Bandar Seri Begawan – The Deputy Minister of Communications, Dato Paduka Haji Yusoff bin Haji Abdul Hamid has lead a delegation comprising senior officials from the Brunei Darussalam Information Technology (BIT) Council, to attend the Microsoft Government Leaders Forum - Asia in New Delhi, India from 05 - 07 December 2005.

The Microsoft Government Leaders Forum – Asia will provide a dynamic discussion platform for government leaders from the Asia-Pacific Region. Wide-ranging perspectives will be exchanged on a variety of challenging and complex issues, revolving around the central theme of ‘Leading in a Connected World’.

The Asia Pacific Region continues to expand its economic leadership, creating new opportunities and challenges for governments in the region. The integration of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) within the public sector offers a host of opportunities and challenges to harness, direct and shape the growth and development of the region. A wide range of issues will be presented in three dynamic discussion forum tracks related to Knowledge Economy, Governance and Education.

This is the ninth year that Microsoft has been engaged in hosting an event dedicated to the public sector. This year, Brunei Darussalam’s delegation will have the opportunity to meet Bill Gates and other Senior Microsoft Executives and more importantly, the opportunity to pitch Brunei Darussalam as a continued location for attractive investment to Microsoft as well as to the other attending government and corporate leaders from 15 countries in Asia-Pacific. The Brunei delegation will also have the benefit of engaging an insightful live dialogue on the plausible future and exploitation of ICT with prominent names and leaders from Japan, China, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, India and Sri Lanka, among many other countries.

According to Dato Paduka Haji Yusoff, Brunei Darussalam aspires to create an advanced Information Society in which everyone is able to access, gain, share and exploit knowledge in order to maximize their potential and improve their quality of life. This is particularly important as a prerequisite to transform Brunei Darussalam into a knowledge-economy supported by modern communications infrastructure. He further added that several focus areas such as e-education, e-government and e-society are crucial in this respect. The adoption of ICT usage among our society must be further encouraged and the important aspect of increasing users’ confidence in using ICT in their daily lives must be addressed.

In addition, service (information) industry viz-a-viz e-Business or e-Commerce is already becoming an economic niche and probably an answer to Brunei Darussalam’s diversification from oil and gas. Big allocation has been provided to make the Government e-efficient and this is an area where the private sector can participate and specialize in.

This knowledge-based industry, if properly managed, would benefit our people, the educational institutions and the country at large and will have direct impact on the productivity of our human capital.