Before this day, the rumour of Nonso Okafor’s intention to contest for the Anambra State gubernatorial seat under the platform of the All Progressive Grand Alliance, APGA, was a popular dinner night topic in many homes, taverns, and on the internet.
On Saturday 27th March 2021, it was no longer a rumour, the lawmaker presented himself to the community and party faithful.
As I sat in my corner of the hall watching Nonso Smart Okafor, one statement in his speech caught my attention. “The world has gone digital,” he said, “our economy has gone digital too. We belong to the digital generation. Our generation has created different digital products that have transformed not just the economy but our world. The pace of digital innovations and inventions is increasing at a geometric rate. I have the clear vision and will power to make Anambra another Silicon Valley.”
If there were any doubt that Nonso would make an excellent governor, this speech cleared it; if there are thoughts that Nonso would make an excellent Governor who will use Digital tools to solve some of the problems of Anambrarians, this snippet of the speech confirmed it.
New technologies and digital services hold great promise for improving government effectiveness, a multi-faceted concept that includes, among other things, control and blocking of loopholes where corruption thrives and efficient delivery of public goods such as education, health, and transport.
Nowadays, citizens expect public services to be as personalized and responsive as the services, just like they get from the private sector and even better.
For any government to thrive, it needs to reimagine how digital policies or strategies can be used to enhance the citizen’s end-to-end experience of public services. This requires the adoption of a ‘citizen-first (which Nonso mentioned in his speech) culture and mindset in designing policies and delivering services.
For example, Social media and mobile platforms are replacing traditional channels as a means to interact with people by government, report concerns, and proffer feedback. Mobile services, such as apps and SMS, enable people to access the services they need in a more convenient and targeted way.
These digital platforms also encourage greater collaboration with citizens by involving them in decision-making, policy-setting, budget prioritization, problem-solving and the co-designing of services.
For one, Artificial Intelligence (or AI for short) can help deliver services to citizens, using chatbots to complete transactions within government websites. It can help provide educational support to students based on their individual learning needs.
Already, the COVID-19 pandemic gave us a reality check as to the need for having most activities done online, or able to go online at short notice.
Economic growth relies on a country’s workforce being skilled and ready to embrace the needs of 21st-century employers.
Nonso’s clairvoyance acknowledges that government needs to build the skills and capabilities of their own employees to drive greater efficiencies, elevate customer focus, and strengthen diversity and inclusion.
In a competitive labor market, the public sector has not always been an employer of choice for top talent. Governments need to do more to attract, retain, and develop people with the required skills and capabilities that will attract younger workers who are in search of purpose-led roles where they can make a difference to the society.
The primary goal of all these is to improve service quality, promote transparent and efficient interaction, enhance the level of public trust in government, and drive better citizen outcomes.
Long queues, flawed data, and problems dealing with paper documents are exactly the sorts of issues that Nonso’s digital government wants to avoid.
Nonso’s digital government will provide a painless way to navigate bureaucracy, to make state services operate more efficiently, and to save money. It will also make his government more transparent, giving citizens more access to government data and providing more insight into, and better control of the state’s activities.
In this digitized age, Nonso is proposing to make dealing with the government as easy as buying stocks online. With digital tools, Nonso would enhance capabilities in the public sector of Anambra.
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