PETALING JAYA: The soon-to-be launched national central database hub (Padu) will be fully owned and made by the government with no private contractors involved, says Rafizi Ramli.
In a Facebook post on Thursday (Dec 28), the Economy Minister outlined that Padu was a fully internal government project developed through the joint efforts of only civil servants from various agencies.
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These included his ministry, the Statistics Department and the Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (Mampu), with cooperation from other relevant agencies.
"Padu is a product of the expertise and energy of civil servants alone as no external consultants and contractors were involved.
"The database (used) existing allocations and infrastructure without having to open new tenders to private parties.
"As a result it does not involve additional spending like what typically happens whenever a new system is introduced by the government.
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"(Furthermore) no annual payments will be made to any private system providers," he said.
He added that the system would be open for three months for users to verify and update their socioeconomic data acquired from more than 270 government databases.
"All necessary personal information, income information, vehicle information, child and dependent information and more will be included.
"(This period) will give the people the time they need to verify and update their details accordingly to ensure fairness as Padu’s data will be used to (deliver targeted) subsidies to eligible people," he said.
Rafizi also applauded the work of the civil servants involved in developing the system within a relatively short period of only seven months from May to December.
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He claimed that Padu’s execution, development and implementation had surpassed previous privately-run system projects in terms of being able to meet the needs of the people and government within such a short period.
"Thank you to all civil servants and the entire team from various agencies who have been working hard since May to Padu’s planned official launch by the Prime Minister next week.
"I pray that the existence of Padu will bring a huge change in public service from the government to the people and prove that expertise does exist among our civil servants," he said.
Padu, set to be open for user registration from Jan 2, aims to be a national database of socioeconomic information for every household in the country, providing regular analytics with a comprehensive store of data updated in "near real time".
This is to allow better data-driven policymaking and decision-making, while enabling targeted implementation.
The system, announced by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim back in May, has been in development since June and will see integration with MyDigital ID, the country's national digital identification system, at a later date.
