Rokiah Mahmud
The Ministry of Transport and Infocommunications (MTIC) has embarked on various efforts and initiatives to expedite and strengthen digital transformation, ensuring that new norms can be implemented more efficiently. This is in parallel with the Digital Economy Masterplan 2025 goals.
Minister of Transport and Infocommunications Yang Berhormat Dato Seri Setia Awang Abdul Mutalib bin Pehin Orang Kaya Seri Setia Dato Paduka Haji Mohd Yusof said this during the sixth day of the 18th Legislative Council (LegCo) Meeting yesterday, adding that the efforts support this year’s national fiscal theme ‘Strengthening Public Well-being Towards More Resilient Socio-Economy.’
“With the vision of Smart Nation (through digital transformation), the Digital Economy Masterplan 2025 is a key reference and roadmap for digital transformation planning and implementation in Brunei Darussalam. For this, the Secretariat of Digital Economy Council (DEC) has executed a number of coordination to further strengthen preparation and implementation of projects as well as digitisation initiatives under the digital transformation plan, steered by Digital Transformation Steering Committee (DTSC) under each respective ministry.
“This digital transformation includes and supports the use of digital technology for the ministry and for the industrial sector under its jurisdiction. Based on the development output from the Ministries Digital Transformation Plan Stock Take carried out from April to June 2021, a total of 10 Digital Transformation Plans have been submitted to be reviewed by the DEC Secretariat,” the minister said.
In encouraging digital transformation in the public sector, Yang Berhormat Dato Seri Setia Awang Abdul Mutalib shared a number of achievements and findings that have come about. In terms of government services, 178 services can now be found online, while there are 25 mobile applications and 22 online payment services.
“Towards a more modern and effective government service, all ministries have been provided with office collaborative tools that provide services such as e-mail, Intranet platform for correspondence storage as well sharing documents, and e-minute, among others.
“The tool rates show that 96 per cent of public servants have utilised the e-mails provided by the government; 61 government agencies are actively facilitating the Intranet platform as tools to save correspondence storage and document sharing; and almost all ministries have started using e-minute or e-Office in work delegation for further action,” Yang Berhormat Dato Seri Setia Awang Abdul Mutalib said.
“Additionally, there has been an increase in e-Darussalam account registrations, reaching about 70 per cent compared to the previous years. A total of 208,077 accounts have been registered and 170,963 accounts activated as of January 2022.
“Alhamdulillah, statistics showed that the use of government services through e-Darussalam has improved. In further moving digital transformation into the government sector (based on whole-of-government approach), MTIC, along with the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) established the Digitisation Policy Taskforce. This body is responsible for reviewing acts and policies that require updating in supporting government efforts towards realising a digital government,” the minister said.
Serious attention also needs to be paid to further develop digital transformation in the private sector.
Yang Berhormat Dato Seri Setia Awang Abdul Mutalib said on this front, two Digitisation Industry workshops have been carried out to deliberate on the digital transformation plan for identified industrial sectors: The Agri-Food Industry Digitalisation Workshop was held in November last year, involving 91 participants; and the Construction Industry Digitalisation Workshop in December 2021, involving 60 participants.
Digitisation workshops for eight other industrial sectors included under the Digital Economy Masterplan 2025 are scheduled to be held in June.
