Welcome home Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim!

by Independant Daily

I would like to take a moment off my schedule to congratulate Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim on his resounding win in the Permatang Pauh by-election. I trust that the Penangites have made a good judgment on their selection.

However, I do have my reservations because like those who did not vote for DSAI, it’s most likely not because he is not capable but it is because we are not sure if it’ll make any difference at all.

There are a certain percentage of people in the country that still thinks that the Pakatan Rakyat coalition does not have the experience to run the country which, I agree. I also agree to a statement by YB Tony Pua that, this also means that they do not have the experience to embezzle billions of ringgit into their own pockets like the existing government does.

I feel that the Pakatan Rakyat coalition have not done enough since the March 08 election to convince the people that they are moving towards a transparent and corruption free country. Only Penang have mentioned about a transparent tendering process for government projects but how about Perak, Kedah and Selangor?

Being an IT person myself and having been working in Singapore, particularly close to the Singapore Government, I feel that the ‘new’ Malaysian government have lots to learn from its tiny but efficient neighbour. From the top of my head, I can already think of at least 2 e-government effort that Malaysia government can implement to reduce occurrence of inflated project cost, corrupted practices and bureaucracy in obtaining government projects; 1) Centralised E-Tendering System 2) Online Company Registration / Checking System, which both will be linked and cross checked against its financial health and portfolio.

However, this will not be enough.

Like what the current government is doing wrong, each ministry has their rights to appoint a software developer of their choice to implement some form of a system of their choice. Thus, causing many projects to be completed halfway or ran out of budget during the course of development or most likely the person in charge from the ministry had never heard of the term ‘maintenance’ and thus, leaving the system to outdate itself and die a natural cause.

In Singapore, there is a semi-government department known as Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) that manages all e-government initiative. They have teams of experts in many different areas that works with the different ministry on what should be done and what should not be done.

The new Malaysia should begin thinking about implementing a similar structure and in fact, improve on it and ensure that this new semi-government entity compromise a process where it has a singular objective and platform that integrate all e-government initiative/systems allowing them to cross reference with each other making it THE single most informative portal for every class of citizen there is in the country.

This will allow us to see every thing that the government does, it’s done for a reason, done in a systematically way and most importantly, the correct way.

Winning the election and becoming the ‘powers to be’ is no longer the formula to ensure longevity to rule. Technology has reached into the minds of the people and only results keep you running. The days where KeTuanan Melayu or Chinese Culture are gone. Welcome the days of Success and Accomplishment.

The win in Permatang Pauh is not the first step. It’s merely the movement a toe…