According to Park II (picture), "The Korea Embassy of Brunei would like to place a special meaning on the recent MoU because it is a follow-up action to the summit between His Majesty the Sultan and Yang Di-Pertuan of Brunei Darussalam and President Lee Myung-bak which was held in June 2009, in Jeju Island, S Korea."
Also the Counsellor and Deputy Chief of Mission at the Korea Embassy, he mentioned that during the talks, the two leaders agreed to strengthen cooperation between Brunei and S Korea in areas of ICT.
Park also said that the MoU demonstrates both governments' strong commitment to developing ICT as the key enabler of socioeconomic development by forging mutually beneficial partnerships.
"Korea is well aware that ICT is placed at the forefront of Wawasan 2035 and National Development Plan (RKN 2007-2012) of the Brunei Government. As the leading ICT powerhouse, Korea stands ready to share with Brunei its experiences and best practices obtained in the process of e-government strategic developments over the past four decades," said the counsellor.
During an interview with The Brunei Times at the embassy yesterday, Park also disclosed the five areas of cooperation for the agreement which include support for e-government policy approach formulation, policy consultation and provision of technical support, human resource development, counter measures to mitigate any adverse effects of e-government and e-government related business cooperation activities.
He also mentioned that some of the adverse effects might include privacy, hacking and the digital gap between the ICT-savvy group and the elderly people.
He then said: "We (S Korea) can address this kind of negative side of e-government and is one area of our cooperation."
Park also said that the training and exchange programmes for human resource development is one of the promising areas that will benefit Brunei most.
Other areas where the two countries can learn from each other are practical mechanisms for online civil services of various government functions, such as national database computerisation, e-procurement, e-customs clearance, e-tax, e-patent, e-business, e-census and e-commerce.
"We have put in place e-services system like the tax system. About 80 per cent of people do not visit the tax office now. They can receive the information from the Internet or mobile phone which will inform the people on which tax they have to pay. In addition, the people can receive their certificates through the mobile services and Internet."
"Another example is the bidding system. Almost 100 per cent of bidding is done electronically. This enhances the transparency as no bribes or tricks can be done which is quite important for improvement of government efficiency and transparency."
He also said that with the digitalisation of customs procedures such as for imports and exports, the documentation procedures can take up to 20 minutes instead of two to three days.
"So I think that the Brunei government can benchmark this kind of system," said the counsellor.
Park further commented that Brunei has the latecomer benefits as we are able to skip two or three stages.
"Brunei can learn from our mistakes and failures. So Brunei doesn't need to go through all the stages in which the Korean Government went through," adding that this can shorten the time for Brunei to be able to reach the stage in which Korea is currently at.
The MoU which came into effect on August 7 will remain valid for five years.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Susan Shim
Quelle/Source: Bru Direct, 10.08.2010
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