The Future of Public Sector Training: An In-Conversation Session With 2025 AIG Visiting Fellow
How can public sector training move from theory to real impact? In an in-conversation session with Professor Emily Jones of the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, our 2025 AIG Visiting Fellow, Mrs Funke Adepoju, presented findings from her research project on how training institutions can evolve into engines of reform and drive measurable improvements in governance.
As part of the fellowship’s commitment to translating learning into practice, fellows are required to share their insights through policy briefs, lectures, and public engagements that contribute to the body of knowledge on policy implementation.
Mrs Funke Adepoju, Director-General of the Administrative Staff College of Nigeria (ASCON), presented findings from her fellowship project, “From Capacity Building to Reform Delivery,” in an in-conversation session focused on the future of public sector training and its role in driving effective governance. She made a clear case for rethinking the role of public sector training as the starting point of reform, not the end point.
Drawing on her research findings, she presented the RISE framework — a four-part model that reimagines public sector training. The framework rethinks what organisations train for, how they train, how they track progress, and how they deliver results.
According to the RISE framework, training must be Reform-aligned: anchored to reform priorities and measurable KPIs rather than traditional curricula. It must be Inspired: embedding public service ethos, ethical leadership, and institutional identity into every programme. It must be Systems-enabled: using digital tools to track reform progress in real time, closing the accountability loop that traditional training leaves open. And it must be Execution-focused: ensuring that training is followed by formal commitments to deliver specific reforms, verified through citizen feedback and measured by service impact.
Through the RISE model, Mrs Adepoju shifts the measure of effective public sector training from what participants learn to what they go on to deliver. She returns to Nigeria to apply this model at ASCON, where she will reshape the organisation’s programmes around reform delivery and implement the model across training for public servants at all levels.
As Nigeria's premier institution for training public servants, ASCON plays a critical role in shaping the effectiveness of government. By embedding the RISE framework into its approach, Mrs Adepoju's vision is to ensure that public sector training consistently translates into tangible, measurable improvements in how the organisations deliver for citizens.