Friday, July 01, 2005

e-Government in Malaysia

We are in a city called Ipoh, where my wife is from.
Ipoh is the third largest in Malaysia, with a population of about 600,000 which makes it comparable but somewhat larger than Haringey.
Ipoh is the name of a tree from which the Orang Asli,('Aborigines' of Malaysia), derive a poison that they use with the darts from a blowpipe.
I checked in at our usual hotel in Ipoh to find myself in the middle of a Conference entitled "Best Practices of E-Government and E-City : Vision, Innovation & Opportunities'.
Ipoh and the State of Perak has announced a 5-year budget of £200 million to get E-enabled, starting from nothing.
For some strange reason, the EU and Brussels is helping with this ambitious plan and has established something called 'The EU Ipoh Virtual City'.
This Virtual City has its own Web Site at www.eivc.org.
As a result of this, there were three Brits representing European e-Government expertise of the sort who hang around Brussels trying to get their snouts in the trough.

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