Hon. Baboucar Bouy made the remarks recently as he presided over the launch of the “File Tracking Application System” (TFAS) at the Ministry’s Conference hall in Banjul.
The application will be used by the National Records Service (NRS) personnel to monitor turn-around time of files within Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) as well as individual officers.
Hon. Bouy explained that the delays in acting on files has been an issue of concern in many offices, adding that proper records management has not been unsatisfactory in some offices especially those that deal with a lot of files daily.
According to him, 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 services delivered by their respective units, directorates and by extension MDAs.
He therefore encouraged individual officers to act on files swiftly thus enhancing service delivery. He stressed that the data to be collected would also be analysed to see if some work processes would need to be simplified to enhance timely delivery of services to citizens.
He further explained that the system will allow NRS to monitor the location and possession of files and provide an indication of 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 outcry and dissatisfaction”, Minister Bouy said.
He said timely and efficient delivery of services to 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 articulated in section 4.2.2 of the Civil Service Code of Conduct.
