Public offices: NEPAD boss decries poor documentation process

By Saminu Ibrahim

Abuja

Chief Executive Officer of New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), Princess Gloria Akobundu, has decried the absence of proper documentation of important information in most of the nation’s establishments.
Speaking at an interactive session with NEPAD staff yesterday in Abuja, Akobundu emphasised the need for attitudinal change in information storage and retrieval processes.
She challenged members of staff, especially those in the Department of Planning, Research and Statistics to be alive to their responsibilities, stressing the “need for better understanding and deployment of ICT in the management of information and other material resources which are usually at the disposal of information resource keepers.”
“Running of offices becomes difficult and expensive if we fail to adequately keep documents and information at the disposal of those who need them to work and to provide certain solutions. Imagine having to go everywhere to search for documents that ordinarily should be at one’s reach.
“I think we must learn to have some kind of strong room in our libraries where we will keep some of these documents. For instance, those we work with, like the Development Partners, work in line with planned agenda. They know what they want and how they want it. If you fail to key into their agenda, you get left behind,” she said.
While reviewing some of the successes and challenges that had been witnessed in the last one year, the NEPAD boss gave thumbs up to the Agency for its achievements, especially amid the paucity of funds that had characterised the ending year.
She, however, lauded the commitment of the staff to the duty, informing them that their efforts had not gone unnoticed at some official quarters, including the Presidency, from where commendations “have lately come.”
She also used the occasion to praise the vision of the Senate Committee on Cooperation and Integration in Africa/NEPAD under its new leadership for the robust engagements and ideas the Committee had promised to bring to bear on the activities and programmes of the agency.

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