Feature: Google helps launch Bhutan into digital era

Tech behemoth Google's online services and applications have reached millions of users across the globe, but in the tiny Himalayan country of Bhutan they are only just staring to gain traction.

Previously, Google's e-mail service and some other applications offered by the California-based company were available for users in the country, but within the civil service that comprises the majority of working people here, Google wasn't used at all.

It was only in June 2014 that the People's Democratic Party (PDP) government launched Google-Apps to fulfill their promise of becoming "paperless" and digitalizing the state system, with such a mission also aimed at environmental conservation.

Initially the service was acquired for one year, and to begin with, provided to 5,000 public servants, students, teachers and education officials.

After completing the initial one-year contract with Google, the Tshering Tobgay government has renewed the service for three more years, and the new deal was signed around six months ago.

While the government has not revealed the total cost of the subscription, officials said that the government is paying Google Apps for 9,000 accounts for three years. For its initial one-year deal, the government was reportedly charged Nu 158 (2.5 U.S. dollars) per account a month.

The government has asked the education sector to move onto the platform, and was provided with 250,000 Google accounts for free.

As per recent media reports, more than 6,000 public servants, excluding those in the education sector, were using Google Apps, with the number of users expected to increased to 9,000 by the year end, owing to ongoing training.

Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay told Bhutanese media that the Google Apps service is expected to facilitate a secure email system and collaboration across the whole of the government. It is also aimed at bringing significant improvements in service delivery, he said, as well as fulfilling the government's paperless ambitions.

Officials within the department of information technology and telecom, under the auspices of the ministry of information and communication, assume that introducing Google Apps has saved an estimated 190 million Nu (about 2.85 million U.S. dollars) by reducing paper usage, unnecessary travel and maintenance of email servers, in the past year.

The service is also expected to save more than 300 million Nu by the year-end with training in its usage reaching more districts and started to cover local governments.

Google has made things easier even for those working in remote rural villages. Khandu Dorji, 46, who works as a local leader in the western district of Bhutan's Athang gewog, one of the most remote regions in which most of the villages and farm are not connected by roads.

Khandu said what used to take days and hundreds of hours of paper work, is now consolidated into a single digital document or file that can be sent with the push of a button.

"Ever since 2015, we have started using Google mail and document sharing facilities to exchange official documents and conduct minor video conversations with concerned authorities and officials," said Khandu.

"We are yet to receive the official training and are excited, as it will introduce us to a wider vision of the services available, including the cloud," he said.

Social media network services, especially Facebook and Wechat, are becoming increasingly popular with a number of bloggers, online business dealers and those wanting to share news of their daily lives.

Wechat is popular event amongst illiterate rural villagers, as it has an easy to record and send voice messaging service that is user-friendly, said the local ICT officials.

After remaining isolated from the outside world for many decades, during the early 1990s, the country was introduced to ICT, which was followed by electronic computers and television. The only television channel that is state owned was introduced in 1999.

It was only after the country's transition from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional democracy in 2008, that private media, online news and social media started gaining popularity amongst the literate population.

However literate people account for just 35 percent of the total population, as rural farmers comprise a majority or around 65 percent of the country's citizens. Endit