All public services to go online
Mustapa outlines government’s digital strategy
PETALING JAYA: The government will try to make all of its public services online, said Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Economy) Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed.
“We want a lot of our public services and transactions to be made available online – 95% or even 100%. While for intra-government (services), the target would be 70%. This is going to be part of our digital strategy,” Mustapa said in his speech at the Economic Planning Unit’s policy webinar titled rebuilding the economy with enabling policies.
“The current challenges (from Covid-19) we are facing have motivated us to move even quicker on this journey of a fully digital society. With the advent of new technologies and social media citizens have become more discerning and are demanding for more services with the click of a button,” he added.
Mustapa said some of the government services now would be brought through a secured cloud technology from the counter.
He said businesses and citizens have higher expectations of the government to facilitate their lives.
“It is incumbent on the government to not only meet these expectations but to be ahead of the curve. It is imperative that we continue to work with the private sector and is essential to the success of the country,” he said.
Mustapa said he hopes the country will be firmly on the road to recovery early or in the middle of next year.
“We have to get things moving once again and we have to get people on the road as people need to get to work. We have to think about how to restart the economy and ensure businesses start operating once again,” he said.
In the question and answer session, Mustapa said there was no need for any financial or tax incentives at the moment for private companies to encourage its employees to work from home.
“It is becoming increasingly the norm in some companies and in some parts of the government that have done this in a very small scale. But this is already happening and the issue is to embed this new normal into our daily practices,” he said.
“Going forward, even for the government we will be identifying some areas of work which can be done from home. For example if you are a consultant, there is no need for you to be at the office,” he added.
He also said that work patterns would be more flexible moving forward.
“There is no need for a 9am to 5pm work hour regime any more. Covid-19 has really brought this to the forefront and not only Permodalan Nasional Bhd but people at Malaysia Digital Economy Corp are working from home as well. I think it is going to be a more permanent feature moving forward,” he said.