Minister Attends Microsoft Seminar On E-Government
By Azaraimy

Bandar Seri Begawan - A seminar on e-government was yesterday held at Sheraton Utama Hotel, facilitated by Microsoft Asia Pacific's solution architect James Whittred.

The talk was attended by Minister of Communications Pehin Dato Awang Haji Abu Bakar bin Hj Apong as the guest of honour.

Also present were deputy ministers, permanent secretaries and deputy permanent secretaries of various ministries as well as chief information officers and chief technology officers of government agencies.

On Microsoft's Connected Government Framework (CGF), Whittred said, "Imagine a scenario where you want to set up a business. You may need to go to different departments such as the law building to register your business name and the labour department for 'rampaian' forms for your workers.

"Imagine how many copies of information you may have to surrender, and how many different forms you may need to get from a number of departments.

"If government systems were able to interoperate and deliver information without redundancy in a timely way, things would run smoother.

"The solution is thus enabling various departments to interoperate, share and consolidate information while offering citizens access to e-services in a citizen-centric view aligned with their needs rather than those of the providers."

He added that the CGF is a vision, architecture and roadmap rolled into one.

"It's a core model for interoperability across six distinct pillars: Infrastructure and networking; data access; services and components; services and process integration; security; and identity and management."

He also said, `By providing a common architecture shared by multiple e-government services, different agencies can gain consistent access to the services and make new services available in an agile and reliable way.

"It drives the adoption of e-government services, with citizens benefiting from having a consistent and personalised experience with individual identities that can be used across various services provided by different government agencies.

"While the CGF as a roadmap is sound, it has to be scaled and customised to suit individual country's needs, especially in the Asia Pacific region, where governments are at different maturity levels in terms of IT adoption."

When governments think of e-government, he said, they think about providing services through a portal.

"It is a limiting view. The CGF isn't just about portals, or the creation of portals; it is about access, or `channels'. A channel refers to a means of connecting to the government. The Internet is one possible channel, but not the only one.

"Even in countries with mature legacy system such as Singapore and Australia, we can still integrate them for seamless delivery.

"When implementing a seamless government, many of the problems are not always technology related. Often, it is about the culture, legal frameworks and established business processes. Governments need to have a practice in place to uncover these constraints and use them to their advantage." -- Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin

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