E-Government in Brunei: Where do we stand now?

OVER the past two decades, many countries, spurred on by the "new public management" and "reinventing government" movement to streamline and improve the efficiency of government, embarked on long-term plans to address the challenges faced by the country in delivering its service to the community at large.

As a result, Information Communications Technology (ICT) was thrust centre stage, sparking the Electronic-Government or e-Government movement in developed and developing countries all over the world. Brunei joined the e-Government initiative in earnest when His Majesty and Yang Di-Pertuan of Brunei expressed in his Titah in 2000 a wish to see Brunei embark on an e-government and e-business initiative, to not only bring Brunei into mainstream global Information technology but more importantly, for the e-Government initiative to act as a key driver in Brunei's economic development. In order to do so, Brunei through the Prime Minister's Office, highlighted four key reasons for implementation of the initiative:

1) To modernise the civil service in order to develop the government machinery into an efficient, effective, innovative, customer focused and friendly system;

2) To build a more transparent and accountable government, as E-Government allows greater participation from citizens and the community;

3) To meet the challenges of globalisation, and

4) To better prepare Brunei to face any future crises similar to ones faced by many other countries in the global financial turmoil of 1997-1998.

To achieve these targets, Brunei allocated a budget of more than $900 million in the Eighth National Development Plan 2001-2005 in order to develop an e-Government framework for the country.

Now, three years after completion of the Eighth national Development plan, it is time to ask how Brunei has fared in its transition to e-Government.

According to e-Government reports, Brunei has comparatively not fared as well in the e-Government global arena as the $900 million investment would suggest. Notably, Brunei has, over the past five years, consistently slid down in recent e-Government readiness rankings that are published annually by the United Nations. In 2003, Brunei was ranked 55th out of 173 countries but a year later, Brunei dropped six places and was ranked 63rd. By 2005, Brunei again slipped 10 places out of a total of 191 countries in the index, falling behind some of its Asean neighbours in the overall rankings — Singapore ranked seventh globally, followed by the Philippines (41), Malaysia (43) and Thailand (46). While the rankings may not constitute an absolute measure of e-Government readiness, they nonetheless reflect a painful truth, namely that Brunei is behind in the global e-Government initiative.

The lack of development or perhaps the lack of speed in development must be examined to see what critical link is missing in the e-Government equation: is it poor or no investment in infrastructure, hardware, or human capital? Or perhaps it is a lack of understanding of the overall strategic e-Government roadmap by its implementers at the ground level?

Currently, the e-Government framework is still in its infancy stages. Most notably, it still lacks any G2C (Government-to-Citizen) and G2B (Government-to-Business) components, which after eight years of e-Government implementation have been discouraging. However in the past year, there has been a visible sign of development, which points to an encouraging trend. For example, a recent competition hosted by the Information department to assess the various G2C criteria of websites of each government ministry is a step forward, and the Ministry of Defence's Defence Personnel Administration Information System (DefPAIS) launched in January of this year will also introduce a G2C component by adding online applications for careers and scholarships for the ministry.

On the G2E (Government to Employee) front, Brunei has had more tangible success, streamlining and improving internal government operations and administrative efficiency through the introduction of ICT solutions such as the Treasury Accounting and Financial Information System (Tafis) launched in 2004, as well as the recent embarkation this month of the $1 billion-budgeted Human Resource Management System (HRMS) for the Brunei government. In order to push Brunei's e-Government initiative into the next step of achieving its target of greater transparency, the government must place more or equal emphasis on improving its G2B (Government to Business) and G2C (Government to Citizens) e-Government components. The reasoning is simple: G2C and G2B components of any e-Government initiative afford the country greater transparency through easier access and availability to vital information through government web portals. In Brunei's case, greater access to information will allow citizens and businesses alike to make timelier and informed decisions which will ultimately help spur Brunei's economy as vital and timely official information will help quicken business decisions and reduce risk and, ultimately, costs.

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