Ministry Heeds Calls For Better Website Services
By Shareen Han

Bandar Seri Begawan - The Ministry of Finance will launch its new website, which is hoped to provide "better services" to the public, said a senior officer at the ministry. Its current website was last updated in June 2005.

The new website will feature more sophisticated features, with a new look and feel, said the officer who did not want to be named.

"We do 'not know yet when exactly it will be launched, but it is currently in the works by the committee," he told The Brunei Times in an interview yesterday.

Some Bruneians have called on the government authorities to update their websites on a regular basis. They have also raised concerns about the difficulty in getting useful information from the government websites, despite calls by the authorities themselves for an e-government. Regular updates of the websites have also been the subject of complaints from people interested in keeping themselves abreast with government policies and plans. Karl Verhulst, a marketing expert for leading IT management solutions provider CA, said that there should be consistency in the updating of government websites to make information sharing a relevant and useful experience for citizens.

He was speaking to the press, following an e-government conference in Brunei last month.

An official from the Information Department at the Prime Minister's Office, however, said that the department updates its website "almost every day".

"Whenever we have new information, we update the website," she said. She added that the other ministries' websites are "informative".

A quick check, however, on some of the links in the Brunei government's website, http://www.brunei.gov.bn, shows that some not functioning.

An e-government website, which was officially launched in 2001, was one of the three core strategic drives of the National IT Strategic Plan. It was aimed at serving as an important public communication and marketing tool to channel the vision, mission goals and core IT strategies of e-government and updating follow-up activities and progress of the e-government programme.

A global e-government study by America's Brown University, last year stated that Brunei was ranked 106 in the e-government ratings, compared to number 35 the previous year.-- Courtesy of The Brunei Times

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