As our world moves towards a digital era, various areas of technology were explored to provide a better infrastructure to how the world is governed. This has led to the emergence of E-government.

E-Government which is also known by several names such as electronic government, e-gov, online government, refers to the use of internet technology to facilitate an online platform for the purpose of services offering, information exchange, and transacting with citizens, businesses, and other arms of the government. In short, the E-government’s purpose is to link up a nation’s population with the government. By doing so, there are various improvements for a nation. The most important anticipated benefits of e-government include improved efficiency, convenience, and better accessibility of public services.

In Malaysia, The Electronic Government was launched to direct the country in to digital age which is advanced in information technology to be on par with other developed nations. Malaysia has implemented various amounts of systems such as the Human Resource Management Information System(HRIMS), Electronic Services System(E-services), and E-Syariah. All of these are linked up through the myGovernment Portal which is accessible at http://www.gov.my/. It serves as a one-stop source resource for Malaysians to access for information and services offered by the government for citizens.

In terms of citizen’s adoption, citizens of Malaysia have begun to adopt and utilize the uses of e-government. An excellent example of this would be the Road Transport Department which is a one stop-centre for citizens of Malaysia to get clarification regarding auto-mobiles they own. One can simply check outstanding summonses, payment and renewal of road tax and summons, and many more with just a click of a mouse. Many Malaysians has started to use and fully utilize the Road Transport Department’s website for various purposes since E-Government was introduced.

Do you know what is E-tailing? Actually, E-tailing is the abbreviation of Electronic retailing, which refers to the process of selling retail goods through internet. E-tailing is synonymous with business-to-consumer transaction. With the introduction of E-tailing in Malaysia, many of the businesses have been converted from brick-and-mortar organization to click-and-mortar organization. Examples of Malaysian companies which make use of E-tailing system are MPH (book retailer), Dell (hardware retailer), McDonalds (fast food retailer), etc.

In my opinion, E-tailing can only involves goods which are non-perishable due to length of cycle time is long. Normally, the delivery of goods takes 2-3days. So, it is impossible to apply E-tailing for perishable goods because there is no way to prevent the perishable goods from being rotten during the transition.

However, I felt shocked when I knew that even “fishes” can be sold through internet! This brilliant idea was come from Abdullah Ibrahim, general manager of Tanjung Dawai Fisherman Association. When I saw the headline “Fish now sold via the Net”, I was wondering that how they can keep the fishes at the very fresh status. After I gone through the article, then I only realized that there is a little bit of “Tricks” behind it.

By combining the E-tailing system and bidding system, it will help the supplier in reducing cost in terms of renting a physical market place to sell their fishes. The bidders will gather at the supplier’s place and start to place their bids through E-mail. When the bidding period is end, the supplier will acknowledge the bidder who provides best deal upon the acceptance of the offer. Besides that, the supplier also able to hit two birds with one stone by cutting down the transportation cost (i.e.: delivery the fishes to market place), while selling the fishes at a high price through auction.

“Nothing in this is impossible, just need some thought and creativity to make the impossible become possible”. There is a possibility for a physical market place to lose its function as a place to trade. Perhaps, this will not happen in Malaysia.