Digital Malaysia to go forward with Three Strategic Thrusts for Digital Economy

Digital Malaysia to go forward with Three Strategic Thrusts for Digital Economy

The Deputy Minister of Science, Technology & Innovation (MOSTI), YB Datuk Haji Fadillah bin Haji Yusof unveiled details of Digital Malaysia, a national programme to advance the country towards a developed digital economy by 2020 via three strategic thrusts.

"Digital Malaysia is a unique programme based on its three strategic thrusts. It will create an ecosystem that promotes the pervasive use of ICT in all aspects of the economy to connect communities globally and interact in real time resulting in increased Gross National Income, enhanced productivity and improved standards of living." said Datuk Haji Fadillah bin Haji Yusof.

Digital Malaysia aims to help raise Malaysia's ICT contribution to 17% of GNI, and also raise its ranks in the Economists' Intelligence Unit Digital Economy Rankings to be within the top 10 of the International Institute of Management Development (IMD) World Competitiveness Year. n estimated sum of RM31.2 billion in investment value is expected to be generated from Digital Malaysia based on a Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) model. The programme targets to deliver an additional RM7,000 per annum for 350,000 citizens from digital income which will deal a huge impact on our standard of living.

Digital Malaysia three game-changing strategic thrust includes:
- Move Malaysia from being supply to demand focused, i.e. initiating more demand-focused activities to leverage existing infrastructure, economic activity, market trends and consumer behaviour;

- Shift behaviours from being consumption to production centric, i.e. encouraging and enabling internet users to produce as much as they consume from digital technologies;

- Evolve from low knowledge-add to high knowledge-add i.e. increasing development of local talent in key industries to become innovators and knowledge workers.

Datuk Badlisham Ghazali, CEO of MDeC, said "Digital Malaysia is unique because of its strategy which is built on three strategic thrusts. It will help to create a new class of digital entrepreneurs through our demand-focused initiatives and it will help nurture a new generation of Digital-savvy youth through the use of digital learning who will form the bulk of Malaysia's workforce from 2020. Digital Malaysia will also help drive automation and technology adoption amongst SMEs to boost productivity".

Digital Malaysia is under the stewardship of the Digital Malaysia Steering Committee led by YB Datuk Seri Panglima Dr. Maximus Johnity Ongkili and reports to the Prime Minister.