Kuala Lumpur, 5 July 2012 – The Deputy Minister of Science, Technology & Innovation (MOSTI), YB Datuk Haji Fadillah bin Haji Yusof today unveiled details of Digital Malaysia, a national programme based on three strategic thrusts to advance the country towards a developed digital economy by 2020. He did this with Datuk Badlisham Ghazali, Chief Executive Officer of the Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC), an organisation under MOSTI, which was mandated by the Prime Minister, YAB Dato’ Sri Haji Mohd Najib bin Tun Haji Abdul Razak to steer the programme.
Speaking at the event, YB Datuk Haji Fadillah bin Haji Yusof said, “Digital Malaysia is a unique programme 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.
“The Digital Malaysia programme’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 is underpinned by three (3) strategic thrusts that have been identified as critical game changers:
- Move Malaysia from being supply to demand focused, i.e. initiating more demand-focused activities to leverage existing infrastructure, economic activity, market trends and consumer behaviour;
- Shift behaviours 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.
Digital Malaysia will deliver its targeted goals via a number of projects. Currently eight (8) projects have been identified and are being rolled-out from this year. They include the Asian e-fulfilment Hub; e-Payment services for small and medium businesses and microenterprises; Shared cloud enterprise services, Microsourcing for income generation, Accelerated international trade through e-Commerce, On-demand customised online education; Growing the embedded systems industry and a Mobile Digital Wallet.The Digital Malaysia programme is a dynamic one and will continuously evolve with an ongoing ideation process and mechanism leading to the development of new projects in the coming years.
Ultimately, Digital Malaysia aims 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 be within the top 10 of the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) World Competitiveness Yearbook.
An estimated investment value of RM 31.2 billion is expected to be generated from Digital Malaysia based on a Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) model, which is expected to create 160,000 jobs and make the overall Digital Economy contribution to GNI, RM294 Billion (17%) by 2020.
From a productivity standpoint, Digital Malaysia is expected to provide an additional 1% SME contribution to GDP by 2020. In terms of impact on standard of living, the programme targets to deliver an additional RM7,000 of digital income per annum for 350,000 Citizens
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”.
“Today Malaysia enjoys a strong ICT foundation, but a holistic digital initiative is still needed to ensure that Malaysia is able to advance further and Digital Malaysia with its three strategic thrusts, will ensure this ,” added Badlisham.
Digital Malaysia is under the stewardship of the Digital Malaysia Steering Committee led by YB Datuk Seri Panglima Dr. Maximus Johnity Ongkili and reports to the Prime Minister.
