Central Government, Policy

Brunei GCIO candid about e-govt inadequacies

By James Smith | 13 November 2008

Over ambitious moves to e-government led to ‘fragmentation’ of effort, says GCIO and Permanent Secretary of the Prime Minister’s Office in Brunei.

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Pg Dato Paduka Haji Ismail bin Pg I fall Mohamed, Government CIO and Permanent Secretary at the Prime Minister’s Office, recently listed some of the inadequacies of the country’s e-government initiative, which included an over ambitious target, a lack of ICT capacity, a deviation from the original roadmap and fragmentation of the implementation.

In addition, the e-Business Programme Executive Committee, a driver in Brunei’s e-Business initiative, “did not move the way we expected,” the GCIO revealed.

Following a review the government restructured its e-government plans which led the e-government programme being put into the hands of the Prime Minister’s Office last year. The budget for the initial national e-government programme was US$660 million - which works out at approximately US$1760/person. As part of this process more than 100 projects have been implemented for e-government

The machinery of government is now gearing up for the next stage in its E-government Strategic Plan, which will cover 2009-2014. Other advances in the government’s appreciation of how to achieve greater value from its IT investment include capacity development within government, defining and optimising business processes, and working to shift the mindsets of civil servants.

“When the Prime Minister’s Office took over the e-government initiative last year, there were about 400 established posts,” said the GCIO. “But when we looked at this in greater detail, we asked ourselves whether we really had the capacity and capability?”

Over the last 12 months approximately US$700,000 was spent to address the issue of capacity development alone.