PUTRAJAYA: The government will be leading by example in capitalising on technology to improve its service delivery by migrating 80 per cent of its data to the cloud by the end of next year.
Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said the data migration as well as the development of a government 'super-app' in the future would greatly aid efforts to widen datasets, thus enabling the government to pull insights to identify societal issues and coordinate support for the needy.
"By understanding pattern behaviours and correlations, we hope to be able to use it for predictive analytics.
"Addressing these issues will help improve public sector service delivery and empower the people," he said in his keynote address at the launch ceremony of Microsoft Corp's 'Bersama Malaysia' (Together with Malaysia) initiative here today.
Big data, he said, has a needle-moving impact and is in itself, an engine of economic growth.
"The ultimate question then is, how do we harness technology to enhance social welfare and reduce inequalities, while cushioning disruptive transitions at the same time?"
The 'new normal' for the world brought about by the global Covid-19 pandemic, he said, has accentuated the importance of global connectivity, amplified the usage of data and exponentially increased the demand for bandwidth and storage capacities.
"The digital way of life is no longer a trendy catchphrase. It is our collective reality. It therefore goes without saying that data is the new gold.
"Entire industries depend on it for growth, and opportunities abound for those able to tap into the huge global appetite for all things related to data.
"In this regard, Malaysia holds immense potential to become a data hub in the region, owing to the growing availability of high bandwidth, ample space, competitive power tariffs and now, oncoming presence of hyper scalers," he said.