The Central Database Hub, or its official Bahasa Malaysia nomenclature Padu, is now a cohesive digital identity system, streamlining massive government databases into a comprehensive and practical tool.
Padu's altruistically revolutionary programme began operations by having to debug rogue codes and plug loopholes that "tricked" the system into setting up multiple accounts by one person who was "experimenting with identity theft".
Therefore, it makes sense to diligently test Padu's vaunted security against malicious hackers. As implored by cybersecurity experts, Padu should deploy ethical hackers to poke holes into the system's integrity.
As for Orwellian–bent critics, they would have to get over it because in this epoch of overexposed and narcissistic social models and media overrun by misinformation, fear of volunteering confidential data is an anachronism indulged by the paranoid and the conspiratorial.
Malaysians have long relayed personal information to the government — and corporations — as a pragmatic way of life.
How so? When they apply for passports, renew licences and road tax, buy vehicle, medical and life insurance, and file tax returns. Above all, there is registering for the ubiquitous MyKad, a mandated prerequisite to deal with officialdom.
Additionally, we surrender intimate minutiae to predator–like smartphone apps to shop, reap benefits, get discounts and collect treat points.
Nonetheless, while we acquiesce confidential information to Padu, it doesn't mean that the data ought to be milked for commercial harvesting, or heaven forbid, subtly leaked to scammers scouring for a big sting.
As a definitive client charter, Padu's administrators must categorically guarantee that the petabytes of particulars are restricted to government applications.
Any time Padu's public information is discovered "loitering" in cyberspace, the hub's executives, especially the entrusted technical people, should be hauled up for negligence.
We strongly assert so because Padu will consciously become the most resourceful, all encompassing and supremely powerful database of Malaysians, from every conceivable stripe and background, mined from a conglomerate of legal, licensing, collection and enforcement authorities.
Padu is the Artificial Intelligence's dream repository of feasible data distilled from a 34.3 million populace, young and old.
Therefore, the probity and impenetrability of this mother of all databases must be held scrupulously sacred.
For now, we'll accept, as a gentleman's bond, the word of government leaders that the matrix's robustness from known weaknesses have been addressed — until the next unknown susceptibility is exposed.
A major concern did arise: crucial food programmes may not reach targeted groups because of the way they declare streams of income that might make them "less deserving". But the concern is elementary and quickly fixable by algorithms infused to collate, analyse and extract functional intelligence.
In the long term, Padu is designed to ensure that only the truly deserving get their rightful subsidies, from food to medical care to utilities, bypassing decades of archaic freeloading hogged by the wealthy and affluent.