This is certainly exciting news as we move into 2007! About 14 governments will be involved and Malaysia will surely be able to play an active role.
Press release from UNDP:
UNDP, IBM and Oracle to Help Asia-Pacific Countries Create Strategies and Policies for Adopting Open Computing Standards
Excerpt:
BANGKOK, 19 December 2006 - United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), IBM and Oracle today announced a joint research initiative to help Asia-Pacific countries share and create strategies, blueprints and policies for adopting the right blend of open standards and technology services. The goal will be for more countries to develop universally compatible applications and networks to make internal and external government services and transactions more automatic, affordable and efficient.
The UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (UNDP-APDIP) will facilitate the development of Government Interoperability Frameworks (GIFs). Many countries around the world have developed GIFs to guide the development of government-wide systems and policies that permit electronic transactions and data and information exchange to take place seamlessly across agencies and jurisdictions.
Today, many e-Government initiatives show that new systems are very often developed from scratch at both central and local levels. New systems are developed with specifications and solutions that match goals and tasks relevant to a particular administration, but without adequate attention to surrounding government institutions and information and communications technology (ICT) systems. The result is a patchwork of ICT solutions that are not always compatible with each other, reduced efficiency and duplication of effort.
UNDP-APDIP, IBM and Oracle, together with the International Open Source Network (IOSN), have teamed up to conduct a thorough review of how governments in the region and beyond are promoting efficient, government-wide sharing of information and data by focusing on automatic technology services provided by computing networks, rather than individual technologies. For instance, this project will examine how existing GIFs are focused on a service-oriented architecture.
The objective is to identify promising practices around interoperability, then document case studies of those practices in action, and ultimately develop and recommend guidelines. Over the next year, UNDP-APDIP will hold workshops to share experiences and findings of the project with interested groups, and publicly release studies and reports at various stages of the project.
Excerpt:
Government Interoperability Frameworks: A Project Proposal
UNDP-APDIP, with support from IBM and Oracle, is proposing to implement a project that will:
- Conduct a review and analysis of whether and how existing GIFs are focused on a service-oriented approach and on open and/or proprietary standards, and identify promising practices on interoperability achieved based on Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs) or Open Standards adoption.
- Prepare, publish and promote a “best practice” template/reference document that includes at least three e-government case-study featuring interoperability achieved based on SOA and/or Open Standards from at least three countries participating in this initiative.
- Prepare, in collaboration with the relevant national agency in three Asian countries a draft GIF based on an SOA approach and Open Standards.
- Prepare detailed interoperability implementation guidelines on 2 -3 specific citizen service areas such as National ID, Land Records, Tax etc.