Malaysia vs Digital Economy

1. You know, in Malaysia, everybody or the politician were all trying to find out, find their own pot of gold. Everybody was trying to get something for their own. So, it became a very prolonged process, and we didn't quite reach our target to be higher income and so much so that the World Bank actually did come up with an analysis and a report in 2018.
2. Actually, the World Bank came in and basically studied the environment, talk about the middle-income track and how we are stuck in it and suggested that the one way we can actually break out is to make a leap into the digital economy.?So, a lot of people just brush to the report, think that, oh, that means we buy things from Shoppe and Lazada.
3. ?Actually, it's not just that, it's a very in-depth idea but the World Bank did not articulate clearly. We worked on that and we have very concrete ideas what the country needs to do in order to make this leap. If we go back to follow all the IMF, World Bank prescription on how to become high income today, because we are late.... you can't go back and do the same thing because you know that the prescription always calls for you guys too for us to find a niche in high tech manufacturing.
4. Today, you have a manufacturing juggernaut up north called China. They can do anything, everything cheaper and better than anybody else can and whatever they don't want to do...... Vietnam, Indonesia is quite happy to take it up. So, for Malaysia to just repeat or to fix. What actions we were trying to take to move into high tech manufacturing alone, it's not going to be enough we need to do, but it's not going to be enough. A lot of the problems that are in our economy right now, like in our society is all interlinked to this one thing.
5. We talk about how people are suffering because of the high cost of living, because their wages have not gone up and why the employers cannot increase their pay too much... their productivity is very low compared to other societies. So, we're stuck there. They have to battle with the high cost of living and the government by borrowing money and giving them free money just causes inflation. It doesn't solve the problem, right. So, if we can help to increase their productivity, I'm talking about all the workers in Malaysia. We cannot then afford to... the employees can pay them more because they're actually producing more, there will be less need for subsidy and we can start cutting back. There's no need for government to give, keep giving all these subsidies and allowances. A lot of the money problem will gradually be resolved at least the burden be reduced and so, our idea was that it's a very long description, but let me just describe to you the kind of life. We are envisioning for the Rakyat when we reach this high productivity.
6. Nobody in Malaysia will ever need to fill out a form. Whenever you go to a place when today they give you a form and they check your IC, it will be a scan on the phone right? So, imagine if a lady gets pregnant and give birth. There is no need to go to register the birth with the Jabatan Pendaftaran Negara (JPN). She will download that app facial recognition and confirm she's the mother. The doctor will also have access to the same app "Confirm" the birth father puts in his ID as well. Register, and all this is sent to the data to the system, generates a birth certificate and sent to his father's e-mail and mother's e-mail. You don't ever say have to say that “Oh my house got caught fire and the certificate was lost”. You can always retrieve it as a soft copy, and the system will count until the kid is 12 years old and prompt the parents. Hey, register your kid for an IC, take a picture according to these rules, you don't even have to come to the IC office and on the same token you want to apply for a passport there's no need to fill out a form and to go to the IC office or even to log on to any system. JPN has all the information you want. A passport. You go back to the apps; you click and say you want a passport and everything will be processed. Either you can go and pick it up, or you can pick it up when you're at the airport or when you're leaving going out the country or even Courier to you, right. So, nobody should need to take 1/2 day off or take a one day leave line up at the government department waiting in line to get something done. It will all be done via the app.
7. Also, for the business world, a lot of the paperwork that we do today issue an order delivery, order receipt, invoice and all that right should be digitized so that when the people go through this business transaction, this commercial transaction, it will be very efficient and one of the reasons why you, the government will want this as well is. Can you imagine the collection of tax would be actually very watertight because all the transactions are captured in a system. Now how do you enable such a thing? And we have given it a lot of thought and talked to a lot of private companies that make software, and in fact, we haven't found any country that actually has this.
8. This idea is revolutionary enough. Maybe perhaps Malaysia needs it, but. The nearest we've seen is Estonia, where they have digitized a lot of the government services, but they haven't really leaped into the commercial sector yet, but we have ideas of how to do this in quite detail but we're not asking for a contract from the government or a project. We believe this one has to be driven from the inside, from the cabinet... from the Prime Minister who says, yeah..., we want to do this and you need someone to coordinate all these among the different ministry and even the private sector to actually make this happen. Now of course the key things start with JPN, the IC and the digital ID, and then of course your IC, your passport (Immigration) and even police report.
9. Can you imagine one day here if you ever get into a car accident. Straight away take a picture with your handphone and through the handphone is where you are making a police report. You don't have to go to a police station, and that same app will submit to the insurance company to process your claim and when you go to the banker to repair your car, the banker will go on to the same app and everybody interact in the same app and capture all this information, one day, if we can actually get the support from the government to do this, the buying and selling of used cars will become very transparent and very efficient. You will know the history of the car. All the repairs and all the claims from insurance, it should all be recorded so that a new buyer can actually search and check. Can you imagine that you can actually do transaction very fast because everything is transparent today very sad. If you happen to buy a used car that was in the flat or had a major accident but the owner doesn’t tell you, you won't know. I mean we take this idea from the UK and in Europe where they have quite a lot of records in their system. So, if you buy a car, you can actually check the MOT, you can actually see a lot of the history. We are taking this one step even further. We are asking for the app where the workshop will use the app. When they do the work, they will enter into the system to generate the receipt. So, all that will be inside the system.
10. The reason why I didn't do with any presentation or anything. We wanted to bounce this idea of to KDN Minister first, of course a key component starts with KDN, the national digital ID we had actually. I gave proposal to various parties including MDEC and that MCMC and also KPKT and KDN on how to do a National Digital ID. We find that there's a lot of self-interest, I think the various ministers were also trying to find out how they can get rich over it. Some of government staff also want to take this to their friends or to actually to be fair in some of these private company approach your people and lobby for them to be the selected one, you know?

So anyway, this this thing has dragged on for a long time but in order to do this for Malaysia, it will actually straddle many other ministries that has this data.

Be Continues.....