#lost Theories – The Nemesis (#maycontain #spoilers)

// February 21st, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Musings

Just watched Episode 4 of Season 6. Since watching the finale of Season 5, I’ve had some theories about who the heck the Nemesis is.

More after the break. Warning: May contain spoilers!

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Google Wave … Google Buzz … Twitter … Facebook … which tool for which use case?

// February 15th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Technology

This week, one of my Friends asked for a comparison between Google Wave and Google Buzz.

I happily obliged, with this short assessment:

Twitter for this ... Buzz for that ... etc etc

A little more in-depth on the different tools for different use cases after the break:

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Reactions to our Singapore relocation plan @keeranj @ummiabdullah

// February 3rd, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Musings

In the vein of “every bodu should should like u“, I thought I’d share some of the reactions I got from my friends when we announced we were relocating to Singapore.

Disappointed that Brunei will be losing your talents

Another business said they were considering me for a C-grade spot in an IT business with great potential. Well, on a lighter side, here’s a much more amusing one after the break:

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Panel Discussion: India #Brunei ICT Scope and Potential for Collaboration

// February 2nd, 2010 // No Comments » // Business

Earlier this week I was invited by the High Commission of India, Brunei Darussalam to be a member of a small 7-man panel.

My scope was to present the Infocom Federation Brunei (IFB) profile and to talk about potential areas of collaboration between India and Brunei – whilst being mindful that the other Bruneian speakers would also touch on these areas of collaboration.

(Slides & speaking notes after the break)

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CIMB is hiring for 3 positions in #brunei. CIMB is ranked #4 in M&A League table.

// January 31st, 2010 // No Comments » // Business

I spotted a job ad on Page 57 of the weekend Borneo Bulletin which I thought was worth sharing.

CIMB Group is hiring for: Senior Manager (3-5 years work experience, Master degree advantageous), Executive (1-3 years work experience, fresh graduates encouraged) and Assistant Executive (1-2 years experience with a Diploma).

FYI, CIMB (Commerce International Merchant Bankers Berhad) is the 5th largest bank in South East Asia by total assets. I think the job posting is blog worthy because:

(More after the break …)

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#brunei e-government advances the fastest in ASEAN over the period 2008 to 2010

// January 21st, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Technology

2008 to 2010 has been a great two years for e-Government in Brunei.

Some of our achievements over the past 2 years

We launched the e-Government strategic plan 2009-2014. This master plan creates a framework for all major stakeholders to work towards, it unifies the efforts of the public sector and the private sector with a common language and it clarifies the governance structures under which the continued public-private collaboration is to operate under.

The Brunei Government consolidated its efforts to deliver a common ICT infrastructure to Government Ministries, Agencies and Statutory bodies by launching the e-Government National Centre.

IFB ran it’s flagship event, the Brunei ICT Careers Day in 2008. During the Careers Day, the industry and employers had the opportunity to emphasise the importance of ICT to potential new hires, to match professionals with industrial needs and perhaps most importantly, to identify a pool of young & talented ICT professionals.

We implemented GEMS, the Government Employee Management System. This Government-wide enterprise system seeks to modernise human resource management within the Brunei Government. Reaching some 40,000+ Government employees, compared with the other e-Government projects, GEMS has one of the widest reach.

So how did this translate into our Rankings?

During Brunei’s previous assessment of e-Government readiness, we were slipping in the rankings (shout out to DebatingBrunei.blogspot.com!). Gradually slipping from a fairly high ranking in 2003 of 55/173 in 2003, down to 63/178 in 2004, down to 73/191 in 2005 and then down again to 87 in 2008.

For 2010 Brunei has risen up the rankings – we were the fastest rising in the 10-country ASEAN grouping. We went up from 87th to 68th place – an increase of 19 spots. Not quite regaining our spot from 2004, but definately a strong increase from prior year.

Extract below from UNPAN:

The down side?

On the Up side, Brunei scored well on: the e-Government index, the Infrastructure index and the Human Capital index

On the other hand, Brunei has scored pretty poorly on: the Online Service Index and the e-Participation Index.

The bottom line

For Brunei to live up to our expectations set in the National Development Plan 2007-2012, and in the e-Government Strategic Plan 2009-2014, we will expect to see some big changes.

Firstly, the results of the e-Government citizen survey (organised by PMO and IFB, in collaboration with EGNC and BAG) will come in. This will be interesting to analyse, because this will tell the e-Government stakeholders which government services are in greatest need of attention by implementing agencies. This kind of e-Participation

And to achieve improvements in the Online Service Index?

I think that very high on the Government agenda will likely be technologies like “Service Oriented Architecture” (SOA) and the “Enterprise Service Bus” (ESB). I feel that a key strategy to enhancing the depth and breadth of online services being offered to the Rakyat (Citizens) is not through brute force computerisation but rather through a thoughtful and most importantly … a coherent business NEEDS driven implementation that focuses on the essence of the problem. This is neatly described by Deloitte Consulting as “Service Thinking“.

Because after all, a brute force computerisation of existing processes doesn’t have the same potential to unlock public value to the Rakyat (Citizens) or to deliver meaningful e-Services.

Once we have identified the “pain points” through the e-Government citizen survey, we can then go about tackling the problem of putting some of these services online. In the language of the e-Government Strategic Plan 2007-2014, the “SOA” is called the “Government Enterprise Architecture”.

I’m looking forward to the next 2-3 years to see the kinds of services that will be implemented in a SOA-driven approach, or as they call it, a “Government Enterprise Architecture” driven approach. And remember! This is all towards delivering e-Services and with a main objective of delivering meaningful e-Services for the public and the nation.

#brunei #parking #fail outside of Jing Chew B304

// January 16th, 2010 // No Comments » // Musings

While circling the block looking for a place to park, I found this bloke parked in the yellow box where it’s labelled;

“NO PARKING”.

I rolled down the window: “You can’t park here, this is the exit”.

The Bloke: “I want to park here.”

I repeated: “This is the exit, there’s a no parking sign here”.

The Bloke: Blank look. Gets back in his car,reverses a bit and waits for me to pass, before he parks again in the spot.

Google’s Nexus One smartphone – not your ordinary innovation

// January 10th, 2010 // No Comments » // Business

Owner of copyright: Schierlitz & Budewig, Tom Schierlitz photographer.

To much fanfare, Google released the Nexus One smartphone earlier this month. Some may say that the Nexus One doesn’t compare against the iPhone, and I have to respectfully disagree on that point.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m a big fan of the Apple iPhone + iTunes model. I think Apple has done a really good job in delivering an excellent end-to-end consumer smartphone experience. Integration with iTunes  and the App store, the intuitive user interface and the form factor have all set the benchmark by which all other smartphones are compared to.

But the real genius behind the Nexus One phone is not in the hardware or the software. The real genius is in the business model : the Google Store and the power of Open Source.

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TBTF – Bear Sterns collapse and Syariah compliance

// December 31st, 2009 // No Comments » // Business

While on holiday, I bought the book “Too Big To Fail” by Andrew Ross Sorkin. I’m about one-fifth of the way through the book. Really gripping stuff, but I wish I had a better way of remembering the names of the key players. Maybe I should put the profiles of the ensemble cast in an Appendix, along with their photos (haha!).

On Monday I recalled a comment from the first Chapter, and recounted it to one of my colleagues at work. Apparently, sources on Wall Street have it that a group of short-sellers maliciously manipulated Bear Sterns’s share price and reputation. This eventually resulted in the merger of Bear Sterns with JP Morgan in a stock swap of $2 per share, down from $172 per share a year earlier. The $2 offer was revised to $10 per share, but that is still less than 10% of the $172 high.

I recounted this story to my colleague because she attended a recent two-day seminar conducted by the Centre for Islamic Banking, Finance and Management (CIBFM) on Syariah compliant financial services, and she had briefed me earlier on some of the materials presented during the seminar.

From what we learned, key in determining if a transaction is “Syariah compliant” is whether it adheres to a set of 5 key principles:

1. Avoidance of “Riba” – I think of this as “Usury“. Whether “profit sharing” agreements in murabaha (profit-sharing) transactions really represent “Interest” on debt (where a debt is a present obligation of the entity arising from past events, the settlement of which is expected to result in an outflow from the entity of resources embodying economic benefits, per the IASB Framework) … ah, that is the topic of a whole separate series of blog posts!
2. Avoidance of “Gharar” – A deceptive sale with uncertain payoffs, benefiting one party at the expense of the other
3. Avoidance of “Maysir” – Games of chance and gambling
4. Avoidance of transactions involving prohibited commodities – all that is “Haram” e.g. Alcohol, drugs, etc.
5. Contracts must have mutual consent, purpose and motive – quite similar to how in common-law systems, the key requirements for the creation of a contract are offer & acceptance, consideration, intention to create legal relations, legal capacity and formalities.

So I was thinking … between running a modern financial services firm and maintaining Syariah compliance … how do we reconcile these two needs? Are they congruent? Are they competing?

More after the break.

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IFRS for SMEs – What does the future hold for Brunei?

// December 21st, 2009 // No Comments » // Business

2 weeks ago at the sidelines of the AFA16 conference, Izam Said asked me for my thoughts on International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption in Brunei.

Over the last two weeks I’ve had more thoughts on IFRS and some thoughts on a potential way forward for us in Brunei.

More after the break.

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