ISSUE 1

COMNET-IT REVIEW ON MEMBER STATES - MALAYSIA

IT APPLICATION FOR HIGHER PERFORMANCE - ELECTRONIC GOVERNMENT IN MALAYSIA

National Context

The strategic location of Malaysia at one of the world’s major crossroads linking the East and the West, has created a melting pot of cultures blending the customs and social beliefs of the indigenous people with those from early traders and merchants from China, India, Middle East and the colonial influences from the Portuguese, Dutch and the British. Malaysia gained its independence from the British in August 1957.

Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy with a bicameral parliament consisting of a Senate and a House of Representatives. Elections are held every five years on the basis of universal suffrage.

The population of Malaysia is a highly variegated ethnic mix, that makes it one of the prime examples of a multi-racial society in peaceful co-existence.

The Malaysian economy has shifted in focus from input-driven growth towards a productivity-driven strategy. The greater use of technology and development of a strong domestic capability are major factors in meeting the objective of industrial competitiveness. Realising the important role of IT as a catalyst for national development, the government has placed great emphasis in the development of IT infrastructure in order to create a strong foundation for building a knowledge-based industrial economy and an information-rich society.

One major project under this initiative is the construction of the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC), a 15- by- 50 km zone extending south from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital and business hub to the new KL International Airport (KLIA). This corridor will be supported by the provision of world-class physical and information infrastructure. Among one of the various flagship applications being developed under the MSC is Electronic Government, which is an attempt by the government to reinvent itself with the use of IT, thereby further improving its efficiency and productivity.

Introduction

Information technology has been extensively used by the Government to support services to the public across a wide spectrum of government functions. Often, the public is unaware that IT is working behind the scenes to deliver these services. Nevertheless, the public has benefited from increased efficiency in the use of IT, for example, faster renewal of road tax or driving licence and greater convenience in paying various utility bills at One-stop Payment Centres.

Recently, the rapid advances in IT have created more opportunities for citizens and businesses to deal directly with government for services. The use of IT promises greater efficiency and greater convenience to the public. Services will be more accessible, more reliable, and will provide faster turn-around time. All of these benefits will be made available electronically through the implementation of the Electronic Government.

This paper sets out a strategy in applying IT for higher performance through the implementation of Electronic Government, thereby delivering better services to the people of Malaysia and at the same time improving the operations of the civil service.

What is Electronic Government ?

The Government of Malaysia has created the Multimedia Super Corridor to accelerate the country’s entry into the Information Age and through it help to achieve Vision 2020 of transforming Malaysia into a developed nation by the year 2020.

The Electronic Government is the government of the future and is one of the seven "flagship applications" to be developed in the Multimedia Super Corridor. It aims to form the foundation of the Government’s information infrastructure to provide more efficient, effective services and operations.

In the Malaysian context, Electronic Government refers to :

"A multimedia networked paperless administration linking government agencies within Putrajaya (the new administrative capital of Malaysia) with government centres around the country to facilitate a collaborative government environment and deliver efficient services to businesses and citizens."

Vision of Electronic Government

The vision of Electronic Government is a vision for the civil service, businesses and citizens of the country working together for their mutual benefit, using IT as a tool to achieve higher performance. To realise this vision, all aspects of government need to be updated and wherever possible re-engineered using the latest in IT, the multimedia technology. In addition, the mindset needs to be changed in order to facilitate the introduction of new services, new service channels and improved service levels to the people of Malaysia.

Objectives of Electronic Government

The Electronic Government has been conceptualised to achieve dual objectives :

1) To reinvent the government, and

2) To catalyse the successful development of the Multimedia Super Corridor.

Reinventing government through Electronic Government will mean higher performance in the civil service. Electronic Government will redefine the relationships of government to citizens, to business and to itself. To the citizens and business, improvements in the civil service will enable them to have better access to services, such as one stop centres for diversified types of transactions. The availability of multi-channel delivery of services like kiosks and the Internet can provide direct delivery of government services to the citizens and business. Information exchange and transactions can be performed on-line electronically without the use of paper. Furthermore, services will have higher quality as transactions will be more reliable, have faster turn-around time and there will be greater transparency.

Improved effectiveness and efficiency of government will mean better processes through improved information flow and superior communication between government agencies. The operations of the government will be further improved with better analytical, management and decision support tools to solve the increasingly complex problems and decision processes faced by today’s modern government. The impact of specific policies will be more measureable and transparent. Successful strategies can be more quickly recognised and used as a model while less successful ones can be modified or changed.

Electronic Government will enable information to be more directly accessible to decision makers. The smooth flow of information across ministries and agencies through a common database and compatible systems inter-linked by a secured, high-speed network will undoubtedly improve the speed and quality of information for decision making.

The scope of the Electronic Government in Malaysia includes all government agencies, the civil servants, the business community and its citizens (Fig. 1).

Figure 1: Scope of Electronic Government

Besides aiming at reinventing the government, Electronic Government will contribute to the successful development of the Multimedia Super Corridor by attracting world class skills and experience from international businesses. At the same time, it will create opportunities for innovation in the civil service, thereby, leading to higher performance and productivity.

Eventually, Electronic Government will spearhead the conversion of Goverment offices throughout the country to paperless offices. By doing so, the improved productivity of the public sector will in turn stimulate increased productivity in the private sector.

Figure 2: Criteria for Selection of Pilot Applications

Implementing a full Electronic Government will involve a very large capital investment. In achieving the aims of Electronic Government, a strategic approach needs to be adopted to look across the whole of government and identify potential IT applications that cover the spectrum of citizen/ business to government, intra- and inter-agency services. High-level criteria were defined to enable the government to prioritise these applications and quickly identify the pilot projects. Pilots were selected based on their level of impact and feasibility

To have the desired impact, the pilot application should be visible to the public, beneficial to a large section of businesses and citizens, and should demonstrate real productivity gains for the government.

Pilot Applications

Using the criteria mentioned above for the selection of pilot applications and the phased implementation of the Electronic Government, successful implementation is ensured. The five applications identified to form the first pilots (as fully described under sections (a) to (e) below) are :

• Licencing & Related Vehicle Services and Utility Payments
• Electronic Procurement
• Prime Minister’s Office - Generic Office Environment
• Human Resource Management Information System
• Project Monitoring System

a) Licencing & Related Vehicle Services and Utility Payment

This application enables the public to transact with the Government and the utility companies using a variety of access methods. With the one-stop service window provided, it is possible to conduct transactions like renewing licences, registering a new vehicle, paying electricity bills and obtaining health information through a kiosk in a shopping mall or by the use of the internet through a PC at home.

The following major services are the first to be delivered under this pilot:

• Driver and Vehicle Registration, Licensing and Summons
• Payment of Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) Electricity Bill
• Payment of Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM) Bill
• Ministry of Health Information

Initially, this project will be piloted in the Klang Valley and is planned to be implemented starting early 1999. On successful implementation of the pilot, the coverage will be extended to the whole country.

b) Electronic Procurement

Government procurement will be on-line when procurement system goes electronic starting 1999. In implementing the project current procurement system needs to be re-engineered, automated and transformed to deliver cost savings and to provide faster turn-around times by enabling the Government to become "smart buyer". In addition, suppliers will benefit from the system as there will be greater transparency in procurement, faster and more accurate payments.

Figure 3: Scope for Electronic Procurement

Electronic Procurement system will allow government agencies to electronically select items to be procured from the network, initiate an electronic approval from the system; create, submit and receive purchase orders, delivery orders and other related documents electronically (Figure 3).

It is envisioned that most processes can be automated, re-engineered, made transparent and transformed into more effective and efficient processes.

As a start, the procurement of goods and services through the Central Contract will be automated and connectivity facilities between buyers and suppliers will be established. This will be extended to processes that involve direct purchase, quotations and tenders. For this pilot project, Treasury and Malaysian Administrative Modernization and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) will be involved. Implementation is expected to begin in early 1999 and the system is expected to be in operation by the end of 1999. On successful implementation, the system will be extended to ten other ministries before rolling it out to all other government agencies.

c) Prime Minister’s Office - Generic Office Environment (GOE)

The implementation of GOE will provide a fully integrated, distributed and scaleable paperless office environment for the Prime Minister’s Office using multimedia technology. The GOE acts as a "universal container" that is able to accommodate various types of business functional components which closely reflect any organisation’s business processes. According to user demand and requirements, these components can be customised to meet specific business needs, or to evolve into more sophisticated functional components (Figure 4).

The GOE consists of three modules :

• Enterprise-wide Information Management System (EIMS)
• Enterprise-wide Communication Management System
• Enterprise-wide Collaboration Management System

The EIMS provides a universal interface for users to manage, find, retrieve and compose the information that they need for their day-to-day operations. Through the Communication and Collaboration Management Systems, users can communicate and collaborate in a group to perform work functions. Working together in an integrated fashion, the three systems provide technical transparency for the users.

Figure 4: Objectives of the Prime Minister’s Office - Generic Office Environment

The initial scope of the project covers the offices of the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Chief Secretary to the Government, Cabinet Division and MAMPU. Work on the project is expected to start at the end of 1998 and to complete in mid 1999. Again, the generic office will be extended to other government offices on successful implementation.

d )Project Monitoring System

The Project Monitoring System is designed to provide a mechanism for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of monitoring the implementation of government development projects. It will enable government agencies concerned to work in a collaborative environment facilitated by workgroup computing, workflow management systems, common database access and messaging services (Figure 5). The operational applications enable agencies to capture project status information, and enable ministries to consolidate and produce analysis report for management. Besides providing the data and communication services, and operational application functions, the system will also provide managerial application functions with services such as data mining on the knowledge base, statistical trend analysis, forecasting, simulation, Executive Information System and Decision Support System.

Implementation of the system is expected to begin in November 1998 and with full roll-out by March 2000. The initial pilot will be rolled out to monitor some of the Seventh Development Plan projects of the Ministry of Education, three State Education Departments (Negeri Sembilan, Pahang and Sarawak) and the five Electronic Government pilot projects.

Figure 5 : The Scope of the Project Monitoring System

e) Human Resource Management Information System

The system is to provide a single interface for government employees to perform Human Resource Management (HRM) functions effectively and efficiently in an integrated environment.

Figure 6: Objectives of Human Resource Management Information System

The system will automate current manual HRM processes and consolidate HRM information for the effective human resource planning in the civil service. With effective planning, the Government will be able to optimise the usage of human resource within the public sector. Furthermore, it will provide a single window access to HRM transactions that cuts across agencies besides giving better channel for communication, improve horizontal integration and resulting with more streamlined processes. The implementation of a paperless environment through electronic publication and distribution of human resource processes and information will facilitate the development of knowledge based civil servants of the future.

The project will involve system development covering areas such as recruitment and selection of personnel, establishment of posts, design of organisational structures, performance appraisal and training. These will help the management to improve processes in organisational development, formulation of schemes of service, salary policy formulation, manpower needs planning, skills management, right-sizing policies, staffing policies and productivity and quality initiatives.

The pilot project is limited to the Public Services Department, Chief Executive Information System Unit (SMPKE) and the Administration Division of the Prime Minister’s Department and MAMPU. The development of the pilot is expected to start end 1998, while the full roll-out (with full functionality) will start in March 2000. It is expected that the system will be extended to Statutory Bodies, State Civil Service and Local Authorities.

Conclusion

The Government has recognised the importance of IT as an essential component in the development of the Electronic Government. IT with its ability to electronically store and sort, access, transmit information rapidly opens up new possibilities for the Government to deliver more efficient, effective and convenient services to the citizens. The Electronic Government proposed by Malaysian Government hopes to provide all its customers with the information and services without the barrier of time and distance. At the same time, innovative use of IT in improving the day-to-day operation of the Government would prepare the civil service for the next century to meet the nation’s aspiration of becoming a developed country.

While the technology is available, there is a need to formulate a coherent plan to tap its potential. Applications need to be prioritised in terms of their impact, visibility, applicability, feasibility and promise of productivity. Risks have to be minimised by phase approach and implementing the pilot projects before a large scale roll-out of the application systems.