A (new?) digital Malaysia

Caption for pic above: Attendees during the 8th BITAS Series conference, which boasts a bigger-than-expected turnout.

During IASA’s Business IT Architecture Series (BITAS) Conference 2018, the public sector’s CIO, MAMPU or Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit, gave a keynote about digital reformation in the public sector. IASA is an association for all IT Architects ad BITAS is an annual regional conference.

Within the public sector context, Susie Dorai Raj, MAMPU’s Principal Consultant shared that the process of delivering new service or innovation to citizens is also known as Digital Transformation or DX.

She also shared that leading a DX initiative within an organisation to deliver services can be challenging because it involves driving change simultaneously in 3 key building blocks – business intelligence, organisational integration, and customer impact.

The key component for DX is data, and these 3 building blocks address the unprecedented amount of data about business ecosystems from other agencies, making sense of it to explore improvements and potential services. It also involves data sharing across the organisation, applying common systems, consolidating shared services and yes, even establishing proper governance for all of this.

Susie said currently, the government is implementing numerous ICT initiatives focusing on the citizens’ needs.

She pointed out, “These initiatives are not developed in siloes but are cross-agency initiatives that require data-sharing, infrastructure sharing and collaboration between agencies.”

Ultimately, this would enable citizen e-service provision via not just counters, but kiosks, portals, and mobile apps, making anytime, any place 24/7 service, a reality.

And enterprise architecture is identified as one of the enabling ecosystems for digital transformation in the Malaysian public sector. It was also formalised as a framework called MyGovEA.

A (new) Digital Malaysia
Supporting organisation of the BITAS series events, ATD Solution and its founder Aaron Tan Dani shared, “For the Malaysia government, the effort to achieve a Digital Government is massive, and the MyGovEA programmes are managed by MAMPU which is under the Prime Minister’s Office or PMO.”

A source close to the matter has shared that a Cabinet meeting tomorrow will decide whether MAMPU remains under the PMO is to be placed under the auspices of Ministry of Communications and  Multimedia.

As a central agency of the PMO, MAMPU has mandated the adoption of Digital Enterprise Architecture among the ministries and agencies, to achieve a digitally connected government.

“This will be achieved via a Digital EA Repository, National Reference Architecture and the Metamodel for the digital government.

“All these connect and integrate all the ministries through a Digital Enterprise Map,” Tan explained.
Some of the MAMPU initiatives that are already underway, include the Government Online Services Gateway (GOS), Government Data Exchange Hub (MyGDX), the Government Data Optimization (data.gov.my), and the Public Sector Data Centre (PDSA).