By Norhayati Umor
SHAH ALAM, Oct 16 — Smart Selangor Delivery Unit (SSDU) has received the Best Practices Award 2019 at the Southeast Asian level for its good practices and outstanding performance in implementing the Smart Selangor programme.
International consulting firm Frost & Sullivan awarded SSDU the prestigious award under the 2019 Emerging Southeast Asia Smart City Governance Agency of the Year category.
“It was an unexpected win. But the administrative structure implemented over the years for the Smart Selangor programme has made it deserving for Selangor to receive the award,” said SSDU managing director Dr Fahmi Ngah in an interview with Selangor Kini here today.
“We have been very prudent with the expenditure of the programme at the state level, and had made sure that every cent spent had met the key performance indicators as well as making an impact to the public.”
Dr Fahmi said the achievement at the ASEAN level had proven that the procedures and compliance practised in Selangor had met international standards.
He said the state government had been different since 2008 in comparison to the former years, as there had not been problems of governance and major leakages.
This, he said, has been the practise of the state administration and complied by all state government agencies and its government-linked companies.
SSDU is a subsidiary of Menteri Besar Incorporated (MBI) that was given the mandate to lead the development of the Smart Selangor programme, which is an aspiration to develop Selangor into Southeast Asia’s premier smart state, leveraging on smart technology and innovations.
Dr Fahmi had suggested that the agile culture should be methodologically and practically adopted into the state administration’s governance structure within six years.
If successfully implemented, he said it would open up Selangor to greater potential for foreign investment and businesses.
“There needs to be more collaboration with the private sector. If the agile culture concept is successfully adopted, the private sector, especially from the innovation and technology industries, would be more interested to invest and cooperate with the state government as it meets the needs of these industries.
“We have to move forward faster without breaking any laws. However, any extreme bureaucratic process should be reviewed to make it more investor-friendly,” he said.
