Parliament's jurassic "cobwebsite" |
Media Statement by DAP National Chairman Lim Kit Siang in Petaling Jaya on
Saturday, 8th July 2000:
Parliament's website is still as jurassic as ever as it has no information
on the parliamentary business to be transacted when Dewan Rakyat reconvenes
on Monday for a two-week meeting
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Parliament's website, http://www.parlimen.gov.my/, is still as jurassic as
ever as it has no information on the parliamentary business to be transacted
when Dewan Rakyat reconvenes on Monday for a two-week meeting.
It is a heart-breaking exercise trying to track official websites, as they
show an abysmal absence of IT and K mentality and mind-set, which cannot
augur well for Malaysia's ambition to become an IT superpower or a K-economy.
I have said before, and I reiterate, that the Malaysian Parliamentary
website is the most disgraceful parliamentary website not only in the
Commonwealth but in the world - whether in interactivity or contents such as
current information, parliamentary debate rercords, bills, laws or a
competent research library service online on toplical issues.
The jurassic parliament website is not an isolated case of the IT desert in
officialdom. Last July, the Anti-Corruption Agency director-general Ahmad
Zaki Husin invited the public to co-operate with the ACA, including making
use of the ACA homepage on the Internet, http://www.jaring.my/bpr.
However, anyone trying to reach the ACA online on this URL will be led to a
wild goose's chase, wasting time as well as draining public confidence in
the efficiency and seriousness of the ACA.
There had been periodical reports in the media in the past about government
websites which have degenrated into "cobwebs", never updated and allowing
for no interactivity whatsoever. Such media exposes, however, only cause
momentary embarrassment but do not seem to have any lasting salutary
effects - apart from causing some of the "cobwebsites" to be taken down
completely.
In mid-April, for instance, the Selangor Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Abu Hassan
Omar directed that all the Selangor State Government websites should be
suspended until all its information had been updated.
As a result, net surfers at the time who tried to access
www.selangor.gov.my were met with a message which read: "The page you are
looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is
temporarily unavailable."
In directing that all state government websites should be suspended until
they were updated, Abu Hassan forgot to give a deadline as to when all the
websites should be updated. As a result, when I tried to access the
Selangor State government website today, it was completely inaccessible.
The government's IT programme, whether national or state, is being reduced
into a joke going by the government "cobwebsites".
All the talk about Malaysia wanting to have a K-economy appears premature
when we don't have a K-government in the first place.
Before the Malaysian government is to be taken seriously about its K-economy
plans, it should get rid of the cobwebs not only on government official
sites on the Internet, but in the mental make-up of the national and state
government leaders.
- Lim Kit Siang -
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