Challenge Brief
During my NYSC internship at NITDA's Project Management Unit in Abuja, I observed that all incoming and outgoing contract files were tracked manually, recorded in physical registers with no digital trail of which department a file was sent to, how long it stayed there, or whether it had been approved or rejected.
This created three critical problems:
1. Files got lost between departments with no audit trail
2. The Director had no real-time view of contract approval status or pending high-value files
3. Staff had no way to search file history by company, state, or contract value
To solve this I designed and built a complete Digital File Tracking System consisting of:
— A Python script that generates 3,000 realistic incoming files and 6,847 outgoing dispatch records covering 60 Nigerian companies from 2020 to 2025 across all 30 states
— A structured Excel workbook with four sheets: INCOMING, OUTGOING, COMPANIES, and DEPARTMENTS, serving as the live data source
— A three-page Power BI dashboard with 50+ DAX measures, a Calendar table for time intelligence, and full slicer interactivity covering:
• Director Dashboard: total contract value, approval rates, YoY growth, file location across departments, top companies by value
• Department Dashboard: dispatch tracking, current file locations, sent vs returned analysis, monthly trends
• File Tracking Dashboard: full searchable incoming and outgoing register, status summary, files by category, company and year comparison
The system is built entirely on free tools Python, Excel, and Power BI Desktop, making it immediately deployable across any NITDA department without additional infrastructure cost.
Key Challenge Question
How can NITDA's Project Management Unit eliminate manual file tracking, reduce document loss, and give leadership real-time visibility into contract file movements across departments, without expensive enterprise software?
Goals & Mission
To digitize NITDA's internal file management process by building a lightweight, zero-cost tracking system that gives the Director real-time contract visibility, gives department heads accountability over files in their possession, and gives PMU staff a searchable digital register, replacing manual logs with a data-driven governance tool aligned with NITDA's SRAP 2.0 mandate for internal process automation and digital transformation.