By Nasuha Badrul Huzaini
SHAH ALAM, Aug 17 — As the nation’s economic powerhouse, Selangor is poised on the right track of leading digitalisation adoption, following the launch of the First Selangor Plan (RS-1) in July.
Malaysian Digital Economy Consumers Association (myDigitalConsumer) secretary Muhammad Sha’ani Abdullah said digitalisation serves as the base for efficiency, democratisation and to enable access beyond space and time.
“This includes ensuring non-discrimination in providing services, receiving feedback, enabling enforcement and compliance monitoring, as well as sustainable development. Given the numerous advantages to going digital, it is therefore incumbent on all public institutions within Selangor to adopt digitisation in order to remain relevant moving forward.
“This is because the current generation of voters, consumers, and workers are well-aware and critical of the importance of digitisation on all levels of service provision,” he said, commenting on the digitalisation initiative outlined under the RS-1.
Under the five-year plan, one of 14 macro indicators that will be used to measure the performance is to achieve 85 per cent digitalisation of government services.
Currently, the state government has introduced various digitalisation approaches like the use of mobile apps for various purposes including the SELangkah app, the Smart Selangor Parking app, the Citizen E-Payment Platform (CEPat), and Bantuan Kehidupan Sejahtera Selangor (Bingkas).
In addition, the state administration also will launch the Selangor Digital School, aiming to address the lack of skilled talents in the digital economic sector, especially in the state.
Commenting further, Muhammad Sha’ani said all digitalisation approaches should be transparent and accountable, and should be done by open tender for the best ideas with the right pricing.
“Digitalisation should prevent duplicates like every local authority spending to develop their mobile apps. Instead, they should focus on an app with multiple functions in all local authorities’ jurisdictions.
“Such mobile apps should also include features that can be used frequently including parking payment, utility bills payment, local authority fees and taxes payments, zakat payment, public transport fare payment (if free for access) and so on, as it will encourage more consumers to adopt digitalisation,” he said.
When asked how to ensure the state government’s digital initiative will be well-perceived by the people, Muhammad Sha’ani said everyone has a role to play.
“As community members, we should help organise digital literacy programmes, especially for the elderly, to empower them to enjoy using technology as well.
“As for the Selangor government, they need to negotiate for low or no transaction fees when discussing with small and micro-merchants, and in so doing incentivising the adoption of digitalisation for merchants,” he said.
Muhammad Sha’ani added there are merchants who do not accept mobile transactions because they are burdened by the costs of doing so, since the transaction fees erode their profit margins.
He argued that should this situation be left unmanaged, it could potentially discourage digital adoption.
“Currently there are certain government agencies that impose surcharges for cashless payments. These practices should be changed,” he said.
