It is with great honour and pleasure that I present Alain Nkoyock to you in his website.
Tenacity and determination have defined Dr. Nkoyock throughout his life. Moving from village to village in Cameroon, living at times with his mother and at other times with his grandfather, Dr. Nkoyock persistently pursued his education, eventually obtaining his Doctorate of Management in Organizational Leadership with a Specialization in Information Systems and Technology from the University of Phoenix (Arizona, US). Mathematics and computer science were his main areas of interest before his PhD. He saw early that the potential for economic growth in Africa would hinge to great extent on its ability to master and implement information and communication technology.
Dr. Nkoyock excelled at his studies and had many career choices waiting for him. But rather than entering the lucrative private sector, Dr. Nkoyock chose to stay in Cameroon to contribute to his home country. He became a lecturer of mathematics, computer science, and statistics, working diligently to increase the capacity of Cameroon to plan, manage and, implement information and communication technology to advance in all areas, including healthcare, education, governance, and business.
While teaching, Dr. Nkoyock accepted a position with the United Nations Economic Commission in Africa (Central Africa Office based in Yaoundé) to coordinate in Cameroon the UN System activities in information technology. This expanded Dr. Nkoyock perspective beyond Cameroon to Africa and the world. Dr. Nkoyock developed a particular area of interest in technical cooperation projects and programmes – it offers model and tools that can change lives, it helps his village and all the villages throughout Africa. The task was difficult but it was a challenge that Dr. Nkoyock refused to leave unfinished. In addition to tenacity and determination, add accepting nothing less than success to Dr. Nkoyock approach to any task.
Dr. Nkoyock became professionally known and respected for his ability to accomplish the difficult, if not impossible. After completing the project in Cameroon, the UN asked Dr. Nkoyock to Ethiopia to coordinate the IT activities of all subregional offices of the Economic Commission of Africa. Two years later job accomplished.
After Ethiopia, the UN again called for Dr. Nkoyock help Nigeria for what initially was thought to be a two-year project to support the country to its fight against corruption and organized crimes. Unforeseen difficulties arose and delays occurred. Dr. Nkoyock completed his two years and other opportunities were calling. But another characteristic of Dr. Nkoyock is that he will not leave a job unfinished. Too many projects fail because of the lack of continuity of experts working on the project, who leave when difficulties arise. Dr. Nkoyock stayed in Nigeria, worked out the problems, and finished the project, furthering his reputation as the man to call when something goes wrong or needs fixing.
But the UN still needed Dr. Nkoyock and they brought him to Austria to restructure the UN’s ICT infrastructure and data centre services. The UN’s request was not as simple as fix the infrastructure and a failing data centre project. The UN asked Dr. Nkoyock to look into the future, and design infrastructure that would meet the needs of the UNOV/UNODC for the years to come, which is more than several lifetimes in the IT world. Dr. Nkoyock successfully completed the project proving once again that he had the technical knowledge and experience necessary, but also tremendous problem-solving and creative skills. Dr. Nkoyock is also highly involved in proposing the future enterprise architecture for the UN within the Architecture Review Board of the UN Secretariat. For all these activities, Dr. Nkoyock proved to be a talented team leader, bringing out the best in all.
Throughout this time, Dr. Nkoyock did not forget the needs of the villages. A major problem was that government and donor money meant to help locally was diverted before arriving. Projects were announced but not built. Money designated for schools, hospitals and other public purposes never materialized. Citizens stopped believing they can hold their governments accountable.
The sheer volume of transactions involved in public procurement makes it difficult to prevent and detect corruption as it occurs on case-by-case basis. According to UNODC, procurement is 15-30% of the Gross Domestic Product of most nations. Of this, 20-25% of total public contract value is lost to corruption each year. A loss of 100’s of billions of a Nation’s currency.
Dr. Nkoyock set about to find a way that information technology could increase accountability in public finances and detect and prevent procurement corruption before such losses occurred. He is spearheading evidence-based research and developing appropriate software tools, IT infrastructure and operations models (public procurement corruption, management of public finances, prevention and enforcement of corruption, intelligence sharing platforms for law enforcement agencies, human trafficking, drugs, anti-money laundering, justice sector reforms). His work on strategic alignment and the use of information systems to prevent corruption through public procurement, to enforcing the fight against corruption, money laundering and organized crime, promote governance and rule of law in the justice sector, has taken him to many countries in Africa, America, Europe, and the Middle East. He has also closely interacted and or advised many international organizations, regional economic commissions and governments on many critical issues for almost 20 years.
Some of the tools, models, and frameworks proposed by Dr. Nkoyock include the Public Procurement Review Software (goPRS) to prevent public procurement corruption; the Criminal Investigation System (goCIS) and the National Information Sharing Platforms proposed to law enforcement agencies; the ICT and Data Centre Model (goIDM) to design and deploy IT infrastructure for government offices especially within LEAs; Judicial Research Centres (JRCs) to improve national justice sectors; or the Five-Stage Process of Business-IT Strategic Alignment that assists multinational corporations to use IT effectively to achieve business objectives.
Dr. Nkoyock has contributed to the development of knowledge, theory and policy. He is a member of many scholarly bodies and editor/reviewer for academic journals such as the International Institute of Informatics and Systemics; Internet Society; Knowledge Generation, Communication, and Management; Politics and Information Systems, Technologies and Applications; Social and Organizational Informatics and Cybernetics; the Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies; the Academy of Management; the Journal of Global Health Care Systems; the Conferences on Leadership and Management of University of Riverside (California). He has enjoyed lecturing, supervising and mentoring post graduate students and interns.
Dr. Nkoyock is the founder of the think and act tank, CABAC, an organization that promotes the role of the diaspora in the development of Africa with the clear objectives of mobilizing diaspora communities, inspiring young professionals, policy makers, and business to think out-of-the-box to do things differently for the African continent. Dr. Nkoyock is also a founder and President of Association Nkom, a non-profit dedicated to assisting rural areas in his home country, Cameroon.
Dr. Nkoyock is a recipient of many awards and honors, including a Commendation from the President of the Republic of Cameroon, His Excellency Paul Biya on August 09, 2004 for outstanding research on the use of IT in electoral systems in Africa and was nominated staff of the Year 2008 within the UNODC’s Information Technology Service in Vienna (Austria). In July 2011, he was featured in the Phoenix Focus Magazine as “High-tech humanitarian in the UN”, and he is also a frequent contributor to major national and international media.
Dr. Nkoyock is finally an accomplished practitioner with technical acumen focused on design and implementation of data centers and server rooms, networking and telecommunications, systems and storage, remote services; cloud computing, information security and data privacy. Hence, he is mostly keen in enterprise architecture, business value of IT, valuation methods, IT strategy and leadership, organizational performance and effectiveness for domestic and MNCs. He is a committed professional with the highest standards, dedicated to finding solutions to problems on both the local and international levels.
Signed: Dr. Julia P. Davis, Vienna, 2012
Dr. Julia P. Davis is the Director of the Center for Public Procurement Law and Policy at the International Law Institute in Washington, DC. She was a consultant to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes to develop national procurement monitoring systems (goPRS) to detect and prevent fraud and corruption in government contracts. She served as Principal Counsel and Division Director within the Attorney General’s Office for the State of Maryland, with primary responsibility on procurement of goods and services, operation and security of state facilities, among other areas. Ms. Davis has served as Advisor to the UNCITRAL Secretariat and General Counsel on the revision of the International Model Law on Procurement. She serves as an independent expert to the United Nations under a pilot programme for the Award Review Board (ARB) handling bid protests, and to the Senior Vendor Review Committee, which focuses on sanctions and debarment issues. Ms. Davis authored “Public-Private Partnerships” published in the Procurement Lawyer and “Second Generation Procurement Reforms” published by the Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa.
