The Federal Government has said that it is committed to revitalizing the nation`s public service through Performance Management System (PMS) initiative, a new system designed to re-engineer and reinvigorate the service performance.
The Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HoCSF), Dr. Folasade Yemi-Esan, said this on Monday in Abuja while opening a three-day ‘Train the Trainers’ Workshop on Job Objectives, organised for officers in the office of the HoCSF.
According to her, the workshop was organized by her office, in collaboration with Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria (CIPM), and was meant to acquaint participants with the requisite knowledge and skills in setting job objectives and discharging their mandates.
She said the initiative was due to the inherent weakness of the current Annual Performance Evaluation Report (APER), use currently to assess the civil servants in the country.
“As you are aware, the PMS is one of the eight priority areas in the Federal Civil Service Strategy and Implementation Plan (FCSSIP 2017-2020) which is designed to re-engineer the Federal Public Service for increased productivity and quality service delivery.
“It would be noted that at several fora, we have informed on efforts being made by the office to develop a new Performance Management System due to the inherent weakness of the current Annual Performance Evaluation Report (APER).
“It is therefore worth stating that the new PMS is based on the principles of accountability, transparency, equity and ownership,” Yemi-Esan said.
She added that when the new PMS is fully operational, every individual, unit, department and institution in the public service shall be held accountable on a continuous basis to ensure that national development goals are met.
She said, “PMS will eventually replace the unverifiable and moribund Annual Performance Evaluation Report APER forms currently used to assess the performance of officers in the Public Service.”
She said that other objective of the PMS was to provide a platform for continuous enhancement of performance with regards to national development programmes, and also to serve as a vehicle for the actualization of national goals.
In his remark, President CIPM, Mr. Wale Adediran, charged the participant to take the workshop serious, saying that the success of the workshop was critical, not only for the office of the HoCSF, but to the country.