BAG Networks eyes ties to ease manpower lack

BAG Networks is considering entering into a collaboration with local information technology companies to address the local IT sector's manpower problem, one of the factors holding back Brunei's e-government drive.

Neo Boon Sen Glenn, BAG Networks' head of business development, said the idea was to collaborate with the IT business community to prepare for human capacity constraints that may likely surface when authorities begin implementing e-government projects in the future.

"We may go through programmes with other companies like staff rotation, where we trade staff with one another so as to say, 'you are doing customs work, we are doing finance work'... and through that the industry will become stronger. It will help the government to achieve its aspirations," Glenn told reporters following the Think Big National Technology Forum at the Empire Hotel & Country Club yesterday.

"The key thing is, we're not trying to corner the market. Human capacity is a big problem in Brunei. If you do a quick check on the number of Universiti Brunei Darussalam IT graduates this year you will know what I mean. It's so hard to even hire people.

"There's no way that one company can help the government achieve its aspirations. It has to be the entire industry," he added.

Numerous IT companies are already working on collaboration with BAG Networks, one of the country's biggest and leading vendors implementing e-government projects.

BAG Chief Executive Haslina Hj Mohd Taib said the company will leverage on this by making sub-contracting open to more parties to effectively gather all of Brunei's workforce, rather than "fight with each other".

Haslina, who was one of the panelists for a discussion entitled "E-Government: Bridging the Gap" during yesterday's forum, said stakeholders need to keep moving to close the gap between design and reality in the e-government implementation process.

"When you worry so much about the input, output, and costs rather than looking at the key performance indicators what you really need to achieve then your problem becomes much more of a territorial problem rather than something that you're doing for the benefit of the citizens," she said.

At BAG Networks, she said, "we no longer wait for the tender process, we're doing it."

"Glenn and I think we don't have much time. We both built our reputation from the number of services that we've produced, but we can't keep sitting down and worrying about how it didn't work. Obviously we are a corporation, our profitability is at stake, we have both Accenture and the government departments wanting us to produce X amount of profit. But the way we want to do it is actually a long-term journey."

The Brunei Times