23 July 2007

Public can just go to one government dept when e-KL takes off

The Star

PUTRAJAYA: The public will be able to carry out all their official business at one government department when the e-KL project takes off this year.

Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Unit (Mampu) director-general Datuk Normah Md Yusof said that under the “No Wrong Door” policy, the last words the public should hear from a civil servant were “I don’t know.”

Normah: ‘Our clients will be served no matter where they go’
“We don’t want the days where people who are trying to conduct official matters are pushed or redirected to various offices and passed from one staff member to another. It is very frustrating for the public,” she added.

Normah said the project, which would be implemented from this year until 2010, could catapult Malaysia’s competitiveness ranking into the top 10, which would in turn attract more investors to the country.

”We don’t want to be left behind, particularly when other countries in the region are also mushrooming in terms of growth.

“An example is when a person who wants to pay his assessment goes to the wrong local council or authority. He should not be asked to go away.

“Instead, the local authority staff can tell him that he is at the wrong office but that he can still pay his assessment there and have the payment entered into the computer online system.

“Our clients will be served no matter where they go,” she said.

The policy comes as the department – which has been tasked to improve the public service delivery system – is seeking to emphasise to the people the concept of “One government, many agencies.”

Normah said that for now, if members of the public call in hoping to get some information about another agency, the staff should be able to give them some basic information about the other agency.

Complaints about being passed around from one telephone connection to another or shuffled between different counters are among the most frequent grouses from the people concerning the government’s public delivery system.

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