Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa of Ondo State has launched an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered digital system designed to automate personnel administration, retirement and pension processes while giving government real-time access to information for decision-making.
Christened “Ondo AI”, Aiyedatiwa said the system is part of his administration’s drive to replace analogue processes with a technology-driven public service that is more efficient, transparent and responsive.
Aiyedatiwa said the initiative is not merely about technology but about changing the way government thinks, works and serves the people.
The governor said information and data had become indispensable to effective administration, noting that speed and accuracy increasingly determined the quality of government decisions.
“We are living in an age in which information is power, data is an essential resource, and speed and accuracy presently define effective administration. We cannot expect the 21st-century public service to operate an analogue system indefinitely, with systems designed principally for another era. This is the technological era. We cannot remain and be working with an analogue system,” he said.
He said the system would improve the quality of government decisions, stressing that accurate information is critical to effective leadership.
“Leadership is about decision-making. And every leader takes decisions based on the information at hand. If the information is accurate, the decision will be near accurate. And if the information is inaccurate, the decision will be false,” he said.
Governor Aiyedatiwa, however, said technology alone cannot transform institutions without the integrity of those operating it.
He therefore charged officers responsible for the platform to ensure that only accurate information is uploaded, warning that government can only access what is entered into the system.
He declared that “the integrity of the information entered into the system must be sacrosanct”, urging officers to discharge their responsibilities with professionalism and integrity.
The governor said the initiative is anchored on his administration’s digitisation policy to simplify processes, reduce bureaucratic bottlenecks, improve institutional memory and bring government closer to the people.
“For us, digitisation is not technology for its own sake. It is a means of simplifying processes, reducing unnecessary bureaucratic bottlenecks, improving institutional memory and bringing government closer to the people,” he said.
The Head of Service, Segun Odusanya, said the initiative marks a major step in the state’s efforts to modernise the public service and make it responsive to contemporary governance demands.
Odusanya said the public service remains the machinery through which government policies, programmes and initiatives are translated into tangible benefits for the people, adding that its effectiveness depends on how human resources are managed, developed and deployed.
He said personnel administration had relied substantially on manual records and traditional procedures which, although they had served the service over time, could no longer adequately meet the increasing complexity of government operations.
Demonstrating the platform, the Managing Director of SmartApps IT Limited, Godwin Odoma, said the system would automate civil service administration, payroll management, retirement processing and pension migration.
Odoma said the platform contains comprehensive records of civil servants, including photographs, appointment details, promotion letters, academic qualifications, complaints and other relevant documents, which authorised officials could access instantly.
He said the system automatically alerts government when a worker approaches retirement, while civil servants could use the self-service platform to determine the exact number of days remaining before retirement.
“With the self-service application, you don’t have any reason to say you don’t know when you are going to retire,” he said.
Odoma said workers can also access their monthly payslips through the platform, while the Office of the Head of Service can obtain the number of workers due for retirement in any particular month.
Fidelis David
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