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April 11, 2022
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According to Telekom Malaysia’s enterprise and public sector solutions arm TM One,1 Malaysia’s economic resurgence in the post-pandemic world will greatly benefit by adopting a human-centred approach to digital transformation, especially amid a tsunami of rapidly advancing technologies.
In an in-depth Disruptive.Asia 2022 outlook interview with Shazurawati Abd Karim, who as Executive Vice President is at the helm of TM One, said that the company’s people first approach has invigorated much of TM One’s aims to sensitively contribute to the growth of Digital Malaysia.
Last year, the nation’s digital aspirations saw fresh impetus from MyDIGITAL 2 and expectations from a government-driven 5G rollout are high. According to the Chinese calendar, 2022 is the Year of the Tiger, and various industry leaders have already sounded the roar towards rapid recovery.
Shazurawati agrees that in common with the global experience, Malaysia’s recovery efforts in 2021 were hampered by challenges related largely to new strains of COVID-19. Although the year, which was widely envisioned by many pundits as the year of recovery, did not transpire as hoped, TM One still managed to achieve several significant breakthroughs, and is well positioned to deliver on several digital nation building fronts, she said. “On reflection, we planned 2021 as the year of recovery; unfortunately, in common with the rest of the world, we found that COVID-19 continued to peak, which meant that the MCOs (movement control orders) and other challenges slowed down forward movement.”
TM One’s focus on catalysing Malaysia’s business and government sectors has seen the joining together of important pieces of the jigsaw, she said.
“By the end of the 2021, we made many positive advances: We are happy to have continued to support our customers, the public and the government. From a business perspective, our performance of driving cloud adoption in 2021 has been phenomenal from a year-on-year growth perspective,” she said, and detailed some of these milestones, which are summarised below.
“One defining moment is when we enhanced the capabilities of α Edge (Cloud Alpha) 3 with AI last year – thus becoming an Intelligent Industry Cloud Platform, with full stack hyperscaler capabilities hosted at TM One’s Tier-III Data Centre in Malaysia. This is Malaysia’s only hyperscaler cloud with end to end services, which meet local, residency and sovereignty data requirements as well as AI-capabilities that comply with the highest industry standards .”
This prepared the ground for another defining moment when TM was appointed by the government as the only local Cloud Service Provider (CSP)4 to play a pivotal role within the MyDIGITAL initiative to support Government agencies’ digital transformation journey. 5
Announced in early 2020, MyDIGITAL is the country’s 10-year bid to vitalise its digital economy trajectory, the objectives of which include boosting digital economy contributions to 22.6% of national gross domestic product (GDP) by 2025 as well as opening up 500,000 new job opportunities.
On the commercial front, Shazurawati said that the end-to-end cloud solution has bolstered businesses operations by offering an array of much-needed benefits future-fit organisations: artificial intelligence capabilities to support all types of business innovation; machine learning (ML) functionalities to deliver actionable insights at greater speeds; edge computing to process data close to collection points; resource monitoring tools for identity and access management; advanced security tools and cybersecurity support to enable continuous real-time visibility and predictive protection.
“As well as providing peace of mind to organisations when hosting critical applications and classified data, industry verticals across the board were in a better position to boost their productivity and performance especially during these challenging times,” she continued.
“Some other defining moments for us in 2021 was the continued broadening of our services beyond Malaysia, when a leading global provider of smart devices, HONOR adopted TM One Cloud solutions to serve its customers across three continents 6 – Asia, Africa and Latin America.”
Some other cited examples included the Ministry of Education’s use of α Edge to host its platform, enabling the simultaneous processing of large number of queries (such as exam results) – 15.4 mil queries, with 8.3 mil queries during peak hour.
Shazurawati also recalled other instances such as some collaborations with top Malaysian banks that used secured digital solutions and infrastructure to enrich their digital financial services and upscale digital banking adoption.
In addition, the provisioning of end to end managed network and security services across the industry verticals remain steadfast.
Shazurawati also pointed to TM’s role of forging strong relationships with global telco and content partners to strengthen Malaysia’s position on the global front as a preferred digital destination and business hub.
“We are very proud of another defining moment for our cloud services in 2021 – we made a big leap forward in cybersecurity and also with partnerships with some of the global telcos such as Telefonica, 7 for example.”
TM One accrued a long record of distinction, including the latest array of records such as:
“So 2021 was indeed a year of fortifying our building blocks of connectivity, cloud services, smart services and on bringing these benefits to more people,” she said, before turning to deeper strategic drivers.
IDC ASEAN Senior Research Manager for ASEAN recently noted that organisations in the region are striving to both innovate and generate revenue from digital products and services and to also be part of the ever-growing and evolving industry ecosystems. “We will see more and more ASEAN enterprises of the future forging partnerships and collaboration with ecosystem players to derive value from shared data, applications, and operations initiatives. This will only lead to the birth of innovative products, services as well as better engagement and experience for customers.”
IDC’s top two ASEAN predictions for 2022 9 are underpinned by the rise of all things digital:
Indeed, the speed of transformation around the world is constrained by talent and skills’ gaps, resistance to change and of course connectivity infrastructure concerns. The challenge of managing and unlocking value from the ongoing explosion of data in a digitalised economy also requires a greater commitment to inclusivity of people.
In the recent signing of a memorandum of agreement by OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) Secretary General Mathias Cormann and ASEAN Secretary General Dato Lim Jock Hoi , 10 the objectives include promoting and accelerating digitalisation with an emphasis on driving infrastructures that include peoples, regions and businesses.
Shazurawati further explained that TM One is working closely with the regulator MCMC (Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission) and other government entities to help open up digital training for people across the nation to take up digital economy opportunities.
“Formerly known as Internet Community Centres, we have supported MCMC transformed these into Digital Community Centres. In addition to internet broadband connections, people can now go to learn about becoming ‘digital enterprises’ – and we help them connect to logistics providers, obtaining grants, and to use collaboration, marketing and digital tools necessary to participate in the digital economy. These are part of TM’s role to improve the country’s digital connectivity through enhanced broadband coverage and quality to homes and businesses.”
TM One has continued to reiterate its role is to provide end-to-end robust and secure digital solutions to harness the power of IR 4.0, AI, Big Data and IoT, to enable national digital adoption, Shazurawati further explained.
“These initiatives are aligned to the government programmes such as Jalinan Digital Negara (JENDELA11) – which focuses providing wider coverage and better quality of broadband experience for the people, whilst preparing the country for 5G technology,” said Shazurawati.
“To tackle the pandemic, we have been providing the internet coverage and PPEs [personal protective equipment] for frontliners at PPVs (vaccination centres), supporting CPRC/CRC (Crisis Preparedness and Response Centre) implementation,12 and the Covid-19 Volunteer Program – ‘Greater Klang Valley Task Force’ initiative.”
With an emphasis on efficient data handling, TM One is committed to working closely with all the key essential services relating to the Ministry of Health, among other programmes. “We came in very strong and very quickly to digitally support the Task Force with their essential tasks for the citizens and are working closely with the Ministry.”
And what of the near future? There is a trend of stabilisation – one of IDC’s 2022 predictions spotlights ‘scaling with knowledge’ and foresees that 25% of large enterprises will see 20% improvement in information usage by 2026 due to investments in intelligent knowledge networks to turn structured/unstructured data into findable and actionable knowledge.
Another of its predictions predicates that an evidence-based culture is ‘paramount for digital-first enterprises: By 2026, 20% of organisations will use forms of behavioural economics and AI/ML-driven insights to nudge employees’ actions leading to a 60% increase in desired outcomes.
Other IDC expectations stress that digital infrastructure is at the core of future enterprises: By 2025, a 6X explosion in high dependency workloads leads to 65% of ASEAN top 500 companies using consistent architectural governance frameworks to ensure compliance reporting and audit of their infrastructure.
Technology is a key tool to build sustainable growth, she said. This echoes is being enabled through the direct and indirect effects of the application of digital technologies and techniques on organisational and economic conditions on the one hand and new products and services on the other.
Meanwhile, speaking of the business value of IT, IDC concurs that by 2024, digital-first enterprises will enable empathetic customer experiences and resilient operating models by shifting 50% of all tech and services spending to ‘as-a-service’ and outcomes-centric models.
“We are fully aware when that Digital Services’ market consumption is almost three times more than the basic levels of communication and connectivity consumption,” she noted, adding that the company is probing further value propositions, capabilities and capacities to benefit verticals’ evolution into transformation and automation.
Shazurawati also affirmed that smart services will be catalysed by the nation’s 5G rollout, which will help improve the economics of scales of Malaysia, and taps ongoing mobility trends in Malaysia and across the region.
Just one impact from COVID-19 during the last two years is the amplification of mobile- or remote-driven digitalisation of the global economy, with Asia, as noted earlier emerging as a high potential growth area.
“Essentially, we are already working as if In the endemic phase to a great extent and are back in the office 60% and have adopted a hybrid working model,” commented Shazurawati. “For this year, our ambition includes growing mobile. We are excited about putting more focus on mobile enterprise.”
Building on what she recently commented in detail about 5G opening a new era for the industry in December 2021,13 she adds that the concept of smart cities presents a practical path and model for actualising the real benefits to people and the economy of 5G. “Smart communities will become key growth engines and beneficiaries of 5G. Global spending on smart city solutions is expected to reach US$2.5 trillion by the year 2026. Smart cities essentially involve using sensors based on IoT, which will generate large amounts of data. 5G will provide higher speeds and more capacity to handle data coming in from multiple devices such as sensors, cameras, cell phones and other sources.”
When looking ahead, one of the most striking findings to bear in mind was posited by Google, Temasek, and Bain & Company’s recent e-Conomy SEA 2021 Report,14 which declared that 40 million new internet users had come online in 2021, and ramped up the internet penetration in Southeast Asia (SEA) to an impressive 75%.
Within this dynamic, Malaysia’s internet economy has rebounded strongly. Bain’s analysis found that the country’s 2021 gross merchandise value (GMV) reached a 47% year-on-year surge and is expected to hit a total value of $21 billion. With a strong 68% eCommerce growth, Malaysia’s overall internet sector saw a rebound of double-digit year-on-year growth and is expected to reach $35 billion in 2025.
Connectivity infrastructure and smart services are quietly enabling this digital economy growth, which includes digital financial services, along with food, transport and logistics and so forth. Shazurawati went on to detail TM One’s work across multiple verticals – touching on manufacturing, education, and healthcare examples.
“Smart Manufacturing is gaining traction,” she remarked. “And we have seen a heightening of activity in education with the private education sector ramping up cloud adoption to drive hybrid learning – another buzzword from the pandemic phase. Hybrid learning has embarked on an exciting journey, which is in tandem with increased digitalisation of healthcare.”
Shazurawati said many collaborative initiatives are under discussion in several verticals. “We are seeing more resolve when it comes to enabling data sharing; and this is in response to the public’s expectations for more seamless, better service levels – for instance, individual patient care across a group of hospitals.”
“Local councils are also adopting smart services as a pathway to address the challenges of improving productivity and services in highly competitive times, enhancing safety and security, reducing accidents at work, the need to automate certain operations and so deploy staff to higher value work, etc.”
Shazurawati said there are many use cases of digital adoption by local authorities and government with many more to come.
“The bottom line is that the more we can serve, the happier the people will become, and generate even better service levels, which contributes to a better bottom line at the same time. Within public sector, we see a desire and ambition to do advance this.”
Speaking of TM One, she said the company culture has ramped the momentum of nurturing a high performance future workforce through upskilling and re-skilling programmes and growing current subject matter experts.
“TM One and the Group is digitising business processes and introducing tools and apps to deliver more robust and efficient execution,” she said, adding that Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) is becoming foundational in managing relationships with employees, suppliers, customers, and the surrounding communities.
On a broader level, she holds that: “Malaysians are absolutely resilient, and have a youthful mindset, which helps us embrace changes quite well. For example, we saw how in the recent flood crises, how tough people were, and how when faced by challenges, people came together to help: so this bodes well for the future.”
“Everybody has learned much of what works and what we all will need to work in the near future. We are moving in the right direction and there is a desire and growing commitment across all sectors to move forward and be better.”
“This is encouraging for us especially as we just at the beginning of the new year, and we are in the midst of many collaborative initiatives, and co-creation discussions,” she adds.
“Much of the motivation among leadership conversations in Malaysia is naturally driven on solving challenges: How can we do this better? For example, precise agriculture (in farming), I saw recently we are cultivating a fish (not native to Malaysia) that produces caviar. Modern farming with technologically controlled environments demonstrate that location is no longer an issue,” she said. “In addition, I truly believe that for us to really move for forward and deliver sustainable, impactful outcomes depends on cooperation and collaboration, and unlocking the talents within us all.”
Malaysia has an enormous opportunity to recover lost ground during the pandemic years, and to accelerate its development as a digital nation.
“Our focus is to put forth a people-first approach to digital transformation via human-centred technology – serving the digital needs of the people and focusing on the usability benefits,” she said, adding that this translates into developing digital solutions that make customers’ lives and jobs better and driving more digitalised ways of working within TM One.
“We will continue to invest in our people, infrastructure and technology to be ready for the next wave of innovation, in order to deliver delightful customer experience.”
Shazurawati concluded that digitalisation will continue to accelerate in the post-pandemic era. “Many projects were put on hold last year because of uncertainty about how to advance these. Businesses are now more convinced and have the appetite and information to move forward. I am happy with the momentum thus far and believe we will continue to move forward as a whole this year.”
“In this year of the Tiger, we are set to roar ahead on all fronts! We will continue to adapt agilely. and sharpen our digital and service capabilities to strengthen our value as partners and moving forwards beyond recovery and accelerated growth.”
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November 29, 2022
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In the digital age and Industrial Revolution 4.0, the agriculture sector is undergoing a massive change by leveraging on digital technologies, especially the Internet of Things (IoT), to create a smarter agriculture.
With the help of robots, drones, remote sensors, and computer imaging combined with continuously progressing machine learning and analytical tools, farmers are monitoring crops, surveying and mapping the fields and using data-driven insights to enjoy higher productivity, saving time, and optimising resources and efforts.
One of the systems that is increasing in popularity and creating smarter agriculture is the Smart Farming system. Smart Farming makes extensive use of sensors (light, humidity, temperature, soil moisture, crop health, etc.) to monitor farm and crop conditions, and automating the irrigation and/or fertigation system. IoT enables devices embedded with sensors to connect and interact via the internet. These devices can be anything from pumps and tractors to weather stations and computers. Smart Farming allows farmers to monitor the field conditions from anywhere, at any time, in real time. Using the combined power of IoT with Big Data and Cloud, a successful communication, connection and transference of data between devices, are done most effectively and efficiently. Digital Connectivity and Cloud Computing are the essential enabler for Smart Farming. Digital connectivity is the foundation without which none of the Smart Agriculture solutions can take place. It is the necessary pre-condition that allows communication between devices and access by stakeholders. Meanwhile, cloud computing enables the hosting platform for IoT and Big Data as well as powers up the data analytics and visualisation.
The value of smart agriculture solutions lies in its promising ability to address some of the longstanding industry challenges – both at the macro and micro level:
With the use of IoT in agriculture, farmers are reaping the benefits from increased agility and data-driven farming. Thanks to real-time monitoring and prediction systems, farmers can quickly respond to any significant changes in weather, humidity, air quality as well as the health of each crop or soil in the field.
With TM One’s comprehensive and fit-for-purpose digital solutions, from connectivity right down to the digital and smart systems and applications, combined with the technical experts who are ready to guide our customers throughout their digitalisation journey, players in the agriculture sector can be assured of a smooth and seamless path to the Next Future of Agriculture.
To know more about TM One’s smart agriculture solution, visit https://www.tmone.com.my/solutions/smart-services/smart-agriculture/
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August 30, 2022
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“TM One is the main agency pioneering the foundation of our nation’s digital infrastructure. Through this strategic collaboration, it greatly helps Ipoh City Council in managing the city more efficiently and in an orderly manner,” – Dato’ Rumaizi bin Baharin, Ipoh Mayor.
With the blend of heritage, food and great scenery, the Lonely Planet ranked Ipoh as one of the best cities in Asia to visit. As a hotspot for tourism, the bustling city provides abundant business opportunities. The city has harnessed this potential by increasing the readiness of its digital infrastructure for mobile and fixed broadband internet.
Keeping this in mind, Ipoh envisions becoming one of the first smart cities in Malaysia by 2030. The Smart City 2030 action plan targets seven domains – Smart Living, Smart Environment, Smart Governance, Smart People, Smart Digital Infrastructure, Smart Economy and Smart Mobility – to effectively address urbanisation challenges faced by the people of Ipoh and to realise Ipoh as a Green and Low Carbon City by 2030. We are embarking on a journey to prepare for a digital future, with TM One acting as the digital enabler and provider to assist the city in its transformation.
In conjunction with the City Leap Summit 2022, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was established between The Ipoh City Council and TM One. The strategic collaboration includes several initiatives that are planned and will be implemented:
One of the most remarkable achievements is the implementation of smart traffic lights. TM One’s STARS leverages AI-enabled sensors at intersections to measure the average waiting time and identify vehicle motions, thereby adjusting green light duration based on real-time congestion, and improve the journey time. This solution also help to reduce the carbon emitted by the vehicle that is using the junction and this is in line with Ipoh Green City Vision to achieve low carbon city. Additional to the benefits, STARS is a single monitoring platform that provides relevant personnel with a centralised viewing of road conditions and equipped with real-time fault notification that triggers alarms through the Telegram chat application. This will allow the relevant personnel to take swift actions and dispatching manpower on-site when needed.
As a result, the smart traffic light solution has improved traffic flow in one of the busiest streets, Jalan Sultan Idris, by 51%. This solution also has led to a 7,500 kg decrease in carbon dioxide emissions in a month – in line with Ipoh’s goal to be a Low Carbon City by 2030.
FORCE satisfies the need for a fluid system to connect the call centre agents, dispatchers and service technicians to attend to citizens’ complaints and inquiries for better communication and coordination. It allows the teams to promptly respond to public complaints and emergencies by accessing real-time ticket statuses. Also, the all-in-one platform automates task scheduling and team management, tracks real-time progress of on-site maintenance and provides access to customer profiles on the go – modernizing the city’s field service solution. FORCE is envisioned to be the system support for MBI’s existing myAduan@MBI citizen app to improve its customer experience, better cost management, and internal resource management.
The Ipoh City Council aspires to establish its first digital call centre via outsourcing. The digital call centre aims to solve the challenges of handling multilingual support requests and reduce abandoned call rates, while elevating critical issues to relevant parties when necessary. Consequently, the city can free up resources and optimise costs, while ensuring the best customer service for the people of Ipoh.
TM One Business Services (BPO) with more than 15 years of contact centre experience in Malaysia, leveraging on our Center of Expertise will be sharing the best practice; which aligned to the Industry Standards and Best Practices to help Ipoh City Council to establish the citizen engagement centre and ultimately elevate the citizen experience to the higher level.
Ipoh aims to be one of the first cities in Malaysia to enable 5G, and TM One plans to support this vision with the provision of free 5G wifi in selected areas. Additionally, a digital fibre connectivity superhighway and smart surveillance systems is being planned for Ipoh citizens.
Smart technologies help Ipoh save cost, shorten commutes, reduce carbon emission rates, and most importantly boost the quality of life for the people of Ipoh. In the long term, smart cities will spur higher citizen and government engagement as they begin to remove the communication barriers and increase the trust between citizens and officials. With the great synergy between both parties, Dato’ Rumaizi aspires to achieve more milestones in collaboration with TM One.
“My hope is that together with TM One, we will explore even more opportunities and smart technologies towards enhancing lives for the people of Ipoh.” – Dato’ Rumaizi bin Baharin, Ipoh Mayor.
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Smart cities are like the humans who live in them, behaving like complex creatures, constantly collecting and transporting information to make better sense of the world. In other words, they are alive.
And like all living things, smart cities possess DNA. In its conventional definition, DNA is biological, but in this context, the DNA of a smart city is entirely different. The engine that drives the ideal smart city lies in its’ usage of technology, designed to support and enhance the lives of the human beings living in them. Each city requires a unique arsenal of technological solutions, chosen to fulfil the specific needs of its citizens, economy and environment that contributes to the success of each smart city
While certain cities thrive on an abundance of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices, intelligent kiosks and computers, others may prefer more minimalistic, hardware-lite designs. For devices to deliver life-improving benefits for their citizens, smart cities must have high-speed connectivity and IoT networks with sufficient coverage to penetrate all parts of the cities, including in-building areas. Also, successful smart cities usually have a platform and application layer that can conduct analytics to transform data into meaningful information, viewed in a command centre.
Similar to how human abilities can be enhanced through natural growth, self-actualisation or technological aids, smart cities have ways to boost their capabilities as well. Here are a few good places to start:
A hyper connected systems need to be in place for a smart city to meet efficiency, sustainability, productivity, and safety objectives. Reliable, high coverage, high speed and low latency connectivity networks form the foundation for almost all smart city systems and are things all smart cities need.
For example, a smart city should have a tech-based delivery infrastructure for public utilities such as water, electricity, waste, sanitation, sewerage and government services built on real-time connectivity. Connected technologies and IoT solutions that can constantly match the changing supply-demand gaps can rapidly improve living standards when integrated with existing infrastructure.
Local councils need to identify and prioritise the fundamental locations, facilities and infrastructure where they would deploy the millions of sensors and IoT devices and solutions in phases towards developing and building an action focused infrastructure framework masterplan or blueprint that would yield meaningful life impacting living and social environment to the towns and cities.
As digital and physical infrastructures increasingly converge, integrate, and interoperate, smart cities must embed the proper cybersecurity and privacy measures in each stage of development. Local councils must also sync cybersecurity strategies across smart city networks and design appropriate security and governance structures to protect their citizens.
The thousands of smart devices are double-edged swords. While they collect and feed helpful information into smart applications, they open up vulnerabilities in the more extensive IoT network. Physical tampering with smart devices can lead to backdoors and malicious implants that can potentially give unauthorised access to black-hat hackers and cyber terrorists.
In short, smart cities that thrive on the abundance of data collected by the network of sensors need to be mindful of data security. While it helps authorities monitor the health of its city, the possibility of a data breach needs mitigation to avoid crippling of city operations. Therefore, robust security policies and management is needed to ensure that governance over sensitive and personal data is practised and automatically managed across the digital, smart services and IoT solutions and systems deployed.
Even though data can be tough to handle, smart cities are valuable reservoirs of data. Effective data sharing and access to this data can unleash new opportunities to innovate and generate social and economic benefits. This practice is estimated to create the above benefits worth between 0.1% to 4.0% of GDP.
All data from devices, people, systems, and the environment go through a transformation process involving data management, integration, machine learning, and advanced analytics to become information that addresses real-time incidents and assists city planning.
One key area that benefits data analytics is the smart government component. For example, conventional government censuses are expensive to implement and often collect inaccurate data, leading to the low effectiveness of newly designed policies and initiatives. With accurate and reliable data, governments can better understand the problems, and improve policy-making abilities by solving the root causes.
Other areas of benefit include financial health, improved outcomes, operational efficiency, public engagement, crisis management and others.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the piece of the puzzle that puts the word ‘smart’ into smart cities. By combining modern machine-learning, natural language processing (NLP), and computer vision with huge data lakes, AI is primed to drive efficiency and solve most problems local councils face.
As AI systems are fed with tons of data, the technology can identify areas of improvement and recommend an effective solution. For instance, AI-intelligent surveillance systems can provide continuous protection for citizens and effective system operations of the cities. This system uses facial and object recognition, behavioural and movement analysis algorithms and objective-detection programs to analyse live video feeds and identify potential risks or threats.
Therefore, gaining extra insights into niche aspects of a city by using AI is the natural step in the evolution of modern-day smart cities.
In Malaysia, many States have already started implementing smart city projects with the federal guidelines of Malaysia Smart City Framework, MSCF. These plans mainly revolve around transportation and cashless payments – two crucial focus in society.
Moving forward, smart city planners must adopt a systems approach, meaning that authorities need to compartmentalise the goals of adopting a smart city.
At TM One we applaud the commitments and efforts of various local smart city initiatives and we understands the enormous tasks and planning required. Our talents, partners and solutions are ready to help local governments turn their blueprints into citizen-focused action plans that will move the needle in terms of turning Malaysia into a digital-first, smart-city nation.
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Five years ago, the conversation surrounding smart cities was in its infancy, with most topics revolving around demystifying the technology behind them. Today, cities around the world have moved past demystification and are taking great strides in implementation. Globally, there are several shining examples we can turn to for inspiration;
While we are witnessing the transformation of several cities worldwide, what are the required factors that make a city ‘smart’?
Developing a smart city is not a task that can be sustained with an ad-hoc approach. Instead, a holistic vision is required to steer decision-making and guide action plans toward implementing realistic solutions that deliver tangible results that can enhance the lifestyles and living quality of all citizens within the city.
The Malaysia Smart City Framework (MSCF) has offered several initiatives such as MyDigital, GTMP and JENDELA as official ‘textbook approaches’ or suggested priorities. Local councils or Pihak Berkuasa Tempatan (PBTs) can refer to these initiatives in developing the smart city vision that best fits their cities.
Behind the development of a successful smart city, lies an excellent core vision that is developed based on the citizens’ real-life experiences. The application of technology is moot if it does not bring tangible benefit to its end users.
The common occurrence of pilot projects being abandoned, with selected technologies being seriously under-utilised, is a result of decision-making without a clear understanding of the real-life pain points experienced by the end-user, the citizens themselves. For a smart city to truly elevate our lifestyles and quality of living, the solutions we choose must be people-centric and based on actual needs.
Critically, PBTs will require sufficient funding to set the ‘smart city’ ball rolling smoothly. However, based on a survey conducted during the previous TM One City Leap Summit 2020, only 2.6% of PBTs surveyed indicated that they have sufficient funds, while 42% of them responded that they required funding assistance.
While procuring sufficient funds may be an issue, we can look to Indonesia to overcome the same challenge. Under West Java’s Digital Villages Theme, the West Java Provincial Government started their digital transformation of rural fisheries by installing basic smart auto-feeders in 4289 ponds across West Java. Instead of immediately using high-end tech solutions, the deployment of basic technology allowed the fishermen to empower their own productivity, resulting in a 30 to 100% increase in earnings and effectively generating their own initial capital for more cutting-edge solutions. On top of that, there was the added benefit of increasing digital literacy among the fishermen to be more receptive to newer technological solutions.
With a vision outlined and action plans identified against the available funding, the next key factor in creating a successful smart city lies in the capabilities of the project management office to turn the vision into reality. Key traits of a great project management office are:
It takes more than a day and more than just a single person to build a smart city. In fact, stakeholder management is critical in garnering support and alignment toward the outlined vision of smart city development. Effective stakeholder management requires a deep understanding of all parties who will benefit from implementing smart cities. These benefits include more efficient public services for citizens, data-driven disaster mitigation strategies for local governments, and more diverse revenue streams for investors.
Communication and outreach are vital in building the required understanding among stakeholders. Examples of campaigns designed to encourage stakeholder involvement include PLANMalaysia’s Libat Urus Pemegang Taruh involving government agencies, stakeholders and research teams for cities such as Ipoh, Johor Bahru and the Federal Territories.
Learning from our Indonesian neighbours again, the West Java Provincial Government has taken on a ‘Pentahelix Collaboration’ model, with initiatives geared towards encouraging collaboration and participation from authoritative bodies, media bodies, businesses, academics and local communities.
Good governance is the final thread capable of tying all of the above factors together. Implementing strong top-down leadership and transparent policies can crystallise each PBTs smart city vision. Good governance can also help develop sustainable funding schemes according to each PBTs needs while delivering the talent required to project management offices. It will also support communications campaigns to encourage the stakeholder buy-in needed for successful execution.
After several years of conversation, the time is ripe for Malaysia to transform its cities. The rakyat already stands to gain much more from a smart city transformation. With the effects of climate change already rearing its ugly head at our mobility, agricultural production and air quality, Malaysia is ready to accept solutions that promise to solve day-to-day difficulties. However, the advancement of smart city technologies stands to take us even further beyond problem-fixing – smart city technology now can elevate Malaysia towards a cleaner, safer, more sustainable, higher-quality way of living.
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