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.
“Information and communication technology (ICT) is the use of information technology to empower the people of Bhutan,” said the minister, adding that the ministry expects the limited pool of ICT professionals in Bhutan to make “not only a big but a positive difference in the lives of our people.”
Demonstrating the government’s strong support for the growing ICT sector, Prime Minister Lyonchhoen Jigmi Y Thinley, along with the education and labour ministers, Lyonpo Thakur S Powdyel and Lyonpo Dorji Wangdi, also attended the conference.
Lyonchhoen reiterated and emphasised the government’s commitment towards realising Bhutan’s IT aspirations. “As managers and enablers of ICT services in the country, it’s crucial that you steer the development of ICT in the right direction, so that our vision of a knowledge society is realised - so that we, as a country and as individuals, are able to derive the benefits of the vast potentials of ICT,” said Lyonchhoen.
Besides providing a forum for discussion on all local ICT issues and experiences, the two-day conference aims at determining and explaining the communication ministry’s role, especially with a focus on its relation with the private sector. E-governance, infrastructure, information technology (IT) enabled services and the IT park, the need to adopt open source software, and the optimising of available ICT resources will also be discussed.
Yesterday, the conference dwelled particularly on determining the department of information technology’s (DIT) role as a parent agency of all IT professionals in the government.
DIT was delegated the task of ‘parenting’ in February this year, which means it is responsible for human resource (HR) actions, such as recruitment, HR development, promotion and transfer, of all government IT personnel. So far, operationalisation of this mandate has taken place only on a limited basis. DIT is using the conference to gain feedback on what approach to adopt to solve existing problems in the ICT sector, especially on resource management.
A presentation on ICT resource rationalisation pointed out that the government is currently overspending on infrastructure and application development. This is caused by duplication of work, such as on developing applications, in different government agencies when it could be done in one, according to the presentation. ICT personnel are also being misused for non-ICT work, which is leading to an environment of “disgruntled” ICT personnel, said the presenter, Gaki Tshering, head ICT officer at the health ministry.
To remedy this situation, three solutions were proposed: of decentralising, partially centralising, and fully centralising ICT resources. The third solution of fully centralising was presented as the most efficient approach. This would mean a situation in which all ICT personnel are centrally located at DIT. Teams from the centralised pool of HR will work on different projects in different organisations when required. This would eliminate the need for all organisations to maintain large qualified ICT teams, reducing cost and allowing for the grooming of experts in different ICT specialised fields.
If the move to centralise is adopted, a HR resource steering committee will be instituted with members from the finance, health, home, and communications ministries. This committee will be responsible for identifying and determining HR requirements for the entire government.
Communications secretary, Dasho Kinley Dorji, said that the objective of such a move was to create a professional team. Dasho Kinley Dorji added that there is a need to streamline and get over ‘turf protection’. He emphasised that the ministry’s role would not quite be one of parenting, but one of forming a fraternity.
The conference ends today.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Gyalsten K Dorji
Quelle/Source: Kuensel Online, 25.12.2009
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