Plateau Chief Executives back in classroom for IT training

Members of the Plateau State Executive Council, key decision makers and those involved in the implementation of government policies were on Tuesday dragged to the classroom for a training session on Information Technology (IT).

The training session which is organised by Plateau government in partnership with the University of Jos, is in compliance with the introduction of e-governance by the Governor Jonah Jang’s administration towards enhancing service delivery and efficiency.
Declaring the session open, Governor Jang tasked participants to take the programme seriously.
Represented by the secretary to the state government, Professor Shedrack Best warned that those who fail to participate in the training may face sanction.
He said the event is organized to ensure that civil servants key into the modern drive of globalized way of discharging office function.
The Plateau State ministry for Science and technology has embarked on training of senior civil servants in computer literacy.
The Commissioner in charge of the ministry, Prof. Comfort Piwuna, said while fielding questions from journalist after the opening ceremony of the five days training for Commissioners and heads of agencies in the state, held at the Government lodge Jishe.
She said the aim of the programme is to impact ICT fundamental on computer literacy.
“The State Governor Jonah David Jang has given an ultimatum to the entire civil servants, that they must be computer literates.
“In the bid to achieve that, the ministry was mandated to organize some form of training to impact the knowledge to state executives and senior civil servants,” Piwuna said.
According to her, the training organised for Permanent Secretaries and Directors in the state ministries has really impacted to the smooth running of work, adding that it has also been helping inter-ministerial communications.
She said the 3rd phase training will take on deputy directors.
“The bottom line is to be running a paperless Government. This is in line with the idea of the State Governor David Jonah Jang, who had initiated a digitalised system of Government in the state.”

Piwuna explained that the training programme will permeates down to the Local Government levels.
Piwuna disclosed that plateau state government has plans to commence training aimed at providing fundamental basic computer literacy training.
“The training is a session to stimulate the participants. Computer is becoming the language of the world and in line with the e-governance, introduced by the governor of the state,
Tanko Ishaya, the Director of ITC University of Jos, said the role of IT in effective governance, the power of industrial revolution that we experience has made things better and transform the world
“The information revolution is growing fast and we need to embrace it,” he said.