Abuja -The South Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) says it will train 22, 625 Nigerian civil servants in e-Government from 2015 to 2018 to reinforce their practical e-Government capacity.
KOICA Country Director Jung Sang-hoon told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Thursday that the project was the first and biggest e-Government training project in Nigeria.
Jung explained that the Federal Government had in 2012, based on South Korea’s wealth of experience in technology advancement, invited it to implement the Capacity Building of e-Government in Nigeria.
According to him, the training, which is holding simultaneously in South Korea and Nigeria, is being implemented by South Korea through the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA).
The KOICA official said South Korea, through KOICA, had already spent two million U.S. dollars to develop an e-Government Master Plan in conjunction with the Federal Ministry of Communication Technology.
“The project’s objective is to share Korea’s technical expertise and reinforce practical e-Government capacity of Nigerian civil servants.
“The e-Government project aims to train 22, 625 Nigerian civil servants both in Nigeria and South Korea,” he said
Jung said as part of the train-the-trainers programme, KOICA would sponsor some civil servants for Masters Degree programme in e-Government at Kookmin University, South Korea.
According to him, the civil servants, drawn from the Federal Ministry of Communication Technology, Public Service Institute of Nigeria and Centre for Management Development, will depart to South Korea in August.
He said other benefitting organisations of the masters’ programme were drawn from the Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation and the National Information Technology Development Agency.
The KOICA official explained that in November 2014, 29 civil servants visited Seoul for two-week training on e-Government and to hold a stakeholders’ workshop.
He said the training produced the e-Government curriculum that would be taught in Nigeria from 2015 to 2018 at the e-Government Training Centre that KOICA was establishing.
Jung said the first in-country pilot training programme would be held at the Public Service Training Institute from July 29 to Aug. 14.
“No fewer than 105 civil servants will be trained on three courses. The training will be carried out by four South Korean professors and three Nigerian instructors.”
According to him, the capacity building of civil servants is critical to nation building as they are the “engine room” of implementing government policies and regulations.
“In this regard, the Nigerian government at all tiers implements capacity building programmes within and outside the country.
“However, e-Government has not received sufficient manpower development mainly because it is relatively an emerging area in Nigeria,” he said.
Jung said globally, South Korea was the leader in e-Government, emerging as number one in UN e-Government Readiness Index Survey for three consecutive times – 2010, 2012 and 2014. (NAN)
