Odimmegwa Johnpeter/Abuja
In what stands as a promise kept, the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HCSF), Mrs. Didi Esther Walson-Jack, Wednesday, December 31, 2025, announced the end of paper-based operations in the Federal Civil Service.
According to Walson-Jack, with effect from the close of business on Tuesday, December 30, 2025, all Federal Ministries and Extra-Ministerial Departments (MEMDs) have, transitioned to digital operations.
She stated this during a press briefing, marking the culmination of the Federal Civil Service’s digitisation drive and the attainment of the Federal Civil Service Paperless deadline.
She described the transition as a decisive move away from legacy bureaucratic processes toward a modern public service built on accountability, efficiency, and technology-enabled service delivery.
She noted that the era of missing, lost,or misplaced files is gone, leading to more efficient service delivery to the people of Nigeria.
The Head of Service, however, announced that with the support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), her office would launch, in January 2026, a Service-wide Training-of-Trainers programme for 500 trainers who would then train officers across Ministries and other MEMDs to promote practical, hands-on, and sustainable adoption.
According to Walson-Jack, as of Wednesday, 31st December 2025, over 100,000 official email accounts have been created for public servants on the GovMail platform.
Her words: “Now, all Civil Servants have official government email addresses, ensuring they operate with official email identities for secure, professional, and auditable government communication at scale,” she said.
According to her, the GovMail is saving the Federal Government billions of Naira annually by reducing dependence on fragmented, agency-specific external email subscriptions and licenses, delivering better value-for-money.
Walson-Jack also stated that in order to consolidate these gains and end the culture of paper-based bureaucracy, the 38 Federal Ministries and Extra-Ministerial Departments will no longer accept paper submissions through their physical registries.
“All correspondence to the MEMDs should now be sent to the official registry email addresses, which can be found on the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation website. Citizens can also now track their correspondence with individual MEMDs through the Federal Civil Service Paperless portal,” she said.
She underscored the importance of digitalisation in providing seamless and efficient service to Nigerians, noting that a paperless Civil Service means that citizens and the International Community no longer need to send traditional paper letters with envelopes to communicate with the Federal Civil Service.
Stressing the efficiency of digitisation, she stated: “The days of missing, lost, or misplaced files are gone, leading to more efficient service delivery,” adding that this approach not only provides clearer audit trails of documents and faster response times but also makes accessing government services more convenient, transparent, and trustworthy for citizens and businesses alike.
“These outcomes reflect the culmination of declaring 2025 as the “Year of Accomplishment,” under the FCSSIP25 reform agenda, with the delivery theme “Final Sprint – Delivering Results”.
“It was a year marked by measurable results, rapid onboarding, enhanced adoption support, and coordinated execution driven through the OHCSF implementation architecture to ensure standardisation, compliance, and sustained performance tracking,” Walson-Jack stated.
She commended the contributions of enabling institutions and strategic partners, including the National Information Technology Development Agency and Galaxy Backbone Limited (GBB), whose institutional support enhanced implementation capacity and accelerated results in the 1Gov Enterprise Content Management (ECM) rollout.
She lauded Galaxy Backbone for their support, which she noted was essential towards reaching the milestone, saying it made the 1Gov ECM rollout feasible at scale and guaranteed delivery by the December 31, 2025 deadline.
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