ASSESSING THE INTEGRATION OF NEW OFFICE TECHNOLOGIES IN RIVERS STATE PUBLIC SERVICE ADMINISTRATION

Abstract

The study assessed the integration of new office technologies in Rivers State Public Service administration. The descriptive survey research design was adopted for this study. The populationof the study comprised of 130 Senior Administrators' of Ministries and 245 Senior Administrators' of Agencies drawn from the Public Service in Rivers State. The entire population was used for the study. A structured questionnaire titled “Integration of New Office Technologies in Administration†(INOTA) was used as instrument for data collection. Three experts validated the instrument while Cronbach alpha was used to obtain the reliability coefficient of 0.89. Two research questions and two hypotheses guided the study. Only 319 copies of the questionnaire were retrieved and used for the study. The items were rated on a four (4) point rating scale; mean was used to analyze the research questions and z-test was used in testing the hypotheses. The findings revealed a moderate level of Senior Administrators' knowledge on the use of new office technologies and a low extent of Senior Administrators' utilization of new office technologies in in Rivers State Public Service administration. The researcher recommended that government should ensure the training and retraining of officers of Ministries and Agencies on state of the art office technologies to build their knowledge on efficient usage and to improve service delivery in the Public Service.