Malaysia releases digital government plan for 2020

Malaysia has created a new digital government strategy, looking to transform public service delivery by 2020.

The Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) outlines key goals in digital, data, cloud, and cyber security in the Public Sector ICT Strategic Plan 2016-2020.

Digital services will be designed around users’ needs. The government will increase citizens’ engagement in building services, MAMPU said.

“We need to change our perspective a bit and engage more with the community of citizens to create online services that are more iterative”, Dr. Suhazimah Dzazali, Malaysia’s Government Chief Information Officer has told GovInsider.

Over the next two years, it will build a platform to allow citizens to provide feedback on policies and government services, MAMPU added.

It will also work with developer communities to build services. Services will be clustered around key moments in citizens’ lives, rather than structured around government agencies, and will be available from a single government portal.

Certain services will be offered only digitally, and citizens will get IDs to access online services. The government also wants to allow online payments, with 19 agencies to offer mobile payments by 2020.

MAMPU will look to encourage broader use of data in government, with analytics being used to improve digital delivery. It will build a dedicated platform for agencies to share data.

The government will enhance cloud services, consolidating public sector data centers and offering “everything as a service”, MAMPU said.

This year MAMPU is developing a public sector cyber security framework, and by next year, it will have a digital forensics laboratory.

Government structures, roles, and performance indicators will be reshaped to align with the digital government plan.

It will create a new “operation model” for ICT units in ministries and agencies over the next five years.