(The Malaysian Today; March 19th, 2004)

SIBU: The targeted date for electronic government (EG) for the State public service to achieve full EG status will be by 2008, said State Secretary Datuk Amar Abdul Aziz Haji Husain.

He said with full EG, members of the public should be able to receive the full range of government services virtually, anytime and anywhere, at their own convenience and at a cost that is affordable to them.

"We have established intermediate targets towards full EG status, one of which is that all state government bills and all payments that it receives to be made available on-line by end of 2005," he said in his address at the launching of the electronic Local Authority (e-LA) programme in the Sibu Municipal Council (SMC) at Kingwood hotel here.

Also present were Minister of Infrastructure Development and Communications, Datuk Sri Wong Soon Koh, Assistant Minister of Public Health, Dr. Soon Choon Teck, Chairman of SMC, Datuk Robert Lau who is also BN incumbent candidate for Sibu Bandar and BN incumbent for Lanang, Tiong Thai King.

Abdul Aziz, who is also the Deputy Chairman of the State Information Technology and Resources Council (SITRC) said the payments included those for which no bills were issued.

An example, he said, was land rent payments and payment for licences, adding that the state government had developed and implemented an on-line bill delivery and payment system called the electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) system since 1999 for such transactions.

According to him, e-LA was part of the EG programme, and the state government considered the local authorities as a very important component of its machinery, saying the local authorities were the third tier in the government infrastructure, and it provided critical services to the local constituents.

"Recognising this, the state has decided to offer all possible assistance to enable the local authorities to acquire and implement ICT systems. We realised that we could not wait for local authorities to implement ICT at their own pace.

"It would be non-uniform and would take too long. So in 2003, we decided to fund the acquisition of ICT software to enable all local authorities in Sarawak to fully computerise their operations.