(Borneo Post; July 1st, 2004)

KUCHING: State agencies have been urged to cooperate with the State government to achieve full electronic government (EG) status by the end of 2008.

State Secretary Datuk Amar Haji Abdul Aziz Husain said EG comprised internal efficiency and effectiveness (IEE) applications, inter-agency applications which uses government-to-government (G2G) systems and public-oriented applications (government-to-citizens G2C system).

Pointing out that information communication technology (ICT) acted as an important foundation and infrastructure in the EG programme, he said the State government had implemented many public-oriented EG applications such as the Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment (EBPP).

He was speaking at the briefing on the e-Recruitment System and the Optical Magnetic Readable (OMR) or State Public Service Commission (PSC) Form 2. Also present was State PSC chairman Tan Sri Datuk Amar Hamdan Sirat. The e-Recruitment system, which was launched in August last year was maintained and administered by PSC.

It is a one-stop centre for job applicants in the State Public Service, which is also accessible by different State agencies to receive and to process job applications.

"Job applicants will no longer need to apply to different agencies for different jobs, but only to the e-Recruitment system," he said. State agencies that had been delegated the authority to recruit were requited to Advertise their applications using the new format that supported e-Recruitment, he added.

"The recruiting state agencies will be given access to the system to process the applications for their own job advertisements while the State agencies will not be allowed to receive applications directly, said Aziz.

He believed the introduction of the system would benefit State agencies and job seekers as processing job applications could be done very fast and very accurately.

"Applications, whether online or through the new optical magnetic readable which is also named State PSC Form 2 will be submitted to the PSC for loading into the job applications database," he said.