NSITF Begins Partnership with DBI to Boost Staff’s Digital Literacy

By Chinedu Echianu

The Managing Director, Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF), Barrister Oluwaseun Faleye, has identified technology, digital skills and Literacy as critical tools to boost service delivery in the operations of the Fund and other government agencies.

To this end, he stated that the NSITF is committed to specialized training and  continuous training of its workers to ensure effective service delivery, pointing out that the Fund is embracing and employing every measure to deepen inhouse capacity, and work with any organization that would help achieve this purpose.

In that vein, Faleye has approved a high level partnership with the Digital Bridge Institute (DBI), and directed that a mini-committee be put in place to work out all modalities for the training and retraining of the NSITF workforce in the area of digital Literacy and proficiency.

The NSITF Managing Director gave this express approval, when the President/CEO of the DBI, David Daser, paid a courtesy visit to him in Abuja on Wednesday.

The NSITF boss, while appreciating and commending the contributions of DBI, to digital Literacy in the country, said the certification from the institute would be very helpful to NSITF and other agencies of government and workers across all sectors.

Barrister Faleye said: “The Certification will be helpful. We are very critical in our technological journey.Training and retraining will play a critical role in that direction. As long as you will add value to us we would engage you.”

“The two key items that you’ve mentioned are therefore very central to what we want to achieve in the context of building the capacity of our staff in-house to be able to use technology for service delivery.

“Yesterday, we hosted a conference which theme was using AI, Artificial Intelligence to further harness the opportunities and the deliverables that we have within the Health and Safety environment. As you may know, health and safety is a critical part of our mandate.

“We are looking for how to use technology to push the needle much more further. So in different components of our service delivery mandate, we have need for that. The certification certainly will be helpful.

“I’m sure that when you sit with our in-house team, you will be able to find a middle ground or an alignment, about this sort of certification that is relevant to us and we can take it forward. With the HR team and the ICT team, we would be able to develop a specific program that is suited for exactly what we do. And the same thing with training.”

Going forward, he said, “we’re very critical in our technological transformation journey. The availability of human resources to do that, to take us on those journeys, to manage that journey, will be important. And training and enhancing that capacity will play a major role.”

The MD therefore, directed his ICT and HR team to harmonize “what the requirements are, what our needs are internally, and then be able to determine who is best able to provide that assistance to us.”

“For me, it is to just reiterate that as long as you have what we need, as long as you are able to add value to our journey, we will always find a room for collaboration that we are preaching. And it’s important for me to also state that, so that my team can then engage you on the basis of that imperativeness of this collaboration.”

The DBI President in his speech earlier said the institute is geographically spread across the country to cater for an institution like the NISTF with workers spread across the country.

Mr. Daser said: “We have partners we can actually leverage in case we have to do something in the South-South, and other geopolitical zones of the country. So why we are here is to seek a collaboration, to help you achieve your vision for NSITF. We want to serve as a friend, partner in progress for you here.

“While we help you in training your staff in IT, we will also, if it’s possible, include that certification into the career progression of staff of NSITF. So we are here as friends and partners, as fellow government organizations.

“As I speak with you right now, we have a partnership with the Ministry of Humanitarian and Poverty Reduction. All our campuses currently are occupying young Nigerians from different states. For a program called Skilled Tours.

“A program like that helps us to improve governance and add value to production, how a government-to-government collaboration can aid service-delivery within the public sector, within the public space. That’s why we are here. Just to offer you a hand of friendship and seek for partnership and collaboration.”

Mr Daser had earlier sought the partnership of the NSITF with the DBI, the foremost institute in information and Communications Technology (lCT) training, which was established by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), 21 years ago.