(Sarawak Tribune; September 22, 2005)

KUCHING: All government departments including those in the sub-districts will be connected to Sarawaknet by the end of the year. "Heads of government departments should start using the ICT systems and facilities available," said State Secretary, Datuk Amar Haji Abdul Aziz Haji Husain at
the launching of the State Public Service ICT Conference here yester-day. Aziz said free regular ICT training had been provided to those in the public sector.

"A lot of money has been spent to get the people and government departments connected, but the programmes put in place have not been fully utilised," said Aziz. He called on heads of government departments to practice leadership by example, to encourage and train their staff on the ground to be IT-savvy.

He lamented the low usage of capacity in the present online system by users (only about five percent of the full capacity) although over 100 applications had been developed and ICT facilities had been extended to all government departments. "Hence, we would like to see all civil servants
fully utilise the system to achieve our target of achiev-ing a full-fledged E-Government by 2008," he said.

Later, Aziz launched the e-book services of Pustaka Negeri Sarawak (PNS), a service which would allow users to access an e-book anytime of the day. PNS recently purchased 200 e-book titles from NetLibrary, Pustaka users can gain access to more than 90,000 e-book titles from over 400 publishers.

Currently, Pustaka subscribes to nine online databases, which carry 13,350 journals electronically. Meanwhile, 400 participants are attending the two-day conference themed "K-Public Service: Leading The Way for Sarawak K-Society."
The conference, which will end today, is held in conjunction with Sarawak ICT Week 2005, which coincides with Malaysia ICT month. It is organised by the ICT Unit (Chief Minister's Department).

Also present at the event were Director ICT Unit (Chief Minister's Department), William Patrick Nyigor, and Director Malaysian Centre for Remote Sensing (MACRES), Dato' Nik Nasruddin Mahmood and Pustaka Negeri Sarawak CEO, Rashidah Bolhassan.