What's with the MoE Website?

The official website of the Ministry of Education, www.education.gov.bt, is dead. And it's been dead for the last few weeks. We first tweeted about this a few days ago.  My guess is that it went down about 3 or 4 weeks ago. That's a pretty long time for a website of that importance to be unavailable. In the online world, it's almost infinity. It's down for so long, in fact, that the website does not even come up in Google search results. Try looking for "ministry of education, bhutan" or any other query related to education in Bhutan. The ministry's official web site is just not there. It's gone.

Unemployment among Google Chrome users?

Like many young people in Bhutan, one of my students who uses Google Chrome as her web browser is looking for a job. Google Chrome is my preferred web browser, as it is faster and more secure than other browsers. Hence, we have Chrome installed on our lab computers. Back to our story. The student went to MoLHR's website, and clicked on the "Job Vacancy" link. Here is what she saw:

eGov by SMS

Thus far, it seems that official announcements to the public have been mainly through the newspapers, BBS and radio. Not any more! Yesterday, I received an SMS from "T.Thromde" on my B-Mobile. The message reads (I quote exactly as it shows on my phone):

ThimphuThromde invites land owners of respective LAP to for public consultation meeting, Babesa 28Aug@RIMhall 10AM, Semthokha 4Sept@ Lungtenphu 11Sept@YHShall 10AM

Using SMS for reaching Thimphu residents is a great example of "eGov by mobile". Especially here, where not everyone has access to the Internet, and definitely not on the weekend, an SMS is likely to reach a large portion of the population.

SMS is of course just the tip of the "eGov by mobile" iceberg, but at this point it is the most effective given the majority of simple, "not-so-smartphone" in the country. In the future, when smartphones become more popular, there's scope for various eGov-services-by-mobile, similar to those in other countries.