The Singapore government on Thursday announced that it is developing a national electronic bills payment hub as part of a bigger goal to involve the private sector and individuals in its e-government strategy. 'Customers and businesses need more than just government services,' said Acting Minister for Finance Raymond Lim at the E-government Forum at NTUC Centre. 'They also need goods and services from the private sector, and sometimes also the people sector. They want total service delivery, where their needs are satisfied without having to deal separately with the government and the private and people sectors.'
The national electronic bills payment hub will integrate bill payment systems of the government with other sectors on a single platform so that users only need to go to one web portal for all their bill paying chores. The initiative will be jointly driven by the Ministry of Finance and the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA).
The hub will be be rolled out in a few phases over a two-year period and is expected to ready by Q3 next year. The cost of this exercise is not yet known as IDA said it has yet to decide on the business model to implement it. It has already shortlisted five proposals and expects to reveal a finalised plan soon.
The national electronic bills payment hub will be one of the projects carried out under a public-private-people (3P) integration framework. Other plans in the pipeline include a one-stop home-moving portal, which will allow users to apply for utilities and inform the relevant government and private agencies of their address change.
At the same time, Mr Lim unveiled a new government portal at www.gov.sga. The new portal brings together the Singov, eCitizen and business Web sites. From next month, there will also be a central Web site for unclaimed monies being held by public agencies. Some of these monies have come from unclaimed tender deposits, court deposits, and excess levies paid. It can be accessed at www.unclaimedmonies. gov.sg. The measures are part of the $1.3 billion e-Government Action Plan II announced last year to put more services online to cut red tape.
Autor: Chen Huifen
Quelle: IT AsiaOne, 30.10.2004
