BBYB 2020

53 / 246

51 INVESTMENT POTENTIAL
The Government of His Majesty Sultan Haji
Hassanal Bolkiah Mu’izzaddin Waddaulah ibni
Al-Marhum Sultan Haji Omar ‘Ali Saifuddien
Sa’adul Khairi Waddien, Sultan and Yang Di-
Pertuan of Brunei Darussalam has been quick to
adopt new technologies, boosting the efficiency
of its services and processes.
Formed in April 2008 under the Prime Minister’s
Office (PMO), the E-Government National
Centre (EGNC) plays an integral part in the
government’s continuous effort towards achieving
the e-Government initiatives with four key
drivers. The first is to modernise the civil service
and government machinery while becoming
customer-focussed and friendly. The second is to
build transparent and accountable government,
enabling better participation from the community
and citizens, whereas the third and fourth are to
meet the challenges of globalisation and to better
prepare for future crises.
EGNC functions as the centralised organisation
that concentrates on information technology
(IT) in the civil service. The centre oversees the
development of IT personnel and centralises
procurement of IT equipment, in addition to
providing common government-wide applications
and shared IT services among all ministries.
The centre also designs strategic plans for
information and communications technology
(ICT) across the government and sets up the
measurement framework, where secretariat
support is provided for various e-Government
governance forums such as the E-Government
Leadership Forum. In terms of research and
new developments in ICT, the centre looks
into the provision of technical advice for the
government’s IT project, feasibility study and
cost benefit analysis.
In terms of IT human resource management,
EGNC is responsible for the planning, recruitment,
development and deployment of all IT personnel
in the civil service. About 400 IT personnel are in
the civil service, of which 75 per cent are deployed
to other ministries, departments and higher
educational institutions.
With the IT industry constantly evolving, the
centre offers training programmes to further
develop one’s IT career and hone their skills. The
programmes come with internationally recognised
Professional IT Certifications such as CompTIA,
Cisco Certification, Microsoft Academy and
Microsoft Certified Professional.
Developed and maintained by EGNC,
is an online platform for sharing
government data and statistics to be used by the
government agencies. The data can be accessed
and downloaded by the public for free online,
raising transparency in the government services.
All the datasets uploaded on are
created and collected by the Brunei government
agencies. Government agencies in the country are
encouraged to share their data with the public.
To ensure the information on the portal is frequently
updated, EGNC as the coordinating agency will
continuously hold discussions with data owners. In
addition, EGNC will send reminder emails for the data
to be updated and for additional data to be uploaded to
increase the amount of accessible data on the portal.
As the country looks into building its National
Centralised Database (NCDB) for government
use, it was revealed during the Legislative
Council Meeting in March 2019 that its
implementation was scheduled to start in the
second quarter of the year.
The announcement was made by Minister at
the Prime Minister’s Office Yang Berhormat
Dato Seri Setia Haji Awang Abdul Mokti bin Haji
Mohd Daud, in response to Legislative Council
Member Yang Berhormat Siti Rozaimeriyanty
binti Dato Seri Laila Jasa Haji Abdul Rahman’s
question with regards to whether relevant
authorities have carried out plans to make
data.gov.bnmore efficient or whether therewill be a
newdatabase centre serving as a one-stop platform
containing all the needed important information.
The minister said the NCDB initiative would be
implemented by EGNC, and the project was in
the tendering stage. The project scope covers
the building of the infrastructure of the database
for use by IT projects under the 11th National
Development Plan (NDP). This will allow better
integration of information among government
agencies, as the NCDB will introduce a new
service called ‘Database is a service’ aimed at
reducing government expenditure in preparing
databases for IT projects under the 11th NDP.
The project will provide convenience to all the
government agencies by allowing them to keep
their data at the centre, said the minister.
In addition, the project has the scope of
functioning as a national information hub,
storing data such as names, address and
phone numbers. An Application Programming
Interface (API) system will be used for this
database project.