The Cambodian government aims to use fibre-optic cable to create an online connection to its offices in the provinces by the end of the year

All government offices across the country will be online and connected to the central government's information-sharing system within the year, according to the official behind the nationwide e-government rollout.

Phu Leewood, the secretary general of the National Information Communications Technology Development agency (NIDA), said large-scale servers had already been established in Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and Sihanoukville to feed connections and data to offices in their surrounding provinces.

"Each has a service and access network; it's a matter of connecting them to the backbone through a fibre optic cable," he said.

"All the main government offices within each province are connected to each other, but they need to be connected to the backbone," he added.  

Called the Provincial Administration Information System, the e-government project has a budget of $15 million to connect offices within each province to each other, and another $20 million to connect each province to the central government in Phnom Penh.

"Once this application is available, government offices will be able to communicate with each other and with the central government more efficiently," Phu Leewood said.  

Cheam Chansophaon, director of Battambang's provincial Agriculture Department, said the digitalisation of government offices in the countryside would streamline work between rural and Phnom Penh government officials.

"This will narrow the gap between provincial offices and Phnom Penh so we can send and receive reports on time," he said.  

Soun Dy, director of Kampong Cham's Industry Department, said reports from his office to Phnom Penh were currently sent by fax since his office did not have an internet connection. 

"If we can have a digital system, it would be a big break because then we can get information from anywhere and our work will become easier."