(Borneo Post; December 24th, 2003)

KUCHING: State Secretary Datuk Amar Haji Abdul Aziz Haji Husain finds the lackadaisical attitude of some State government agencies towards information and communications technology (ICT), particularly the Internet, unacceptable.

He said that the web was now an indispensable communication and service channel and it would be even more important in the future because society was becoming more developed and ICT becoming more affordable.

"The web will become the key communication means to reach and interact with the customers. Agencies that ignore the web will lose the confidence of their customers," he said at the awards presentation ceremony for the Best Sarawak Government Agency Websites 2003.

However, he felt that only a minority group of agencies had not developed their own website, but some of those that had websites, did not update them regularly, which he said he was "not pleased" about.

In this respect, Aziz reminded the agencies of the State's ICT policy which required that all agencies must maintain a website, that they be responsible to maintain their own websites and these must be registered with the State ICT Unit.

Aziz said that while his office had appointed and trained a webmaster to develop and maintain the websites of every agency, some agencies had a team of their own and they distributed their web creation and maintenance tasks among the different sections of the agency.

"In some agencies, the heads take a personal interest and role in their website creation and maintenance. These are good practices that should be emulated by other agencies," he said. Having said that, Aziz was glad to see that the agencies with websites were participating actively in the competition this year.

He said the event was held annually to show the State government's commitment to the development of websites by all its agencies as an important channel to communicate with their customers, be they the local public or international investors or tourists.

"I hope that the heads of State agencies will take accord the same importance to their websites and to this competition as I have," said Aziz. The competition last year has taken a different approach from that in the last two years. It now has two categories, one for in-house development and one for outsourced development.

Aziz explained that websites developed by full-time processional web developers were better than those developed by part-time in-house resources.

By having the two categories in the competition, he said they were honouring the in-house developed websites that might not fare favourably against those developed by outsourced full-time professionals.

"We have also selected the webmaster of the year from in-house website developers. The State Government is serious about developing internal expertise to develop and to maintain their websites." In the in-house web category, the winner was the Land and Survey Department (www. land survey, sarawak.gov. my) and in second place was the Sarawak Electric Supply Corporation (www. sesco. com. my).

In the out-source web category, the winner was the Sarawak Tourism ' Board (www. Sarawak tourism, gov. my) and in second place was the Kapit Resident's Office (www. kapitro.sarawak.gov. my).

The winner of the Best Webmaster Award was the Land and Survey Department's Tan Kheng Siang