The Lagos State Government has confirmed Mr. Senukon Olufunmi Ajose-Harrison as Director-General of the Lagos State Public Service Staff Development Centre (PSSDC), Magodo.
Ajose-Harrison became Acting Director-General in May, following the retirement of his predecessor, Mrs. Regina Olubunmi Fabamwo.
For Lagos State to realise its vision of becoming Africa’s model megacity, its workers must continually deliver quality service residents, who daily transact business in the state or require its services.
The Director-General of the state’s Public Service Staff Development Centre (PSSDC), Mrs Olubunmi Fabamwo, said this at the celebration of the Service Charter Day, and the unveiling of the centre’s service charter document.
At the event, which held at the centre’s library in Magodo, Mrs Fabamwo said as a capacity building institution and one of the 14 pilot Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs), for the charter, PSSDC will continue to train manpower that would be change agents in running government business.
Describing service as critical to government, Fabamwo said workers must key into delivering cutting edge services, and that was why PSSDC as the training arm of government keyed into the charter to build a sustainable platform for the state to continue getting things right.
Noting that no leader can be effective if he cannot serve, Mrs Fabamwo said the best leaders are good servants. “Leadership is service and service is leadership,” Mrs Fabamwo noted.
She added that PSSDC is committed to the vision of Governor Babatunde Fashola who, while launching the charter in 2012, looked forward to building a state with a strong cultural identity that would not only drive the nation’s social and political trends, but become one of the top 10 megacities of the world in terms of urban living indices.
She said the service charter is meant to inculcate in all public workers the fact that they are employed to give quality, fast and reliable service to the over 20 million residents of Lagos, who would need their services everyday. She said a well trained worker, who internalised this ethos would go ahead and with others to build strong and virile institutions that would sustain an enduring legacy for coming generations.
The Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola has inaugurated a nine-member Governing Council for the Lagos State Public Service Staff Development Centre (PSSDC).
At the inauguration ceremony in his office, Fashola said the ultimate dream was to see the institution become the Lagos School of Government in the mould of the Kennedy School of Government in the United States and other such schools across the world.
The Council, headed by a former Head, Lagos State Civil Service, Prince Adesegun Ogunlewe, has other members drawn from both the public and private sectors, including Mr. Abiola Popoola, the immediate past president of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria, Mrs. Regina Olubunmi Fabamwo, Director-General of PSSDC, Mr. Adeshina Mohammed Odeyemi, Mrs. Kikelomo Morenike Sanyaolu, Mrs. Olubusola Ajibola Abidakun, Mrs. Adetokunbo Ogabi, Prof Hakeem Fashina-Bombata and Mr. Idowu Oladipupo John. The Council has three years tenure.
Fashola said the inauguration was coming at a time when there was urgent need for outstanding leadership not only in Nigeria, but across the globe in order to make human civilisation live up to its expectation and achieve its full possibilities.
Fashola, who also expressed delight that the inauguration was coming so close to the end of his tenure, added that his pleasure arose from the fact that he could look back and say his administration was leaving behind not just a strong public service but also a very strong and respected Public Service Training Institution.
He thanked the initiators of the institution which he described as “a far-sighted vision” adding that although it is still work in progress, government had over the last few years committed a lot of resources and time “in first upgrading the infrastructure of the school so that it is an environment that is conducive to learning which has all the tools”.
He noted that the institution was already playing the role of a Lagos School of Government “in a much understated way” pointing out that aside the institution being the place where the state’s teachers now receive their annual courses, it was the place where the government converted graduates into volunteer English, Mathematics and science teachers and sent them to the state’s secondary schools to help train students in those subjects.
He said: “This is also where the reformed programmes for the Lagos State Transport Management Agency (LASTMA) and Kick Against Indiscipline (KAI) into the Lagos Law Enforcement cadre of the public service took place.”
Fashola added that a lot of the resources that have been generated by government has been deposited in the same institution where, according to him, the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and the state’s revenue generation formula were developed.
According to him, the government is happy to invest resources into the institution through which he said government is now developing the leadership qualities of the Nigerian people within the Nigerian territory instead of sending them overseas.
He added that he has been receiving letters from governments within and outside Nigeria asking for his government to send resource persons to share the knowledge with them.
Fashola expressed confidence that the ultimate dream would be achieved, saying: “This is because in the men and women that we have chosen, we have a lot of confidence, there is a lot of experience on one hand, there is a lot of youthfulness on the other side and there is a rich mix also of private and public sector experience going into the governing school.”
The Lagos State Public Service Staff Development Centre (PSSDC), Magodo, has adopted the balanced scorecard to drive its performance management and complement the Staff Appraisal and Development Report (SPADEV) in the state.
Its Director-General, Mrs. Olubunmi Fabamwo, at a management retreat with the theme ‘Strategic Performance Management – An Excellent Tool for Organisational Success’, presented the report as a tool for enhancing the centre’s service delivery by achieving its objectives and deepening its relevance to the state government.
PSSDC management agreed to commit to the adoption of the balanced scorecard because of its potential to capture and measure the salient performance indicators of their functions and with the conviction that public sector organisations must become more performance-oriented if they must deliver public goods effectively.
Noting that the scorecard may be a novelty in public service performance management, Fabamwo expressed confidence that the centre would be leading the shift to a performance management system.
The Lagos State Commissioner for Establishments, Training and Pensions, Mrs. Modupe Oguntuase urged the centre to improve in its services .
While congratulating the centre’s staff on the successes, she charged them not to be complacent but continue to design and implement quality capacity building programmes that would enhance the contributions of the public service to the developmental strides of the state government.
Chief Executive of MacTay Consulting, Mr. Tayo Rotimi, said public sector organisations should ensuring equity in their reward systems if they create effective linkages between Ministries, Departments and Agencies’ (MDA’s) mandates, strategies and performance objectives, through the adoption of a more robust and approach to performance management.
According to him, the scorecard provides a good example with its four perspectives namely, financials, customer, processes and learning and growth, adding that with this four-perspective approach, public sector organisations would be translating their strategies into defined operational plans and actions, adding that its adoption would support the PSSDC from being a transactional to a solutions providing capacity building institution.