By: Lamin B. Darboe
The Minister of Public Service (MoPS) has expressed that reliable data offer great opportunities to improve the socio-economic development of nations by improving policy planning and implementation, empowering citizens and promoting social inclusion, thus it also ensures that services designed are tailored to citizen’s needs.
Hon. Baboucar Bouy delivered this statement on Friday April 11, 2025 as he presided over the official opening of the second phase of a day-long validation workshop on Data Inventory, held at Ocean Baye Hotel in Bakau.
According to Minister Bouy, responsive and sustainable development cannot happen in the absence of data, adding that they must have basis for policies or programs to deliver as government or development actors and this must be anchored on data.
“My Ministry recognized the significant benefits of data in making informed decisions particularly in designing, executing and evaluating policy and program interventions. We also recognized that there are data gaps and part of the data generated at the level of MDAs are not widely shared or subjected to cross referencing,” said Minister Bouy.
Public Service Minister therefore has this to say: “effective implementations of many policies are usually affected by the phenomenon of Ministries, Departments and Agencies operating in silos, but equally not leveraging much on data”.
In this regard he explained, as part of the preparatory of the PAMP which is geared towards improving public service delivery through enhanced data governance and modernization of public administration, MoPS launched a data Inventory Exercise three to key ministries namely: Basic and Secondary Education, Higher Education, Research, Science & Technology, and Health.
AS part of the second phase of the exercise Ministries of Fisheries, Gender and Tourism are now onboard thus, this will help to create a comprehensive inventory of data assets across all sectors.
The purpose of which he went on, is to systematically catalogue and assess the data assets within the three ministries, identify gaps, redundancies, and opportunities for data optimization and come up with strategies to facilitate exchange of administrative data within Public Service.
According to Minister Bouy, the project’s outcomes will support better data governance, leading to improved service delivery and increased transparency in government operations.
He therefore, urged the participants to seize the opportunity to share their insights, expertise, and perspectives openly and candidly to ensure that the objectives of the data inventory exercise are achieved.
Minister Bouy expressed his heartfelt gratitude to UNDP for their unwavering support and collaboration in bringing this initiative to fruition, while also salute the team of consultants 2M CORP and thank them for the deliverables achieved so far.
The ceremony was chaired by the Permanent Secretary at the MoPS, Pateh Jah, while in attendance were the Permanent Secretary Reforms, Sheriff Jallow, Dr. Yahya Jallow lead Consultant 2M CORP and other Directors within DSPD.
