PM UNVEILS DIGITAL ‘TO-DO LIST’
Cloud-tech adoption enables delivery of innovative services to people at lower cost
AZURA ABAS PUTRAJAYA news@nst.com.my
PRIME Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak yesterday unveiled the nation’s “to-do list”, which will boost Malaysia’s digital initiatives’ implementation and its economy.
One of the initiatives is the introduction of the “Cloud First” Strategy to the national agenda, beginning with the public sector.
Najib said the adoption of cloud technology had been proven to be fundamental to an organisation’s digital transformation.
“Cloud adoption will enable the government to deliver innovative public sector services to the rakyat without incurring high levels of capital expenditure to invest in information technology (IT) infrastructure, such as data centres, servers and storage.
“This enables the government to allocate resources for more impactful programmes for the rakyat. With this strategy in place, there is no doubt the government is taking the lead in embracing digital transformation,” he said after chairing the 29th Malaysia Implementation Council Meeting here yesterday.
Najib said the government could facilitate cloud adoption by the private sector, adding that Malaysia would develop its own National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Framework.
This, he said, would be an expansion of the National Big Data Analytics Framework. Its development will be led by the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC).
“In a hyper-connected world, it is becoming abundantly clear that AI is the defining force of the fourth industrial revolution. AI could well be a game-changer in improving the lives of Malaysians.”
Najib said he looked forward to another important milestone for Malaysia on Nov 3 — the Digital Free Trade Zone (DFTZ) initiative.
DFTZ, launched in March, will provide physical and virtual zones to facilitate small- and medium-sized enterprises to capitalise on the convergence of the exponential growth of the Internet economy and cross-border e-commerce activities.
It will act as a microcosm to support Internet companies to trade in goods, provide services, innovate and co-create solutions.
One factor to grow the nation’s digital economy, Najib said, was building the right talent pool as the “competitive weapon” needed lies in talent development.
He expressed his pleasure at the progress of the MyDigitalMaker movement, adding that he was inspired by young talents such as 12-year-old Ariff Amir Ali, who had developed Internet of Things prototypes since he was 10.
He was upbeat over the progress of another initiative, the Malaysia Tech Entrepreneur Programme (M-TEP), which he said had global appeal.
“We have received applications from entrepreneurs from more than 10 countries, including Germany, India, Australia, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States.”
On a wider industry-level, the prime minister hoped to accelerate digital adoption by establishing the Digital Transformation Acceleration Programme for large and mid-tier firms, which had contributed 63.4 per cent of the gross domestic product.
“We have started our digital transformation, but our industries are still far from being digitally ready. The challenges noted include a lack of structured approach, budget limitations, shortage of digital workers, as well as the perception that digital transformation is too fast-paced and complex.
“To accelerate the transformation, we will appoint Digital Transformation Labs to provide consultancy and assist in prototyping new digital products and services. The labs will then match participating companies to digital companies.”
This outcome-driven programme intended to achieve three main outcomes — increased productivity, reduction in foreign labour dependency, as well as creating a new business model or source of growth for the participating companies, he added.
He cited Top Glove as an example. The company, by digitising its chemical testing line, had removed its dependency on foreign workers and reduced unplanned downtime by 100 per cent.