IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

A small facility to help modernize the country’s public services

The Kingdom of Bhutan has opened a 2,500 square foot (232 sq m) data center at the Bhutan Innovation and Technology Centre in the Thimphu TechPark.

The facility, designed to Tier II standards, already has 22 government services running on it including civil registration and finance procurement systems. The services take up 60 percent of the current storage capacity of 50 terabytes.

All 20 dzongkhag administrations now have broadband internet access, with leased line connections being established in Dagana and Gasa yesterday.

With nationwide administration broadband connectivity achieved, the government has achieved establishing a comprehensive intranet that will enable nationwide e-governance, at least in theory.

The system is expected to go online this year. DIT expects the move to make it easier to get, for example, a security clearance certificate, which is “an arduous affair today”; and an applicant’s information could be obtainable at the time of request within a single day.

As Bhutan heads down the information highway, the country’s information and communication (ICT) officers are made the “captains of the voyage” to create an informed society. The country’s 225 ICT professionals were given the task by the information and communication minister, Lyonpo Nandalal Rai, yesterday as they gathered in Thimphu for the first national ICT conference.

“Say if a person wants to know the arrival time of a particular transport service, this system will make all the details available online,” said a spokesperson for the RSTA.

“It’s a very critical project with a critical role in shaping society,” said the prime minister. “It’s one of the projects that I’ve been extensively and intensively involved in since its conception.”

Renamed as the ‘Chiphen Rigpel’, the five-year Nu 2.5B project, which is funded by the government of India, will be formally launched by the prime ministers of Bhutan and India on April 30.

The Nu 2.04B Chiphel Rigpel project to “enable a society and empower the nation” through information and communications technology switched on yesterday, with 18 leaders, including the heads of the executive, judiciary, the legislature, the army and cabinet ministers, attending a two-day course to understand what ICT can do for a society and e-governance.

Despite the prime minister, Lyonchhoen Jigmi Y Thinley, the chief operations officer of the royal Bhutan army, Major General Batoo Tshering, the supreme court chief justice, Lyonpo Sonam Tobgye, in attendance, the opening was kept a low key affair.

Department of information and technology (DIT) director Tenzin Chhoeda said that the online system will link every police station in the country with the ministry of home and cultural affairs. This will mean that an applicant’s information could be instantly obtainable at the time of request within a single day. It will go online this year.

The government had targeted 2010 as the year when every one of its agencies provide at least 75 percent of all possible public services online, according to a July 2009 updated version of the Bhutan information and communications technology policy and strategies (BIPS).

The Nu 2.5B project, previously known as the ‘Total Solutions project’, is an ICT capacity building project, undertaken by the government of Bhutan, with financial assistance from the Indian government.

The project, in its six components, will work over the next five years towards enabling e-governance, empowering teachers and taking ICT to schools, enabling employment skills, furnishing tertiary institutes with ICT training centres, reaching the unreached all over the nation, and managing e-waste.

The agreement, signed in March, requires NIIT to provide funding worth Nu 2.7 billion to the DIT. NIIT is obtaining this fund from the government of India.

A government objective of establishing community centres (CCs) in all gewogs by 2013 may not happen, it was revealed at the mid-term review of the ministry of information and communications (MoIC) on Wednesday.

The department of information technology and telecom (DITT) informed the government that Nu 256M more was needed to complete the objective. The department’s director, Phuntsho Namgay, called it a “serious constraint” and a financial requirement that would have to be fulfilled for the objective to be completed.

By 2010, obtaining a citizenship identity card, or a land ownership certificate may not take as long as, like some applicants humorously describe it, “after a pair of shoe soles are worn out.”

With the launching of an electronic-platform (e-platform) yesterday in Thimphu, government organisations now have the capability of offering online public services.

That e-governance is first about people and then processes and technology was one of the understandings top leaders came to after attending a two-day “training” on how ICT can make Bhutan a knowledge-based society.

“A knowledge society is about ideas and innovation; about bringing humans to the centre,” information and communications secretary, Dasho Kinley Dorji said in a presentation of Chiphen Rigpel, the project that aims to transform Bhutan.

The Swiss agency for development and cooperation (SDC) has committed about Nu 65M to improve public service delivery by the end of the current plan.

The assistance will go into creating a “One Stop Shop” where a number of services can be availed at one place.

“Bhutanese citizen should be able to come to one place and be able to sort different administrative matters at one place, instead of having to run to different offices asking for different forms,” said SDC’s east Asia division head, Pradeep Itty, who signed the agreement with GNHC officials yesterday in Thimphu. “This will shorten the time to sort out any administrative issues,” he said.

Things may be moving fast in mobile technology, with the subscriber base reaching almost 170,000 since its launch in 2003, but the pace is slow in Internet and computer usage, according to the director of the information department, Tenzin Choeda.

The total number of computers in the country is between 10,000 to 12,000 and most of it was with the government and corporations and in the urban areas.

Lack of government initiative, clear policy, and investment has hindered the success of Bhutan’s telemedicine project, a possible solution that could have alleviated problems for rural patients, like high rate of referrals to regional hospitals, caused by the chronic shortage of medical specialists in the country.

The prime minister Lyonchhoen Jigmi Y Thinley and the Indian ambassador to Bhutan Sudhir Vyas inaugurated the projects - SAARC telemedicine and rural telemedicine - during the ministry’s annual conference in Thimphu.

For citizens to exercise this fundamental right, there has to be machinery or a process in place, through which they can exercise this right. The RTI act lays down the process on how to apply for information, where to apply, how much fees, if any, etc. Unless we have an act, an ordinary citizen will not have adequate access to information held by a public authority. Without access to relevant information, it is not possible for a common man to participate in a meaningful debate on political and economic choices available to realise his socio-economic aspirations.