Governor Alex Otti has directed that every community in Abia State be covered with internet network service within nine months.
The Governor gave the directive while launching the Abia State Dedicated Internet Access/Wide Area and Managed Network project to support digital governance in the State.
Otti said that the project, which is in partnership with IPNX, “is aimed at improving governance deliverables by empowering civil servants to do their jobs in a result-oriented way.”
The Governor, who titled his speech “The Digital Transformation Journey Begins,” challenged Abia workers to enter the world of technology or risk being left behind.
He said: “In the future, certain levels of efficiency with the use of relevant technology shall now be required as a necessary condition for exposure to new opportunities and promotions in the civil service.
“While the state will avail its employees all the right support to scale their IT systems knowledge, it is incumbent on everyone to appreciate that the old era of operational inefficiency is gone for good.
“You either upskill and grow or become uncompetitive and stagnant. This is not to threaten anyone, this is just to call your attention to the need for you to open yourselves up to the new technology. If you resist technology, technology will resist you,” Gov. Otti emphasized.
The Governor said that attention would be given to the training and retraining of the personnel.
“Sufficient resources have already been earmarked for capacity-building programmes. We want to achieve seamless deployment across all service institutions across the State.
In his speech, the State Head of Service, Mr Benson Ojeikere, thanked the Governor for giving unprecedented attention to civil servants.
He promised to reciprocate the gesture with higher productivity.
“We are actually going to reciprocate by moving the service to the next level; beyond what has never been experienced in this country,” the HoS assured.
Earlier in his address, the Chief Information Officer to the State Government, Mr. Gerald Ilukwe, noted that a government network is a foundation of any digital government program and said that the project is a major milestone in Governor Otti’s transformational agenda.
He assured all MDAs whose offices are not yet covered in the initiative’s current phase that they would benefit from the second phase.
“This phase one is focusing on the multi-tenant building complexes that have many MDAs in them in the first instance. Even as we are rounding off this one, we are going to start the next one.
“By the end of this service year, the entire government ecosystem in Abia will be linked up to one interconnected network,” Ilukwe stated.
He also assured that workers would be able to transact their operations in a manner that is more secure than manual paperwork, saying that the initiative would be completed and commissioned in five weeks’ time.
The Group Managing Director of IPNX, Mr. Ejovi Aror, expressed gratitude to the Governor for granting them the opportunity to participate in the transformative initiative.
“This partnership signals the beginning of a new chapter in the journey towards building a digitally connected, technologically advanced and economically empowered Abia State.”
He said that the initiative would facilitate efficient service delivery and assured that they are committed to providing seamless productivity, which is essential to unlocking the full potential of any economy. He added that they would work closely with the government to ensure the success of the initiative.
Honourable Commissioners and senior Government appointees, including civil servants, attended the Kickoff ceremony.
VANGUARD
