Cambodia Releases E-Government Guidelines

PHNOM PENH, The agency behind the nationwide e-government released a long-awaited guidelines for the first time, at the end of last week detailing what ministries and other government departments needed to do, to take their services online, a local media reported on Wednesday.

The National Information Communications Technology Development Agency (NIDA) also released information security to ensure government information was kept secure and protected from system intruders, China's Xinhua news agency reported, citing a report from the Phnom Penh Post.

NIDA Secretary General Phu Leewood was quoted as saying that the e-Government Service Deployment Plan was important for building information communication technology (ICT) capacity in govenment and also for tracking progress and what remained to be done.

"This is a master map for us to walk together in the right diection for all [government and private] institutions to get up to speed with the global ICT sector," he said.

Thirty government ministries and institutions received the two sets of guidelines at a seminar last week.

The guidelines were based on a needs analysis conducted at all relevant ministries in 2007 with technical assistance from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

They identify areas in which e-government can be used to build the public service competency of government institutions, provide guidelines for collecting data and help establish a blueprint for expanding government services.

Van Khema, a deputy director at NIDA in Charge of networks, said the key obstacle in the path of the e-government rollout is the connection of all 24 provinces to the central government's information-sharing system via a fibre-optic backbone.

He declined to give a timeline, saying only the infrastructure would be in place "soon".

Called the Provincial Administration Information System Project, the e-government project has a budget of some US$15 million to connect offices within each province to one another, and another US$20 million to connect each province to the government in Phnom Penh.

Three data centers -- in Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and Sihanoukville -- will act as hubs for surrounding provinces.

-- BERNAMA