(Eastern Times; November 7, 2006)

KUCHING: The State Government yesterday moved a step forward in e-government concept with the launching of the Multimedia Conferencing Systems (MCS).

MCS is expected to benefit various Government offices throughout the State. “We can safe on traveling time, enable faster decision making and lower costs of operation,” said State Secretary Datuk Amar Hj Abdul Aziz Husain at the soft launching of the system at the Wisma Bapa Malaysia here yesterday.

The recent global as well as recent events that had resulted in disruption and higher cost of air travel were enough impetus for using multimedia video conferencing over the SarawakNet Wide-Area-Network, he said.

“We have been piloting MCS internally among some ministries and Resident's offices as well as my office, the State Financial Secretary's office and the State Attorney General's office.

“I am generally very pleased with the results and would like to see the rollout to all State Public Service offices and Government Link Companies (GLSs),” he added.

The MCS is brought to State Government by SAINS, the ICT arm of the State Government.

Sarawak is the first in Malaysia to apply the MCS which was based on the wide-multi-point system while the most of other states were using the conventional point-to-point (PTP) system, Aziz said.

He was convinced that with some practice, the system could be widely used to like e-mailing, applying leave online and the many of e-government application that had been rolled out in SarawakNet. Aziz, who is also the Deputy Chairman of SAINS, described MCS's apparent benefits as more than the usual video conferencing.

“MCS offers virtually unlimited multi-point-to-multi-point interaction for notebook, desktop, boardroom and wireless environment. It runs on any network that support IP or Internet Protocol, be it Local Area Network ((LAN), a Wide Area Network (WAN) like the SarawakNet or the Internet.

“This allows many types of multimedia conferencing to take place at maximum effectiveness regardless of geographical constraints, be it desktop-to-desktop conference, boardroom-to-boardroom, and desktop-to-boardroom.

With MCS, not only can you hear, see and talk, you can also swap or transfer files, present slides, report or watch videos while conferencing,” he said, adding that this enhanced feature was essential and very practical in today's meetings in which immediate results or decision making was needed.

During the function yesterday, a multimedia conference was held simultaneously with the resident's offices of Kota Samarahan, Bintulu , Miri, Sarikei and Sibu and the office of the State Tourism Ministry. The video conference is being made available by SarawakNet.

Adopting proven technology from Mlabs Systems Bhd (MLABS), a technology partner of SAINS, MCS is a full-fledge multi-point video conferencing system that is set to greatly improve the way meeting are held – from the conventional coming together face-to-face discussion to conferencing face-to-face without actually having to be in the same room.

Among those present were Deputy State Secretary II Datuk Haji Morshidi Ghani, Director of State Information Communication Technology William Patrick Nyigor, security advisor of State Government Datu Yusof Nook and the director of State Administration Unit Augustine Juna.

Also present were the CEO of Sains Teo Tien Hiong and MLABS System's K.T.Wong.