Digital Malaysia is Here and Now

Digital Malaysia is Here and Now

Just yesterday, July 5, the Deputy Minister of Science, Technology & Innovation (MOSTI), YB Datuk Haji Fadillah bin Haji Yusof unveiled details of Digital Malaysia, a national program based on three strategic thrusts to advance our country towards a developed digital economy by 2020. He did this with Datuk Badlisham Ghazali, Chief Executive Officer of the Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC).

“Digital Malaysia is a unique program based on its three strategic thrusts. It will create an ecosystem that promotes the pervasive use of ICT in all aspects of the economy to connect communities globally and interact in real time resulting in increased Gross National Income, enhanced productivity and improved standards of living,” said YB Datuk Haji Fadillah bin Haji Yusof at the event.

“The Digital Malaysia program's three strategic thrusts will leverage on new and existing initiatives to drive Malaysia towards a digital economy. By effectively combining existing ICT and digital initiatives, Digital Malaysia will foster a cohesive digital ecosystem that will ensure Malaysia becomes a developed digital economy,” he added.

Digital Malaysia will be based on three strategic thrusts which are considered as some of the most critical game changers:

• Malaysia will move from being supply to demand focused, i.e. initiating more demand-focused activitives to leverage existing infrastructure, economic activity, market trends and consumer behaviour;
• Shift behaviour from being consumption to production centric, i.e. encouraging and enabling Internet users to produce as much as they consume from digital technologies;
• Evolve from low knowledge-add to high-knowledge-add i.e. increasing development of local talent in key industries to become innovators and knowledge workers.

Currently, Digital Malaysia already has eight projects identified and will be rolled-out from this year. These projects will be used to achieve and deliver its targeted goals and include the Asian e-fulfilment Hub; e-Payment services for small and medium businesses and microenterprises; Share cloud enterprise services, Microsourcing for income generation, Needs-based Deployment of societal programs to community, On-demand customized online education; Growing the embedded systems industry and a Mobile Digital Wallet.

Ultimately, Digital Malaysia is designed to help Malaysia raise its ICT contribution to 17% of GNI; raise its ranking in the Economists' Intelligence Unit Digital Economy Rankings to be within the top 20 and also within the top 10 of the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) World Competitiveness Yearbook.

Based on a Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) model, Digital Malaysia is expected to draw an estimated investment value of RM31.2 billion and is expected to create 160,000 job and make the overall Digital Economy contribution to GNI, RM294 Billion (17%) by 2020.

Datuk Badlisham Ghazali, CEO of MDeC, said, “Digital Malaysia is unique because of its strategy which is built on three strategic thrusts. It will help to create a new class of digital entrepreneurs through our demand-focused initiatives and it will help nurture a new generation of Digital-savvy youth through the use of digital learning who will form the bulk of Malaysia's workforce from 2020. Digital Malaysia will also help drive automation and technology adoption amongst SMEs to boost productivity.”

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