Hi, everybody, we're back. This is Dave Vellante of Wikibon.org. My co-host today, Paul Gillan, who I'd like to thank, had to leave, but he was fantastic, so I really appreciate his attendance here on theCUBE. He was a CUBE newbie, but you never would've known it. This is theCUBE, and we're here at the MIT Information Quality Symposium. We've been here for two days. This is, we're at the tail end now, and, but we've got a very high energy guest, Mission Lean Casey is here. She's the Chief Data Officer of the Federal Reserve. Mission Lean, great to have you on theCUBE. Thanks for coming by. Thanks, Dave, appreciate it. Yeah, so you were the first Chief Data Officer at the state level in the state of Colorado, the first Chief Data Officer at the Federal Reserve. What makes a good Chief Data Officer? What are the characteristics of a Chief Data Officer that we should look for? Well, I think there's a combination of skills. I think strategic leadership is certainly one of those things. Someone who's been in the data world and the high tech world, that's important as well, but also people who are used to dealing with political situations. Traditionally, data's been siloed off, and we're at this point where Chief Data Officers are really silo busters in a number of ways, and Chief Diplomatic Officers, and having to span and cross lines of business and bring cross-functional people together to really leverage and optimize data in ways that it hasn't been done before, so I spend a lot of my time actually on the communication side, on marketing and strategy and figuring out what the service portfolio of our group really needs to be relative to the board's mission and strategy and how we leverage data and optimize data in support of board mission, but even at the state government level, being able to blend the data strategy and tie that and align that to mission strategy is really important, so someone who's a good strategic thinker and can work with the C-level executives across the organization to really understand what the goals and missions and objectives of the organization are. So organizational dynamics, obviously, communications, strategy, did you have a background in organizational dynamics in any way, shape, or form, or did you just sort of natural at it? No, it's something I've been observing over a number of years. I've worked in a lot of different types of organizations, actually. Small companies, force startups, very large organizations like IBM Global Services, and so I think to me as sort of an observational person, the structure of an organization can really support or impact and hold back work that needs to be done and I think it's an important topic that is under discussed in the conversation around CDO. It's so true. I mean, organizations can either be an inhibitor or accelerator and it's sometimes hard to figure out how to approach that. Change, culture change and the culture of an organization is also in a similar model and organizations really being able to embrace a different mindset around managing data. So I spend a lot of time thinking about that and executing, trying to execute against that. So let's talk a little practical experience. So when did you join the State of Colorado as a CDO? Well, I joined the State in 2007 and I actually was the Director of Identity Management for the State and then in 2008, the legislature passed a law. The first one that we did around better improved data management. They were having challenges and the governor was having challenges in understanding and getting answers about key business data sets around number of employees we had, number of citizens we were serving, number of vehicles in our fleet as examples and they wanted to have better data to improve policy making, to improve financial decisions and they recognized that we could be doing a much better job of managing data, sharing data, exchanging data to improve outcomes for not only our citizens but the businesses that we were supporting in the State of Colorado. Which year? 2008. That was eight. Okay, so it went from sort of identity management right into the fire of- Well, I actually held both roles for the remainder of my tenure, yeah. Okay, so I'm sure you got a big raise for that. No. What were your first 100 days like? It was the first time you were a CDO, right? At the State of Colorado? Yeah, right, is that correct? You weren't a CDO before that. I was not a Chief Data Officer prior to that. No, so yeah.  There weren't a lot of, there still aren't a lot of CDOs around. So what were your first 100 days like? Not a lot of role models.  So one of the first things I did was actually pull together a cross-functional team that was representative of the majority of the State agencies that we had and we started building a plan that tracked along three angles. First of all, trying to inventory the data that we did have, trying to understand how information was and wasn't being shared across the organization and getting our arms around policies and processes that may or may not be in place to support that. So a baseline? We're baselining and also gathering information about what could be possible if we were managing our information. So trying to understand your constraints, the out-of-scope expectations, where we wanted to get to and what the future State could look like in having those conversations as part of, we're here, we need to go there, what does that roadmap look like? So that was part of step one? That was part of step one. Okay. And we subsequently passed three laws after that around data and information management. We actually, the second law we passed put our Enterprise Governance Council in legislation. We wanted to make sure that it would span administration changes. So instead of doing executive order, we chose to go through the legislative route and had phenomenal bipartisan support from our partners in the State Legislature and then pass a couple of other laws after that. So I want to make sure I didn't miss it. I think I heard you say that when you started out, you really focused on three areas, which I called baselining and you said that part of that was the future State and what you could actually achieve. What else was part of that three? Organizational understanding who we needed to have in order to operate and implement. So our approach was generally understanding where we needed to go, but what the current state needed to look like. Operationally, who we needed to have as part of an implementational team. And then thirdly, getting our arms around the policies and processes, we would need to support that. Okay, and then just for others who are thinking about doing something like this, we heard that trend say it's not a project and I know I'm speaking almost like in project terms, but you gotta get started. You gotta get started somewhere. And these three things, the baselining, understanding the organizational requirements and the policies that you need to put in places, sounds like a reasonable thing to do. How long did that take just to get your arms around that before you could actually start the journey? We took the better part of a good year. Six months actually to do the beginning of the baselining. Out of that work, we identified some target priority areas that fed into the bigger picture roadmap that we put together about how we needed to execute and what the priority areas were because we hadn't managed data commonly as an organizational asset. If you picture a state government, we're a $19 billion organization with 30,000 employees and every agency prior to Governor Ritter's administration had its own chief information officer, its own way of capturing data, storing data, maintaining data at some set of policies and processes. So certainly there was a lot of work to do, but we needed to be very surgical about how we went about accomplishing mission. And so we put together a series of priority needs for the state organization and hide it to what I called four anchor projects which were high priority statewide initiatives, education, juvenile justice, healthcare, and transportation and brought common groups together to actually start tackling the common challenges that they were each facing, but in a common way. Okay, so now it's 2009, right? So this started in 2008, if I heard that right. It started in 2008, 2009. Of course, the world was dominated, the entire discourse in every corner of the world was dominated by the financial crisis. What effect did that have on your ability to execute? Well, so we had to cut 20% of state budget at the same time and we were also undergoing an IT consolidation. So sort of the backdrop to me becoming the chief data officer was one of the first things the governor did coming in was to centralize IT under the governor's office of information technology. So state IT had never, state IT as a corporate service had not existed before. Again, each agency had its own CIO, its own budget, its own IT personnel, et cetera. But we were going to centralize service model. So that was going on and there were a lot of changes that were happening in the midst of financial crisis overlay and the fact that we also had to lay off 20% of staff but still supporting all the services needed to be done. So for example, unemployment rates just shot through the roof and there were major, major pieces of work that needed to be tackled around the state's unemployment system which was actually implemented in 1969. Right? So Neil Armstrong walked on the moon when this system got in and the state, written in lines of cobalt and the state legislators couldn't understand why we couldn't just make some gooey change. And it all of a sudden be able to handle the 600,000 more new applicants that we were dealing with. So there were a lot of dynamics going on at the same time that we were trying to do data governance and improve data management and pull together a cross-functional governance body and actually implement again specific project. So the IT folks were migrating the unemployment system. They weren't migrating it, by the way. They built a web front and on top of it but it didn't get migrated. Good because it never would have got done. For all I know it's still operating in the 1970s. I mean it, it probably would have never got done if they had to freeze the code and migrate it. Exactly. They couldn't have frozen the code and taken the whole thing under. It was one of those situations where you all of a sudden had to deal with this tremendous spike in service but still support constituent needs.  Within IT or? So I reported directly to the chief information officer which I generally don't recommend. It's been a consensus here that that is not the best. I want to talk about, go ahead. So I'll talk about the plus and minuses and generally speaking because the data needs of an organization are really business driven. The decision rights, the accountabilities, the business processes, all of those things really are business owned decisions and so fundamentally I really believe the chief data officer should be on the business side of the house somewhere. In the case of state governments though from a structural perspective, typically, you know, you don't have a CEO and you don't have a chief operating officer typically. So it's a different sort of organization structure. Because the governor was consolidating IT and moved us into the governor's office, we were sort of neutral Switzerland, right? The only other places to put a chief data officer would have been into one of the executive branch agencies which would have pissed off every other executive branch agency, right? So we were only the only neutral place. Inherent advantage here. Exactly, exactly. So in that case, because of the organization structure, it worked out fine but generally speaking, I truly support a really tight alliance between the chief data officer and the chief information officer or chief technology officer because truly the technology needs to be supporting the business and can support the business, whether it's through analytics or enterprise architecture, there's so many ways but the data requirements need to be different from the business side. Okay, so talk about the outcomes of all that effort. So now you're slowly coming out of the recession in 2010. You've got, you know... Well, the rest of the country was slowly coming out of the recession. State governments are now, just now coming out. Yeah, I was just saying, the tech boom was 2010 but that didn't ripple through. Yeah, I mean, if you think about government organizations, they tend to lag behind. They're just now actually starting to get the revenue increases. Yeah, 2010 was maybe, okay, this might actually end at some point. Right. But it looks like it's not getting worse. That was sort of the state of 2010. Exactly, so it was starting to stabilize but certainly state coffers weren't increasing and we weren't adding headcount. It's what we're doing. But what we had done was set up a very small dynamic, what I considered a highly functional team. It was myself. We had a chief enterprise data architect, a business analyst and a project manager and we had, again, identified these four major cross-functional initiatives that were actually getting funding from the federal government. So we had money coming in to do these things and so we were able to actually continue our work with funding streams that were continuing. So that was actually extremely valuable for the state. And so what we did was partner with each of these initiatives and had them build money in to support the work that our office was overseeing and doing and that included everything from hiring, business analysts for the projects to inventory, the systems and applications and data sets relevant to those projects because we didn't have an enterprise data inventory for the state. We didn't have an enterprise application inventory. So there were some baseline foundational things that needed to be done that we started with these four initiatives and started to fill in the gaps. And over time, hopefully that those gaps have been closed and they've got a better sense from an organizational view what data they have, how that ties to business process, business function, et cetera. Now, when did you leave the state? We had a gubernatorial transition at the beginning of 2011, Governor Ritter did not run for reelection. And so I left at the end of January of 2011 and just went into private consulting practice. So what impacts were you able to see or were you able to measure at that point in time? Started in 2008, exited in, you said the beginning of 2011, end of 2011. The beginning of 2011, January 2011. What impacts did you? There were a number of things. So first of all, we did end up with four laws around enterprise information management and information sharing. We ended up with quite a number of enterprise policies and processes to begin our sort of repository of artifacts around data governance and started to align the way the various divisions were actually managing their data. One of the biggest wins was we ended up getting a $17 million grant from US Department of Education to build our state longitudinal data system in the education space, which never would have been built without that grant funding. But one of the things that stood out to the US Department of Ed was how our data governance process was being managed within the state that made us one of the early winners in the race to the top grants. Okay, now you had a legislative edict in the state of Colorado. We did, highly supported by the legislature and the governor. So that was the catalyst for the role of the chief data officer. Now you joined the Federal Reserve. What was the driver there for them to say, hey, we need a CDO? So with the backdrop of the financial crisis in mind, a couple of years ago, the Fed engaged McKinsey consulting to come in and start doing some helping support strategic planning for the organization. I think there was a realization that while the Fed is obviously an extremely effective organization, they've traditionally managed the research and the supervisory regulation the size of the business very separately and hadn't until that point quite seen the interconnectedness of where the two intersect which may or may not have caused the financial crisis. I'm not gonna get into that, certainly I don't know that, but out of the planning was an identification of the need to share more information across organizational silos and to be able to better manage data as an organizational asset. And so if you look at the strategic framework that the Federal Reserve Board has, it's number one priority is financial stability and it's number two priority is better data management and data governance. And part of the series of objectives that fits into strategic element number two is the creation of the Office of the Chief Data Officer. So I joined the Fed on May the 20th and that's when officially the Office of the Chief Data Officer got launched. And that was an independent decision obviously that the Fed made, right? And said, okay, this is a good idea, we need to do this, the executives of the Fed said, all right, we want to do this, we approve it, let's do it. So that there wasn't obviously the same kind of legislative edict. So the question I have is, because we heard today only, let's say one in 10 organizations have a board approved data strategy, probably less than that have a Chief Data Officer. It's gonna be low single digits maybe, I don't know. And maybe there's some kind of de facto data officer, but generally speaking, if there's not an edict, there's maybe less of an incentive or a less likely level of probability that you'll see a Chief Data Officer. Or do you subscribe to the scenario that because organizations are trying to be more data driven that data are a Chief Data Officer is going to be fundamental and organizations are going to see this? How do you think that'll shake out initially? I think over time organizations that really are information heavy to their business will begin to have the Chief Data Officer role more and more. I certainly think that the best way to set it up is to have the executive sponsor and authority of your Chief Executive Officer, your board of directors, the C-suite. They absolutely need to be behind that role in order for that role to succeed. Part and parcel of that is a change in organization culture that enables folks to get out of the mindset of the data's mine, the data's mine, and really view data as an enterprise asset and be incentivized to manage it that way. Yeah, so what should the Chief Data Officer, what should be the scope? I don't like the word own, but you know what I mean by that, not own, but what should be the sphere of responsibility for this Chief Data Officer? I don't know if you saw Mario's discussion today. He's on one of the panels with Derek Strauss. Yeah, the first one this morning, yeah. I was amazed at the number of disciplines that he had up on that slide. There were 11 areas. It was like M&A, ops, data governance, policy, security. Mario's very talented. He can do a lot of stuff, so.  Now, of course, he's got a much smaller organization, but what areas of the organization should be under that umbrella of the Chief Data Officer? I think part of that answer is that it's gonna depend on the organization, right, and what's needed, and I've been in organizations where they have owned as much as what Mario showed, which is really sort of the Dimmbach model, right? Everything from data governance through data architecture to business intelligence and analytics. In some organizations, data acquisition is part of that, depending on whether or not organizations are looking for content externally or not looking for content externally. In some organizations, the BIC is a really big part of that, right, the Business Intelligence Competency Center. Some organizations don't have that. I guess my view of the world is that, generally speaking, the Chief Data Officer, first of all, owns the Enterprise Data Strategy, right, and works with the rest of the C-suite and key executives and stakeholders across the organization to understand how the data strategy is gonna be in support of the Enterprise Business Strategy and goals and missions, whether it's we wanna increase revenue opportunities and be more innovative, or if we're trying to reduce operational costs and improve operational efficiencies, right? And there's a range of things that can be done in there. Enterprise Data Governance and Enterprise Data Management, I think, are really important core pieces of the Chief Data Officer. In particular, I think, certainly, organizations that are really gonna undertake this need to set up an Enterprise Data Governance Council, whatever that's called, that has executive support and it's very cross-functional in nature and is looking at the systemic issues around data and really tackling policy process standards in a common way for the organization. Lastly, I think the really sort of big other role the Chief Data Officer plays is as change agent for organizations and again, that's everything from breaking down the traditional silos and getting people to think about the bigger enterprise needs while still managing the what's in it for me conversation to be in the storyteller about why improved data management is the right thing to do in support of business goals and objectives. So there's this change agent role and evangelism role that I think the Chief Data Officer has a really big voice in playing to the organization. Transformation opportunity. Transformation and innovation, if you can get to that point, right? I think Chief Data Officers today are doing a lot of the block and tackling work because it's been under data hat while lots of people and organizations say data is the most important asset of the organization. The time and money hasn't been invested in managing data. Yeah, and the data role's been just a back office role in many organizations. In many organizations and so I think for Chief Data Officers coming in, it's very much a startup shop and a lot of foundational work needs to be done. We heard it this morning, just even having an inventory of all your data assets. Most organizations don't have that, right? So getting that baseline is really foundational in terms of understanding how your information flows are happening, what systems are connected to what systems, dealing with data quality issues, dealing with metadata issues, the whole realm of things. You can't manage your data if you don't know what data you have. You can't secure it if it's invisible to you from a security officer perspective and you can't optimize it and leverage it if you don't know it's there. So we've talked sort of indirectly about this but I want to ask specifically how social data fits and how you see CDOs leveraging social data. I know, again, as a good consultant, good former consultant, it does depend. It does depend. But we haven't talked directly about that today. Social data specifically, what do you see there? I think there are really specific, interesting use cases that certainly are happening today, right? The NSA is a perfect example of, they're following our phone calls, they're following us on social media. They're connecting those dots, right? Interesting to follow the opinions on that too. They fall on both sides of the aisle, don't they? They fall on both sides of the aisle. And certainly the Intel community is doing a much better job of connecting the dots and they are following social media and looking for patterns and analytics. On the flip side, I think healthcare organizations are even looking at social media feeds and how to incorporate that as part of their 360 member profiling or member consumer engagement and outreach and how can we reach out and connect with our customers and our members and our potential clients in a more effective way than we've been able to in the past. Retailers are a great example of this, right? Of how they're leveraging social media to send you a coupon or let you know that there's been a product announcement. But I think there's a lot of big opportunities, again, to pull that into other big data analytics, to understanding where things are trending and be able to tie that into a broader suite of analytical services that an organization has. All right, Mr. Lee, my last question is advice for young people. I'm always telling my kids, get into some kind of data field which means they probably won't because I'm advising them that. But what advice would you give to kids in college? They're interested in data. They're interested in this field. Maybe even aspire to be a data czar at some point in time. What would you advise them? A couple of things. And actually, if you heard Dr. Michael Rappa yesterday, I think he's got a really nice approach to how he runs his program down at Etsy State. We didn't hear him, but he was on theCUBE and we're actually gonna do some stuff with him. He should, he's great. But he takes a really holistic approach because if you don't have the strategic thinking skills and you don't have the communication and marketing skills, then what you've got is a really great data analyst or data programmer, but someone who can't communicate the value and tell the story to the organization about how the data's improving X, Y, or Z, right? And at the end of the day, that data's gotta have some impact and value to the business. And so having folks who have some technical skills but more importantly are able to think strategically, understand the business, understand what's driving the business, and have those excellent communication skills so they can sell the story and even know how to tell a story to sell, right? Why does this data matter to us as an organization? Why is it important? Those are the kinds of future data leaders. I think we're gonna need in the future and hopefully the business schools and masters in science programs and engineering programs and mathematics programs are beginning to get that message. You hear that way. So I was gonna say, what should my major be? Should I be a marketing major, a psychology major? I was a marketing major undergrad and then got my MBA. So I'm not a hardcore programmer but I am someone that spent a lot of time on the business side of the house and leveraging technology to improve business outcome and leveraging data to improve business outcome and be able to tell that story in a successful way to an organization. I said the last question. I wanna ask one more. Thinking back on your experience, the state of Colorado, if you had to do it over again in thinking about maybe some of the mistakes you made, what would you do differently? One of the things I say is the biggest thing I did not do well in Colorado and I partially blame it on budget cuts and partially on being understaffed was I did not communicate the value as well to the middle and lower levels of the organization. Legislators, governors, executives across all of the division areas all bought in. They all got it, they all understood it but where things started to fall apart and when things did stall out in certain areas it was always at that middle layer and we didn't have a great communication strategy and plan because we were just trying to execute and get a lot done. And so in this role, we will have a dedicated communications person and dedicated training education person and a dedicated change management person as part of our program management office so that as we are developing enterprise standards, policies, procedures, et cetera, we've got dedicated people who can work across the various functional areas to communicate, to build awareness, to build the knowledge and skills to actually do the implementation to sell the what's in it for me story that needs to be told over and over and over and over again. Top to bottom as we heard. Top to bottom. Top to bottoms up. Michelin, thanks very much. You're cool and smart and really appreciate you coming on and sharing your great knowledge about the CDO role. A great cap to an awesome two days here so really appreciate your time. Thank you Dave. Keep it right there, everybody. I was talking about smart. I've been at MIT for two days. I just feel smarter hanging out here. All right, keep it right there. I'll be back to wrap. This is theCUBE, Silicon Angles coverage from MIT's Information Quality Symposium. We'll be right back.


Welcome to JSA TV and JSA podcast, the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals. I'm Jamie Scott of Kataya, coming to you from Virtual Metro Connect 2021. Joining me today is my good friend, Steve Higgins. He's the president of Mobile Wear. Steve, welcome back to JSA TV. Hi, Jamie, thanks for having me, great to be here. It's great to have you and for our viewers who don't already know, can you tell us a little bit about Mobile Wear? Absolutely. Mobile Wear is a leading IoT data connectivity provider for companies and industries around the globe. Fairly unique in our solution and our approach with a single SIM solution. Found out of the company in 2004 and feel very fortunate we've been able to have a lot of success and growth in this industry. Yeah, wonderful. 2004, that's 22 years, 15, 16, 17 years. 17 years, yeah. I was getting it.  Tell us a little bit more, especially about IoT, it's such a buzzword. So one of the things that we really see in the IoT space is customers want a solution that's out of the box and gives them the connectivity they need. They've got sensors in almost every part of their operations now and Gartner projects by 2024, 50% of all manufacturing will be using IoT platform of some type. So we look forward as well and said, yo, let's be at the forefront providing a solution now so they can get it fully implemented into their operations and really utilize that data. The biggest trend that we see is clients want just that. They need usable, digestible data that's going to allow them to understand and analyze that data in real time. And that's exactly what our single SIM card does it allows them to connect any of their sensors anywhere around the world and be able to manage that in one platform. Can you mention clients, which industries and businesses do you think would be an ideal fit for mobile wear single SIM? Yeah, and I love that question. So we are having tremendous success in QSR. So quick serve restaurants, manufacturing and that spans across multiple industries but if you think any kind of a manufacturing process where they're really looking to automate more and more and be able to make some shifts on the fly with real time data. We also have security video surveillance is a large area that we're finding more and more expertise in with those clients and allowing them to really have that real time surveillance from anywhere in the world and be able to monitor that from their knocks. Oh, I love that. Yes, that makes so much sense. And being this unique perspective into these industries and ours, do you have any industry trend that you think will be popping in 2021? Any industry trends. I think you were seeing in the quick serve restaurant vertical through this pandemic many of those companies have heavily stepped back and looked at their operations. You're seeing, you know, some of them change what the drive through experiences like for those clients. Many are going with a curbside or a car side solution where, you know, employees can go right out to the car with a tablet of some type and we're actually providing the connectivity in those tablets allowing those, you know, organizations and clients to fulfill those orders at a lower cost more efficiently and just continuing to improve the customer experience in that as well. Yeah, I've definitely just this weekend had that experience and I was thinking this day make it move so much faster and it's a lot more pandemic. Yeah. Oh, conscious, if you will. So now I know who's powering those tablets. I think the benefit that we bring is, you know, clients don't have to go out and confirm what carriers have the best coverage in the location for each of their stores with our solution. They can just send out one SIM and it's going to automatically pick up and ride on whichever network has the best connectivity in that area no matter where they are in the globe with our connectivity on over 600 carriers around the globe on one SIM card. It certainly solves all their needs. Makes total sense, particularly in this crazy world we're living in currently. So where can our viewers go to learn more about mobile wear? Absolutely. So best place first and foremost is our website mobilewareus.com and also on LinkedIn under mobile wear. And I'm always checking those messages and connections and look forward to hearing more from any of the viewers. Excellent, mobilewareus.com. Thank you so much Steve for joining us. It's always wonderful caring about mobile wear and thank you viewers for tuning in to JSA TV and JSA podcast here at Virtual Metro Connect 2021. Happy networking.


You're not angry with them. You're not revolting. You're not rejecting.  Neutral and quiet. Each of the people you meet in your life who's not your family, you should have the same attachments to everyone or be detached from everyone. That's the way to be. Just because you share blood doesn't mean you're obliged now to to sit at family dinners for the rest of your life. You're obliged to look after your parents. You're obliged to look after their physical well-being because the emotional well-being of another person is difficult to do. You're obliged to look after your children. You're obliged to look after your partner. The rest of the family, they should be glad if you are there. They should appreciate your presence. If they don't, it's not the place for you to be.


We're glad to know you're still there. It's time now to go to the press and see what we can lift off the press That means the headlines for today on some of our national deals We're glad to have joining us. Mr. Tunde Kolaulay a legal practitioner here in Lagos State. Good morning and welcome to the program Mr. Kolaulay Okay, it's another wonderful day There may not be money, but there is and there is Happiness which we can choose to get or not to get because let's let's say happiness is a choice wherever you find yourself Okay, so We're starting this morning with a Guardian newspaper And then the first headline here slow e-payment channels wassen cash You look tight troubles That's the first headline here the the Christmas was celebrated in a very Very low key to a lot of people especially some workers in the federal civil service that were That celebrated Christmas without salaries. A lot of people said that they were not paid for December as the celebrated eulogite and now cash payment e-payment and all other things Wasn't the situation. What was your what is your perspective about? What happened during the eulogite especially as regards the cash crunch we're fighting Can you hear me? Okay, but I can hear you loud and clear without any hindrances Yes Let me just say I did my Christmas in Lagos and I did a little bit of the moving around I can say that Your account is What a moment We're talking to tundekolawole and we're looking at the headlines We will return to tundekolawole to have his comments on all the headlines in the meantime what we're going to be doing is Just to give you a rundown of all the headlines and when he comes we'll be taking them one after the other We'll begin with the guardian newspaper The one he was answering when we went off like that was slow e-payment channels wassen cash eulogite troubles that's The biggest headlines on the guardian newspaper and then we have smaller headlines over 50,000 soldiers in counterterrorism separatist operations nationwide says see chief of army staff saboteurs hoarding naira dollars now on federal government's watch list Okay That is also on the guardian newspaper. So if you're hoarding naira or Dollars you are now on the federal government's watch list. That is if they know you Senator lament rise in taraba killings calls for emergency We have responsibility. Okay. Now you can find that on page 28 With responsibility to ensure Nigeria's stability tinobu tells governors That's on news page three on the guardian newspaper Boxing day how harsh economy spoiled fund for many Nigerians. That's metro page eight You can find that story apc alleges plot to pilfer eight billionaire from kanu coffers That's on news page 28 on the guardian newspaper Two months after versity teachers insist they're being denied four-month salary News page three guardian newspaper. That's where you'll find that Another headline says fast-tracking justice dispensation through alternative dispute resolution It's an editorial on page 12 middle belt to threaten self-help as debt toll in plato killing hit 155 that is on news page six on the guardian newspaper So those are the headlines on the front pages of the guardian newspaper. We move now to nature news nature news has the leading headlines on nature news as Green Nigeria initiative federal government to plant 25 million trees in 2024 the riders are budget Budgets are 100 billion for green bond allocates 15 billion naira for great great green wall I think color will it has joined rejoined us Welcome back to today Can't get in there. Okay, so you were saying that you went around Legos a little bit for Christmas. Okay, let's continue with that I mean I have been spending Christmas in Legos over a long time now and I haven't witnessed the kind of Christmas that I saw that this life last time around everywhere was tried people were looking for long the kind of festivities and saying they're dancing musicians playing in different places and all that wasn't working there and just like the papers in the pocket getting the two cars to really do some of the transactions and people but not even would do the Christmas in terms of buying food, groceries and water and drinks for family members relations and now that we're all on very very low key which tells us the reality that this scarcity time is a real and that the government would require to do something about it rather than start telling stories and saying people are holding the currency and water if no people are holding the currency must you announce it that they are on your work list all the currencies are the economic sabotage all the government's relation too is to go after such persons and raise them and prosecute them in a court of incompetence and jurisdiction but rather than face realities you find that coming without pushing out the propaganda of the government against the people my suspicion is that the government is mopping up cash the cash in the system so as to bring down inflation the inflation of the NIPA over 20% and it can continue like that since my spirit of control so I would rather not say that there is a monetary policy that the government is implementing that is at the bottom of this capital of currency that we have in all over Nigeria and as to the performances of the NIPA made and all that it has never been top notch even when currency was in the cash you and I will know that the performance of the NIPA is dependent on the service providers that we have in the country that is the telecommunication company and the performance of the telecommunication company that I know that just like I have said hasn't always been excellent why is it not excellent it is not excellent because the technology that we have in that area is a little technology in some other parts of the world and all that most of the telecommunication company operate through satellite look at the most facilities now it does require to put a antenna somewhere anywhere in the world you are able to see simply because they are operating through satellite the telecom providers in Nigeria should be looking at the possibility that they are made of really joining the counterparts in the other parts of the world where satellites now controls and help them to regulate disseminate and get messages across the people they are all the telecommunication platform that we have in the country the comment here I want to say to find some other ways that may come through inflation my advice here has only been that the cost of contracts in the country in terms of trust and this is another contract is too high there is no justification for it they are now in the movement satellites and all that of the politicians is also way out of of reasonability so furthermore I am not even sure that we have a list here that the CBA has the accurate data as regards the amount of money in circulation so they need to look at some of these areas they require to know the amount of money in circulation to be able to implement some of the monetary policies that they are presently implementing while we are talking about trying to mop up the cash from the in circulation nobody is talking about what happens when you use e-transactions the kind of charges that come with the e-transactions and the kind of failed transactions that you find because you are talking about the service providers being the ones that are responsible for whatever happens but nobody is talking about this to address these issues because a lot of people who should ordinarily go to the banks are very reluctant nowadays they intend to keep their money at home because they can spend it you go to the bank to collect your own money they are not giving you the money just because they want to mop up the cash how do you survive if you need this money to do whatever you are doing for instance if you are a farmer the farming season is about to kick off and then you are going to get your money to go and hire people to do declaring or anything that you need to do in the farm you cannot access this money so people are resorting to keeping this money at home yet you want to mop up the cash that is in the economy how practical is this is it going to work at all because I don't see it working I don't know if you have a better insight to that you are correct but my take is that who even has good money to keep at home now almost all of us are living on a huge train because of the hyperinflation in town no matter what money you get now by the time you go to the market you find out you can't buy most of the things that you used to buy with the money you require to take huge sums of money now to buy just a basket of tomato a basket of onion and then a bag of rice and water you know so these are challenges the monetary policies of the government not just this government's look all the civilian government that we have had have not been working especially with regard to the government before this war the government before this war was reckless in the money that it was borrowing the money that it was spending you don't start spending what you don't earn but that was what we saw in the last administration those are some of the things that lead to oil inflation where you have very low productivity not just in the area of agriculture but also in manufacturing and then your oil is no longer available to sell in the international market you are likely to face the kind of challenges that we are facing now and I'm sorry to say even though this may sound non-palate but it appears to me that the situation may even get worse in the coming days, in the coming months and in the coming years except the government in the system and be honest with the people of Nigeria I will advocate let the government begin to focus its attention on full security let's go back to agriculture if we can provide food for our people the problem will be have and of course we also require to do something decisive with regards to security the security situation in the country has totally broken down Nigeria has become like a broken head that is the almost impossible to limit fix or put together but we must find a way around it if we want to continue to lead as a nation, as a united country as a one people that I mean I don't like the capital of this set the president I mean the presidential spirit of the liberal party look at the number of people that were killed in Plateau State even in one situation that is further going on between the Israelis and the Palestinians that kind of number of people are not killed in one single day unlike what we are seeing in the Kominah or Intertribal what we are seeing all over the country well talking about security we will just take these two headlines to get at the senator Lamence Rice in Taraba killings calls for emergency and then this other one on page 6 of the Guardian says middle belt threatened self-help as debt toll in Plateau killings hit 155 in fact from inside information that we got from the calls they said that it is possible that is more than 160 people killed in one day now the worrisome thing is that yesterday on Daily Trust newspaper we had when the story was that 145 were killed the defense chief was telling Nigerians take ownership of security and it worries me at what point legally can we as a nation say we are declaring a state of emergency on security because for me I think we have reached that point where a state of emergency should be declared are there incumbrances that will meditate against this kind of pronouncement are there conditions that will make this impossible that is still keeping us here and we are not declaring a state of emergency in security well when we have people say we need to declare a state of emergency with regards to security I laugh why do I laugh in this killing that we seen that we are seeing all over the country has been going on for more than 12 years or they are about we started with the Bukwara misogyny and then it got ready to pan the tree and lawlessness and then we also have to separate this movement in the fountains and all that one of the primary responsibilities of government is to provide security for its people if there are any government that cannot guarantee security has no business being in power so when government begin to say that they now require to declare a state of emergency before they can guarantee security it means that the government is not serious at all that is something you should do as a matter of security that is something that you should do without giving any excuses and war as you and then you must be seen to be making very serious effort in that collection I was pointed out the one we have in our hand is a classical gorilla a wolfia that is being weighed by the bandits in the different parts of the country when you look at this plateau killing and all that it took place on the myth of chris class that is a place in which the community they wanted to attack will be relaxed will be in sensitivity will not be expecting that anybody will come attack on a very auspicious time to attack them the people will just be to a sedentary to be able to put up a defense and then the people coming to attack on them that is a classic gorilla activity so and that is what has been happening in most of the community in which this kind of killing has taken place what this tells me is that the Nigerian security people the army, the police the PSS and war have the civil defense and then the local vigilantes will require to really think to spread their own strategy the public will also have to adopt a gorilla approach to fighting this security that we have in our hands when we begin to use the classical warfare methodology we might not be getting the result that is very required and then we might be making a very terrible message but as we saw in Kathmandu and Kathmandu and not too long ago in which the trolls have leashed on the community who are celebrating Ibel Maloud so the soldiers the army, the security chiefs will require to really fountain the strategy and tactics for committing this security and bandaging all over the country and more importantly it will also appear that the struggle to have access to mineral resources and then to Rosu Casus and Lola is also behind some of these bandages and war have so we require to do something with regards to access to the mineral resources of the country in the different parts of the country this phase is way way beyond the mayor inter-communal classes economic activities will appear to be behind some of these security challenges that we have in our hands people want to go and steal other people's cows and other animals they want to take over the aggracing land people's aggracing land they also want to have access to mineral in the different communities and then be able to take them without paying royalties and taxes to government so it's a very serious situation and except we need to put more attention to these areas and less attention to politics we pay too much attention to politics we should not take more than 10 percent of our time but almost 90 percent of our time is spent on politics and also non-economic activities that we have in our hands it's possible to rein in this insecurity but in this they have to be a kind of strategy they have to be more commitment and then the local communities too will have to will have to take things into their hands because I'm sorry to say self defense is a fundamental right under the Nigerian constitution where the state has not been able to guarantee citizen security then the citizen will have the right to find ways of me to really defend them defend themselves if you don't sit by you don't start watching when people just open you and begin to kill massacre into a menu on the daily basis such as we have seen in the last 12 years of the Arab world and more importantly like I said we must blame the politician for all this thing because they are secured they are not thinking about providing security to all citizens well let's move on to other matters we are taking some stories from nature news the federal green initiative that's the leading headline federal government to plant 25 million trees in 2024 budgets 100 billion Naira for green bond and then allocates 50 billion Naira for great green wall your comments please here it will be it will be a good development if they are able to do it if they are not if they are not merely paying lip service to the insecurity that we have I mean to this green revolution thing that they are talking about but don't forget that in the return to DC we have only has very active budget that's in here mark to fight the certification and then to also the green Nigeria in the different parts of the country but what has always happened to those budgets have we always had results for those budgets the answer is no in fact what has always happened is that those budgets or those monies are putting the budget for the politicians and the civil servants and their friends who gave it to have access to state resources at the end of the day no green initiative will be seen all over the country and the countries they have it from the north to the south west to east on a year made basis and because this climate change is a reality the fact that the security we are talking about has part of its roots in the challenges that we have in the area of the climate in the certification that we have on about the country the cultural area for the cultural others are moving more and more than south to find the great places for the animals they are having more frequent classroom with the farmers because the farmers want to keep this land and then the animal areas will also want to provide places for the animals so if we have been able to fight the desert encroachment the desert encroachment in Kamei, Kadimei, Tikiawa in Meduguri in Boronuna and Warapo some of the challenges that we have in some of these local communities would have been reduced I would want to see a situation in which we have a commission that we may be able to monitor some of the things that are said to be here in Yarmat to be done in the area of the certification and improving the environment in which we live too many times Monizia Yarmat is not a fancy a safe place in terms of the planting the trees and cleaning all the pollution in the Niger Delta area but thanks to that number the final end of the day this is a mere propaganda in the matter of positions they are not committed to executing at all and except we begin to pay attention to our environment we will be merely cutting our own losses in order to spite ourselves because when the environment is gone we will all be in trouble very serious trouble as the people and in security we will fall down right in the country there is this story also on nature news two stories actually Lagos pledges enforcement of environmental impact assessment that's on the one hand and then Lagos state government urges residents to stay away from distressed buildings those two stories are coming from Lagos state I'm more interested in stay away from distressed buildings I don't know it doesn't seem like a deliberate policy for housing that will accommodate the people that are in Lagos and so people resort to a lot of a lot of practices some of them very harmful to make sure that they just have a roof over their heads if you are not resorting to going to Lagos state to be coming from Lagos state to work in Lagos state and pay taxes in Lagos state and all that it doesn't seem as if they have a deliberate policy on housing that they have or something that has given you the hope that something will be done about housing in Lagos state In fairness to the Lagos state authority since that is how we live in Kui they are building an environmental efficient has been very active in ensuring that people who are building houses comply with building regulations in ensuring that the houses that are distressed are marked and the citizens are asked to evacuate those buildings but the truth of the matter is that our people are very stubborn people in houses are distressed and the government or the country agencies ask the people to evacuate those houses our people will usually refuse to evacuate those buildings consider a force to do so but if you have the ability for them to comply and if people have the ability to comply with the regulatory authorities with their instruction with the order that are given I am sure we will have the total environment let me just say this Mr. Kui the environment even in places where we have baskets where cans are provided we will find out that our people will still not use those facilities they will throw dialysis into the drainage they will throw it on the road and then they mess up the environment but just a moment Mr. Kui if you are flying over Lagos and you look at Lagos from the air you will find that as one of the most beautiful cities in Africa but when you are on the ground the kind of pollution the kind of lit up the kind of abuses that you will see will rather be put off the government or the respective agencies will also be to see that both cases it's not just about providing facilities we really need to educate the people on the need to comply with making the environment pollution free lit up free and then they need to stay away from the safe building where you don't stay away from the safe building what you really do is risk in your life as the buildings will collapse anytime and then the people will be killed another name for life but in addition to enforcing implementing activities and decisions we also need to look for ways to provide cheap housing for our people I am not sure any citizen will want to live in a decent house if they really have alternatives and where they could stay in their safety guarantee building a house is not a tea party renting a house in a place like this is not a tea party it's not very expensive especially in the urban areas so all this is must go together in as much as want to enforce regulations and water you know in as much as want to keep our environment clean we must also be able to provide cheap houses for our people in such a manner that they will not be adamant in continuing to live and stay in a house that has been set up to be destroyed and watered the mudgate institutions are not working and when the developers build houses they are very very expensive not to stop us if they come in within the building houses to make facilities available to make finances available at about between 2 and 5 percent interest so that the developers will be able to build cheaper houses we can also have the developer with cheap material will be able to build houses for the people I think we are able to do that all the preaches all the samples and water with regard to the need to stay away from the safe houses will come to north they lead to the pollution the messing of the environment that we also see also has a relationship with the conditions that we have in most of our cities especially in the legal area you find an environment where not more than 5 10 or 15 20 people should live the process of people that are living in those areas live in two conditions and water them so where an environment is contested we are too many people occupying a small space of land the consequences you always see that it is difficult to keep what an environment is hygienic and then people will draw out a manner of thinking you also need to lay their head on something I have some sleep ok see and then provision of cheap houses provision of cheap materials for people to be able to buy houses granting of loans to civil servants every point of security the army, the police and all that to be able to build their own houses will help a great deal and then we should also be able to prepare the land in the rural and the outskirts of the city make clothes water light availability developing areas these days people have access to to energy to water to goods and all that and they can access their workplaces from those little places very easily and cheaply I am sure some of the challenges that we have in some of these areas will be a thing of the past or at least if not totally eliminated I am just wondering I have two concerns some of the people who live in distressed buildings live in those buildings because they are the ones that are a bit affordable they don't seem to be deliberate efforts to monitor what goes on in tenancy I don't know if it is covered by law but landlords in Lagos state seem to do as they like if I may say that and they just wake up one morning then tell you that the rents have gone up maybe 300% or 200% as the case may be no regulatory body that will hold them will rein them in and say no this cannot be done it happens like that and like I always said a lot of people maybe up to 70% maybe are living outside Lagos and coming to work in Lagos and they pay tax here so that's one reason why people stay in distressed buildings secondly it doesn't seem as if they also give this warning and orientation at the onset they will leave you to build they will give you a land somewhere that you should not build because the integrity of that place you are building on is not even good enough don't they do land integrity check before they allow you to build there but they will give you a place to build you build they leave you from foundation before they come and mark X with a red paint and then what happens from there is that you go to the office and talk to them and then they let you continue till you roof the house before you know what is happening the house has tilted and maybe twin houses close to where I live there are twin houses that are touching each other at the roof and you are telling that person after spending all that money to leave that house because you are going to demolish it or something or something if you need to do this shouldn't you start from the beginning why sell land to people when that land cannot hold a building in the first place and then why let the landlords to do whatever they like just because they built their own houses is it not covered by law that these things should be done and to protect the tenants and everything it is let me quickly say this that certain land cannot hold houses there is no land that you cannot build a house look at the so called banana island these are some three lands that people are building houses with the function of money the function of your resources if you have the means to do the kind of foundation that you do you should be able to build as anywhere in most of the places that some of these houses that have challenges are being built when a poor man now wants to go and build his own house in an empty area he is planning to face a lot of challenges because he will not be able to do the proper foundation that he is required to do as you guys know there are two laws that takes care of something for example you are not supposed to start building your house without a building plan and part of the building plan that the country uses to do is ask you to do soil tests and the soil tests will tell you the kind of foundation that you require to do to do before you begin to build the kind of material that you require to use in certain places if you are building in a swampy place the material you use is different from what you are likely to use in the dry land all those places are empty but because processing building plans and getting some of these tests done are very very expensive come back home and take a long time not about people it will just say if I cut those things and just go ahead to build your house because if you have about 10 million to build your house and you are going to be spending about 8 million to do soil tests to build your house for example you are told you need to have a certificate of occupancy before you can get a building to build your house I find that very strange a deed of assignment is as good as a certificate of occupancy why would I say that people must have a certificate of occupancy before they can get it's not too late for me as a person a cause to process a certificate of occupancy and some of these other integrated things that I have talked about could be very challenging and could be very very expensive so if we are able to reduce the cost of these things I will confirm the processes and also educate the citizens on the importance of compliance with all the building regulations and what are they I am sure we will begin to have improvement in that area but with my experience in the area of property in the area of property the challenges people have always faced is the cost of compliance it is a time that we wasted and also the resources in some other areas that are needed in some other areas okay, well let's move to the punch newspaper federal government plans fresh regulations for OP, money points, others these are small banks small microfinance banks that have come into Nigeria and they are doing a lot of things the regulation will come and I am sure they will be tighter taxing and so many other things that will clip their hands a lot and Nigerians are asking the questions the regular banks what kind of regulation is in that sector to hold the regular banks because they do things that a lot of people have lost confidence in the banks to transfer some of these mushroom banks are the ones that give loans to a lot of Nigerians without even any collateral they are the same ones that you do transactions on their app and you are not charged a cover but the regular banks are doing charging people and doing a lot of things that people are not comfortable with and regulations are coming is it not just partial to bring more regulations to this type of banks and leave the regular banks to just go scot free as Nigerians are perceiving with due respect my solution is that each time the government have always said they want to bring in some regulations in certain areas you will be surprised at the end of the day what they want to do is to easier taxing or increase the taxes that they already get it from such a person and when they do that it leads to increasing cost of living that will mean more taxation for the people for me most of these so called low pay people they are agents of the bank in a way they are working for the bank and they are a bank themselves all we need to do the regulations that are applied to the bank in a way so to say if it is working you really don't need to start to think about imposing more budget on these people because whom do you find in those areas now? some of the people that have been retrieved from the banks some of the people some of the young graduates some artisans who have learnt a trade and all that and have been able to find jobs most of the one that you now find who are operating some of these money points and making money available to the people in the different street corners imposing more budget on them in terms of taxes in terms of rules and regulations and modus operandi might be detrimental to their survival because our bread somewhere in which people are facing some of these activities or these services in the south east have cried out that they come in the south east have started imposing more budget on taxes from them and because of that they will also increase whatever commissions that they are getting from those who come to use their facilities and water for God's sake these particular trade activities are not the fundamental issues the fundamental issues to address in my humble opinion is the course of governance in this country it is the course of contract it is for us to be able to address what is happening in the different local governments all over the country and with the local governments are now parallel to each other and some of these securities that are finding in the different parts of the country is as a consequence of the paralysis that we have in the local government level in the past the local government used to be the first line of defense when it comes to security but because the government has refused to allow the local government to operate on function that line of defense has collapsed it has broken down so now the common face the common eyes of the economy and lead the petty traders the petty people the ordinary people are trying to earn the living in the government that's when they give you a thousand naira I mean five thousand naira or whatever the family will take a hundred naira from your money because those are the people who want to start to regulate what is the level of profit that they are making that is not the need to focus due attention on them of course the government should consider it on something more important like I have said the cost of governing the cost of contract the common face the situation of the local government needs for food security and of course we need to fight the challenges that we have in the area of country which I think the fight the struggle for the control of many a fight may be responsible for and not the petty traders it's not a time to earn the living okay let's just take a final one before we wrap up it's related to what we are just talking about now federal government will go after economic saboteurs next year that's according to the senate leader he insists national assembly will pass 2024 appropriation bill December 30 now saboteurs they say some people are hoarding the naira some people are hoarding the dollar and then they will wait till next year to go after these people that's my concern they say they will go after these people next year and we are already suffering from that hoarding right now whether it's being hoarded by the banks or it's being hoarded by individuals and all that so if you are going to go after them my question is why not go after them right now that's what the federal government says next year people know who the economic saboteurs are and they are not going after them even at the religion of duty what is the responsibility of government is it not to ensure that nobody does anything adverse that will affect the economy the economy is the life wire of any nation that is the juggler of the nation you don't stand by and allow anybody to destroy the juggler of the nation so you ask yourself why are the ESCC established what about the ICPC what about the special profile you live in the Nigerian police what about the civil defense what about those who go after the drug violence and war what are their responsibilities you don't need to start an organization but from the root of the case if you know who the saboteurs in the economy you as a government you have to coerce apparatus so you may be able to deal with the people without telling us that you have identified certain persons who are sabotaging the economy and all that no matter what time this kind of thing the very right to talk the key of the matter is that because certain persons lack ideas and they really don't know what is happening that is why they are talking this way if they have ideas that they know what is happening they wouldn't be telling us that they know certain persons sabotaging the economy and that is the year 2024 that they begin to go after them for that moment you look at the topic books whether the ANCCR the ICPCR this activity of the special fraud dealing the last some of these other control agencies or security agencies and what have you they all established to deal with these things and then even the criminal code the criminal code the constitution and all that all the standards of the land have provisions within them to deal with the economy to deal with the stealing to deal with the fraud to deal with the misapplication misappropriation and investments of public funds and all forms of economy to deal with that that even if you take the ICPCR you take the ASPCR the other node that we have in this country is enough to deal with all the criminal activities all the criminal agencies that we continue to see all over the country so the government should this is from this ID talk they talk to us and say you are people who cannot who cannot think who cannot see what is going on who cannot who cannot that they continue to teach rather than engage in a very serious act of governance okay well this is where we have to draw the curtain for today Mr. Kolawele thank you so much for lending your voice to what's going on in the country thanks for having me happy new year in advance wish you a happy new year too and a lovely day we were talking to Mr. Tunde Kolawele a legal practitioner here in Degos we will take a short break and when we return we will look at our fresh hot topic stay with us