The Ondo State Governor, Mr Lucky Aiyedatiwa, has launched an Artificial Intelligence-powered digital system designed to automate personnel administration, retirement and pension processes while giving government real-time access to information for decision-making.
The governor said the initiative was not merely about technology but about changing the way the government ‘thinks, works and serves the people’.
Launching the new digital system at the Cocoa Conference Hall of the governor’s office, Akure, Governor Aiyedatiwa stated the system tagged ‘Ondo AI’ was part of his administration’s drive to replace analogue processes with a technology-driven public service that is more efficient, transparent and responsive.
He said, “Information and data have become indispensable to effective administration, the speed and accuracy increasingly determine 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.”
According to him, the system would improve the quality of government decisions, stressing that accurate information was 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.
The governor further explained that the initiative was 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 the government closer to the people,” he said.
Demonstrating the platform, the Managing Director of SmartApps IT Limited, Mr Godwin Odoma, stated that the system would automate civil service administration, payroll management, retirement processing and pension migration.
Odoma said the platform contained comprehensive records of civil servants, including photographs, appointment details, promotion letters, academic qualifications, complaints and other relevant documents, which authorised officials could access instantly. a
He added that the system automatically alerted the government when a worker approached 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.
In his welcome address, the Head of Service, Chief 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.
