In the second session of the THiNKBIG National Technology Forum, Pg Dato Paduka Haji Ismail bin Pg I fall Mohamed, Government CIO and Permanent Secretary at the Prime Minister's Office, addressed over 200 participants on "Brunei's e-Government: Implementing the National Plan" describing the Brunei government's vision and direction on ICT.
During the forum, the permanent secretary revealed the findings of a 2006 report, commissioned by the Ministry of Communications, which listed some of the inadequacies of the e-Government initiative which included an over ambitious target, a lack of ICT capacity, a deviation from the original roadmap and fragmentation of the implementation.
In addition, the e-Business Programme Executive Committee, a driver in Brunei's e-Business initiative, "did not move the way we expected", the permanent secretary admitted.
Following the 2006 review, however, there was a reorganization of the e-Government initiative and is now in the second stages of reorganization, stated the permanent secretary, the first of which was to place ownership in the hands of the Prime Minister's Office.
In 2007, the e-Government initiative was given full accountability of ownership to the Prime Minister's Office.
Meanwhile, the establishment of the Authority for Info-communication Technology Industry of Brunei Darussalam (AiTi) in 2003 produced a significant and effective player in the e-Government initiative with an allocated luidget of about 13$1 billion under the ei4th NDP.
The permanent secretary also revealed the long-term e-Government Strategic Plan 2009-2014 and the various inputs towards the development of the revised master plan, one of which is dialogue with COs and industries. "We will host roundtables with CIOs and a closed-roundtable with the industries to attain inputs for the master plan" which he revealed is to be held on November 22.
According to the permanent secretary, the past 10 years have produced over 200 project proposals, 100 completed projects and several others, which are currently being implemented.
He also cited, during the forum, several challenges of the e-Government initiative in the areas of ICT infrastructure, mindset, business processes, HR capacity in government and private sectors, etc.
"When the PMO took over (the e-Government initiative) last year, there were about 400 established posts but when looked at in greater depth, do they really have the capacity and capability?" he asked, disclosing the over B$lmillion spent in the past year to address the issue.
Referring to the private sector, the permanent secretary reiterated their achievements of over 100 completed projects, earning over B$200 million, but asked, "How many local companies... individuals can we be proud of?"
The permanent secretary was, however, enthusiastic of the future of e-Government citing, among others, opportunities in national capacity building, and improvement of public service delivery.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Narissa Noor
Quelle/Source: Brunei Direct, 13.11.2008
