IfG.CC - The Potsdam eGovernment Competence Center

Recognising that compliance with international industry standards is necessary to realise the vision of an e-government in Brunei Darussalam, several government ministries and departments have taken the initiative to establish standardised platforms in handling and processing geospatial data.

Such mainstream IT platforms would also provide more efficient and cost-saving data storage, analysis and retrieval systems.

The `Enabling Oracle Spatial for Brunei Darussalam' seminar, jointly organised by the Brunei Institute of Geomatics and the Oracle Corporation, discussed the capability of the Oracle software in providing such data management services and its advantages over systems currently used in the government. Oracle is a global leader in database technology and solutions, and its Oracle Spatial software is specially designed to work on mainstream IT platforms and handle enterprise-level data warehouses.

Geospatial data is that which have some geographic reference, such as postal codes, zip codes, city and country names. Existing systems involving the use of proprietary-standard components which may pose compliancy issues and cost more to maintain and upgrade.

In accordance with the e-government initiative, data storage and dissemination methods should be flexible enough to allow access across various departments and via various applications.

Speaker Rakhisah Mat Zin, the senior regional manager for the Oracle Corporation, said ``implementing Oracle applications may seem expensive when a customer pays for it upfront, but in the long term it is actually more cost-effective''.

According to Mohd Jamil Mohd Ali, the Surveyor General and President of the Brunei Institute of Geomatics, the Survey Deparment and several other agencies under the Ministry of Development are already using the Oracle Spatial software for their database needs.

Through the seminar, he hoped that more organisations in both the public and private sector become more aware of the benefits and practicality of the software, and would be encouraged to employ it.

The seminar also featured guest speaker Eve Kleimann, who spoke on Oracle Spatial's defining features and functionality.

Autor(en)/Author(s): Khairunnisa Ibrahim

Quelle/Source: The Brunei Times, 08.11.2006