By: Lamin B. Darboe
Information Officer, MoPS
The Minister of Public Service, Administrative Reforms, Policy Coordination and Delivery has stated that the ‘File Tracking Application’ system will help in identifying the system, points of delays in taking actions which will extremely help in addressing the root causes of file delays in offices to take corrective actions.
Hon Baboucar Bouy was speaking on Monday, July 31, 2023 as he presided over the launching ceremony of the “File Tracking Application System” (TFAS) at the Ministry’s Conference hall in Banjul.
He said the Application will be used by the National Records Service (NRS) personnel to monitor the turn-around time of files within the Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) as well as individual officers.
In his statement, Hon. Baboucar Bouy explained that the delays in acting on files have been an issue of concern in many offices, adding that proper records management has not been satisfactory in some offices especially those that deal with a lot of files daily.
According to Minister Bouy, the information which will be generated from the FTAS will be used by managers as well as supervisors to ensure that there is continuous improvement in the services delivered by their respective units, directorates, and extensions MDAs.
He therefore encouraged individual officers to act on files thus enhancing service delivery, stressing that the data to be collected will also be analyzed to see if some work processes would need to be simplified to enhance timely delivery of service to the citizens.
The Minister explained further that the system will allow NRS to monitor the location and possession of files and indicates how long a file stays with an officer, thus serving as an element of performance monitoring.
“It has recently been observed that the movement of files between offices and among officers in most of our MDAs is slow and quite often the subject of a lot of public outcries and dissatisfaction”, Minister Bouy disclosed.
He said timely and efficient delivery of services to the citizens is key to the work of a Civil Servant which is one of the expectations guiding the relationship between the Civil Servant and the public as clearly articulated in section 4.2.2 of the Civil Service Code of Conduct which States, among other things that: “A Civil Servant shall be polite, helpful and reasonably accessible in their dealing with the public, at all times treating members of the public as customers who are entitled to receive high standards of service”.
“Let me finally commend the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education EMIS team and NRS staff for working together to have the application launched and also urged all MDAs to take inspiration from these two institutions’ collaboration,” Minister Bouy concluded.
