Homegrown enterprise infrastructure systems provider Ecquaria Technologies Pte Ltd. has been awarded a S$4.7 million (US$2.8 million) contract to build an integrated Service Portal for the Ministry of Communications of Brunei Darussalam, in support of the government?s plan to transform the delivery of public services to citizens.
The strategic win strengthens Ecquaria?s foray into the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) eGovernment market. ?We see growing opportunities from governments in Asean who are increasingly looking to help individuals and businesses simplify the use of public services,? said Ecquaria?s president and chief executive officer Dr Foong Wai Keong.
?Southeast Asia is on a growth curve and new opportunities are sprouting for Singapore?s companies. Given that more than 70 percent of our projects are eGovernment in focus, we believe Ecquaria is well-positioned to capitalize on the niche eGovernment market opportunities the region offers.?
According to a September 2004 report in Beyond Singapore-Southeast Asia, a publication by International Enterprise Singapore, outlook in Asean is bright with an expected GDP growth of 5.2 percent this year. For Brunei, growth is expected to be within the range of 4 percent to 5.5 percent.
Ecquaria, an associate company of Frontline Technologies, is part of a consortium commissioned by MinCom to design and deploy a centralized eGovernment platform that the government agencies and their appointed vendors could develop on and roll out robust web services rapidly, efficiently and securely for use by the public. Under the service agreement, Ecquaria?s flagship enterprise infrastructure software, Ecquaria Service-Oriented Platform (Ecquaria SOP) will be used to power MinCom?s ministry-wide intranet, an integrated Service Portal that will host public information of all the agencies of MinCom. In addition, a new electronic billing system and other eServices will be developed for the Portal using Ecquaria SOP.
The new portal solution with built-in single sign-on authentication features represents the Brunei Government?s customer-centric approach to eServices delivery. It is specifically designed to address the security and availability needs of MinCom?s Data Center and Disaster Recovery Centers in addition to streamlining information and eServices catered to the different needs of its users -- internal users as well as citizens and businesses.
?Through the new single electronic gateway, we can now facilitate a higher level of communication and collaboration among geographically dispersed agencies as well as with the public users,? said Ang Kian Guan, director of IT, Research & Development, Ministry of Communications, Brunei Darussalam.
According to Ecquaria, its open and extensible process-driven infrastructure will enable the Brunei Government to build integrated services across multiple agencies easily and efficiently -- and at the same time, provide a secure environment to ensure a seamless and concurrent development of services by MinCom?s different ministries, without affecting the government?s ongoing operations.
Buoyed by its success at home in architecting and implementing two key large-scale electronic public services projects, notably the Public Service Infrastructure (PSi) and Online Application for Integrated Services (OASIS), Ecquaria is aggressively taking its eGovernment experience and expertise overseas.
In December 2002, the company?s flagship product, Ecquaria Service-Oriented Platform was endorsed by the Asean e-Task Force as the foundation platform to build Asean Service Access Platform (ASAP), an open collaborative infrastructure platform to foster electronic commerce growth, facilitate interconnectivity and technical interoperability amongst Asean countries and globally. Through ASAP, government agencies, commercial enterprises and consumers are able to obtain ?one-stop? customer-centric services that are personalized to them and built through syndicating supporting services.