Happy New Year to all readers and a warm welcome to our first Reformer Monthly e-newsletter for 2015. This February edition covers some of our activities during January and since our last publication. During that period, BPSR received an award as “one of the most outstanding public service organisations in Nigeria” from the Independent Service Delivery Monitoring Group (ISDMG). We are particularly pleased about this because our first contact with ISDMG was when they sent us a Freedom of Information Request asking what we had done in the last one year for the budgetary resources allocated to us. Our response was then included with those of many other organisations and we were listed in the newspapers, following which the Nigerian public voted that we should receive the award. BPSR did not part with any money to receive the award, and was, instead, treated to a nice dinner at the cost of the organisers during the award ceremony.
During the period, we also continued with our Lunchtime Seminar Series. The latest one was on “Overcoming the Challenges of Public Procurement in Nigeria” and was kindly delivered by Engr. Emeka Eze, the Director General of the Bureau of Public Procurement. The seminar revealed that public procurement reforms in Nigeria had saved government N618 billion since 2007.
I was also privileged to have been invited to address the DFID Governance Conference in Brighton, UK, a two-day forum of all DFID Governance Advisors from around the world. It was a wonderful opportunity to showcase the Federal Government’s reform efforts and also to engage with a major donor about how best to tailor their support to the needs of developing countries. Post event feedback from DFID suggested that our session was voted the best session over the entire two-day conference.
Lastly, the Steering Committee on Reforms held a high-level retreat to fully consider and validate the National Strategy for Public Service Reforms. The retreat was attended by very senior government officials who robustly debated various contentious issues in the Strategy and proposed ways forward that were captured in a communique. The communique is with the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, who is also the Chairman of the Steering Committee on Reforms, for his signature.
As we face up to the challenges of dwindling budgetary provisions in 2015, a number of the initiatives that we have designed and nurtured over the last few months are nearing completion. As the quote goes: “Everyday, in every way, we are getting better and better.” More about these next month!
| 
No comments:
Post a Comment