Government's Focus On Four Main Areas Of Importance In Digital Technologies

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 21 (Bernama) -- Acknowledging the importance of digital technologies as a medium to achieve higher growth, the Malaysian government has emphasised on four main areas to ensure that public agencies and businesses embrace and capitalise in digital disruptions. According to the Economic Report 2016/17 released by the Finance Ministry, the four main areas are the Internet of Thing (IoT), Big Data and Analytics Data (BDA), Cloud Computing and eCommerce. Towards achieving this objective, the National Broadband Initiative (NBI) was launched in 2010 to ensure accessible and affordable high speed Internet for the rakyat, focusing on rural areas, schools and low-income groups. As of 2015, 77.3 percent of households in Malaysia have access to broadband services. To further strengthen rural connectivity, a few initiatives have been implemented, namely 1Malaysia Internet Centre, Mini Community Broadband Centres and eRezeki and eUsahawan programmes to uplift the bottom 40 percent households (B40) community and micro-entrepreneurs. To remain competitive in the Connected Economy, Malaysia is investing heavily in building, attracting and retaining talent through various initiatives such as Digital.Tech@Schools, Digital Maker Movement, collaboration with globally renowned providers such as Coursera and Johns Hopkins University and Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) Malaysia programme to facilitate the hiring of foreign expatriates to attract global talents to be based in Malaysia. In Malaysia, there are about 21 million Internet users while the mobile penetration rate has reached 143.8 percent of the population. In particular, the Internet, one of the platforms of virtual connectivity is the most powerful mechanism that can perfectly match buyers and sellers. In 2015, there were 3.4 billion Internet users globally and the number is expected to increase to nine billion in the next ten years. The rise of applications such as Facebook, Airbnb and Uber has created virtual communities larger than some nations, important to trade, innovation, entrepreneurship, economic growth and prosperity. The benefits of these data flows will spur innovation in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, IoT, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, material science, energy storage and quantum computing. Disruptive innovations such as Uber, Skype, Spotify and Alibaba are appearing across the globe, making traditional business models irrelevant. Broadband access and adoption are crucial to seize the full benefits of the Connected Economy because broadband will enable greater use of ICT, which in turn will boost productivity and raise a nation's overall competitiveness. However, Malaysia is still facing key challenges such as low technology adoption among SMEs, digital disparity between urban and rural areas, and high cost and slow Internet speed. -- BERNAMA