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.