Progressive Labour Party Senator Michael Scott last night backed calls for Government to stop dragging its feet over the installation of e-mail in its departments - including the House of Assembly.

He said that, as Bermuda promoted itself as a major world centre for e-commerce, it should lead by example by getting all of its various offices on line.

Mr. Scott said he went to the Government's computer services support department just two weeks ago to find out why the implementation of the system had turned into a "slow crawl''.

And he said his main concern was that the House of Assembly was not on line.

He said: "The infrastructure is there, but it seems to require a boost. "I don't know why it is taking so long. The reasons that have been offered are technical and I didn't scrutinise them closely.

"I don't think there is an institutional problem of feet-dragging, but the House of Assembly, as departments go, is among the last to go on line and I don't think it ought to be.

"The department is already effective at getting documents out, but if it could be done electronically, it would be instantaneous.'' At the Senate yesterday, President Alfred Oughton hit out at Government's slow progress to becoming a fully integrated "e-Government''. Mr. Oughton said one department was so tired of being without the use of e-mail, it had taken the matter into its own hands by hiring a private contractor to install the system.

He said: "Nothing wrangles me more than the clerks office in the House of Assembly not having e-mail.

"One Department contracted their own independent contractor to install their e-mail.'' He said this was because Government was moving too slowly to have the system installed.

And he also called for the Bermuda Legislature to have its own web page as other countries in the world were already making strides to have a fully functioning e-Government.

He said Bermuda expressed itself as a leading centre of e-commerce, so it should be practising what it preached.

A Government Information spokesman said Government computers were connected through an intranet, and the backbone of that intranet was the J.D.Edwards Financial System, which computerises areas such as finances, the budget, and personnel records.

More than 700 Government computers are connected to the intranet and all of these are capable of using e-mail.

However, this is just under a third of Government's computers and connecting them was described as "no small undertaking''.

The Spokesman said departments being connected to the intranet was more of a scheduling problem than anything else, but the computer systems and services department was working its way through the workload.

He said it would not be long before the House of Assembly had its computers linked to the intranet.

Sen. Michael Scott