IT companies agree to put government online

Three information technology ventures -- Yam.com (蕃薯藤), Seednet (數位聯合電信) and Novell (Taiwan) -- announced plans yesterday to cooperate on an information Web portal for the Executive Yuan, designed to improve intra-government operations.

"This is a showcase of Internet applications for enterprises," said Chen Jen-ran (陳正然), CEO of Yam Digital Technology Co Ltd (蕃薯藤數位科技). Chen said that during an economic downturn the government should set an example by using the Internet to improve operational efficiency.

The strategic alliance pools the strengths of Web portal Yam.com, Internet service provider Seednet and Internet software provider Novell (Taiwan) Co Ltd.

The alliance is set to deliver a new business solution -- enterprise information portal (EIP) -- to companies who want to go cyber and their first client is the Executive Yuan.

Enterprise information portals are applications that enable companies or governments to unlock internally and externally stored information, and provide users a single gateway to personalized information needed to make informed decisions.

Chen said the group won the four-year contract with the Executive Yuan in August and will fire up the first stage of the portal service in mid December.

"All citizens around the island will be able to download 1,500 different forms from the portal and government departments can share information with each other on the platform," Chen said.

As for cost of the project, Cherng Chia-jun (程嘉君), CEO of Digital United Inc (數位聯合電信), said for the first year it is estimated to bring in NT$19 million for the three companies. "After that it will be approximately NT$20 million to NT$24 million per year." Cherng said.

Yam.com is responsible for Web interface design, content management, Seednet will take care of the network infrastructure and Novell Taiwan is in charge of e-directory software service.

Novell's e-directory service is employed to manage user identities, network resource and information, such as log-in numbers, personal e-mail and information access authorization.

According to Barry Chen (陳學智), general manager at Novell, this is not the first time the firm has worked to boost government efficiency.

To date the company has delivered government services such as car registration, driver license renewals and tax filing online for the city of Toronto, the US Census Bureau, the UK Ministry of Defense and 40 state governments in the US. A market watcher says the online government service will be used more and more by the general public as the popularity of the Internet increases.

"With more people using broadband, it will be easier for online government services to become popular," said Nathan Lin (林宗賢), a telecom analyst at National Securities Corp (建宏證券).

This can be seen in Singapore and South Korea, where broadband penetration rates are higher than Taiwan and governments got online earlier than Taiwan, he said.