Seventhly, ensuring affordable, accessible and responsible government. Some of our Ministers have a tendency to want to boast that we are going to be the first in the world in IT, when in fact, they are quite ignorant about big strides that have been made in other countries.
Recently, the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Abang Abu Bakar Mustapha was reported as saying that a “cyber court” would be set up after Parliament passes a Bill on the proposed cyber law in the forthcoming meeting.
He said that Malaysia would emerge as the first country in the world to set up a cyber court.
It is news that Parliament would be asked to enact legislation to introduce the first cyber court in the world. This announcement has not only caught the country, but I am sure, both the judiciary and the Bar Council by complete surprise.
While Malaysia should aim to be a world leader in government administration to provide better, faster and cheaper public service by making full use of the opportunities presented by the new information and communications technologies, we must have our foot firmly planted on the ground and not be carried away by hyperboles or even worse, to believe in these hyperboles ourselves.
It is ridiculous for Malaysia to be talking about being the first country to have a cyber court in the future when the Malaysian judicial system has not yet gone on-line while other countries are already quite advanced in electronic usage in their administration of justice.
Singapore for instance has started introducing a cybercourt system by requiring all lawyers to submit all their court papers electronically, with a 50 per cent surcharge on existing rates levied on attorneys who file old-fashioned paper documents.
A computer database containing all of Singapore’s legal statutes is being prepared for the Internet, allowing lawyers to conduct legal research electronically.
The Australian High Court went online last October, with stacks of information available online on what the court does, has been doing and will do soon in the business lists. There are also transcipts of recent speeches and, most impressive of all, the full text of all court decisions from 1947 to the present.
In the United Kingdom, even the ancient House of Lords has gone on-line, making its judgments available on the Internet.
For Malaysia, as far as electronic usage in our administration of justice, it is a total blank. When Malaysia has to catch up with other countries in the provision of electronic services, whether in the administration of justice or other public service departments, it will make Malaysia look ridiculous if our Ministers continue to claim that they want to be “first” in this or that area, showing their ignorance of the strides already made by other countries in these fields.
In Parliament and in the INFOTECH ’96 Conference, I had questioned why Malaysia must wait until the Prime Minister’s Office in Putrajaya is completed in September 1998 before introducing electronic online services to the people, as is already being done by many other countries - as Malaysia does not lack the technology but only the commitment.
Recently, the government announced that it would introduce pilot online government services in the Klang Valley in September this year through electronic kiosks.
However, the people have still to know whether the online government services would make the government more open, accountable and cheaper and it is still to be tested as to whether the people would find it comfortable to access government online through electronic kiosks rather than from their homes.
It would have been more in keeping with the spirit of an information society if the government had consulted the people first about how electronic service-delivery could best benefit the people and businesses.