(Borneo Post; March 8th, 2002)

MIRI: The State government will finance access to the SarawakNet for all local authorities and statutory bodies.

This will be done through the Sarawak Information and Technology and Resources Council (SITRC)'s budget, disclosed Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Amar Dr George Chan Hong Nam yesterday.

As such, he said, there should be no more reason for them to be left behind by the civil service in the use of ICT. "Connecting State to local authorities to SarawakNet will be a challenging exercise because of poor coverage of high-speed telecommunication links with districts," said Chan.

However, the State government is confident that they would be able to do it with a mixture of various wireless, leased line and dial-up connections, he added.

Chan, who is also Finance and Publice Utilities Minister, was speaking at the signing of memorandum of understanding (MOU) for Sarawak Electronic Bill Presentation and Payment (EBPP) system between the State government and five major local authrities.

The five local authorities are Kuching South City Council (DBKS), Kuching North City Council (DBKU), Sibu Municipal Council (SMC), Miri Municipal Council (MMC) and Bintulu Development Authority (BDA).

The State ICT Unit and Sarawak Information Systems Sdn Bhd (SAINS) are now conducting ground survey on local infrastructure situation and requirements in all districts.

This will enable it to plan and design networking infrastructure to the local authorities, disclosed Chan.

"Local authorities and statutory bodies are requested to give their utmost and full support to this exercise. Come December 2002, I hope that we will be able to exchage e-mails with all local authorities in the state," he said.

As of end of 2001, all State civil service agencies, all the way to district level, are connected to SarawakNet, Sarawak's own wide area network that connects all district to Sarawak.

SarawakNet enables communications and sharing of application system and information between civil service agencies.

"State civil service now is fully dependent on SarawakNet, as many application systems and database are centrally hosted on it, and work processes between individuals and agencies are routed and conducted over it," Chan said.

He said as a result of careful planning, coordination, implementation and monitoring, Sarawak is now the leading state in the usage of ICt in the country.

The State government has long recognised the importance of ICT planning for proper development of state public service by taking up a strategic planning exercise in 1992, the first in Malaysia.

The 1992 exercise was done centrally and it was difficult to update and maintain the resultant ICT plans. As of this year, the State of implementing a new approach in ICT planning.

"State agencies will develop their own ICT plans, and these will be consolidated and integrated by State ICT Unit in the Chief Minister's Department," Chan revealed.

In order to do this, state agencies must appoint Chief Information Officers (CIOs) who will be responsible for all matters relating to ICT, including planning and monitoring with the agency.

Chan said to improve service delivery and quality to the public and promote the usage of ICT and interaction between government, the State government will implement more of similar electronic government (EG) applications in the future.

Representing State government at the signing was State Secretary Datuk Amar Haji Abdul Aziz bin Haji Husain while Chan Seng Khai, Haji Madehi bin Haji Kolek, Robert Lau Hoi Chew, Wee Han Wen and Haji Abang Helmi bin Tan Sri Ikhwan signed for DBKS, DBKU, SMC, MMC and BDA respectively.