Make full use of e-Government: Deputy Minister

By Lyna Mohamad

This was stated by Deputy Minister of Communications, Dato Paduka Hj Yusof bin Hj Abd Hamid, who was the chief guest at the opening of the "Building High Performance Government" seminar, yesterday, at the Orchid Garden Hotel in Berakas.

Dato Hj Yusof added that the successful implementation of Brunei's e-Government would revolutionise the way the government is serving the nation in general and the public in particular.

In order for this to be achieved, he said, various steps in the process of delivering a more efficient service must be re-engineered and not just merely automated. In addition, any outdated laws, rules and regulations should be amended or rewritten where applicable to keep pace with the technological changes, he added.

"An IT project such as e-Government can enable this re-engineering process, resulting in a much faster and efficient delivery of services at possibly lower transaction cost," said Dato Hj Yusof.

The deputy minister further added that the Government of His Majesty the Sultan and Yang Di-Pertuan of Brunei Darussalam has allocated a huge sum in the developmental budget to implement the e-Government programme.

"The amount allocated constitutes a significant percentage out of the total budgetary allocation for the whole national development plan and therefore emphasises its importance to the government," he said.

"The successful implementation of e-Government projects is crucial in taking the nation to the information age, and timely completion is also critical.

"But what's most important is that, when completed, the various applications contained in the e-Government projects should be fully utilised," Dato Hj Yusof added.

"The huge amount of money invested must not go waste. In this respect, we must ensure that applications are indeed relevant to our real needs before they are even purchased."

The Deputy Minister also urged project developers not to be caught in a situation in which applications 'pushed to us' by vendors are those designed for user sizes many times over the actual requirements, resulting in them paying more than what they ought to.

"I believe this is an important precaution we must all take since there are still many projects in the pipeline for implementation," he added, disclosing that the e-MinCom project is almost ready and is now awaiting integration work to be completed before the first service is rolled out.

"Another crucial part is adequate human capacity planning besides physical infrastructure development in ensuring the success of the e-Government project, where the definition of success should be expanded to cover the ability to provide sufficient training for locals who could later take over, operate and manage the systems well after the end of the completion date.

"New methods for acquiring and developing its workforces to become more knowledgeable, efficient and productive should continuously be pursued," said the Deputy Minister.

Jointly organised by BAG Network, Accenture and Oracle, the one-day seminar was meant to promote the sharing of experiences amongst the three organisations.

Also in attendance at the seminar were Pg Dato Paduka Hj Ismail, Permanent Secretary at the Prime Minister's Office, several other senior government officers as well as officials from private sector organisations.