#TECH: MDEC CEO named World’s 50 most influential people revolutionising governance

CYBERJAYA: The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC), Surina Shukri, has been named among the World’s 50 Most Influential People Revolutionising Governance in the inaugural Agile 50 list – a joint initiative by Apolitical and the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Agile Governance.

Created from over 300 nominations from governments, international organisations, NGOs and companies across the globe, from Japan to Brazil, the list seeks to laud those politicians, civil servants and entrepreneurs driving agility in governments all around the world, recognising both high-profile icons and shine a spotlight on the crucial work performed by those driving the widespread digital transformation of government in these testing times.

Surina Shukri joined MDEC, a developmental agency, mandated to lead Malaysia’s digital economy in January 2019 and continues to lead on the back of three strategic pillars, namely digitally skilled Malaysians, digitally powered businesses and digital investments.

Over her tenure thus far, Surina has also accomplished various MDEC programmes including eUsahawan, a digital entrepreneurship programme that helps on-board micro enterprises onto various e-commerce platforms. This programme saw 41,789 entrepreneurs trained with a total sales value of RM65.4 million generated, from Jan-June 2020.

Other programmes includes:

l #MyDigitalMaker is an initiative that encourages and provides opportunities for students to become digital creators, producers and innovators. The initiative is also in collaboration with the Ministry of Education Malaysia to train teachers on programming, micro controller and computational skills. To date, 1.3 million students and 88,000 teachers have been empowered with digital skills. For the period Jan-June 2020, 2,000 teachers were trained for computational thinking skills certification and Science Teaching Certificate.

l Digital Ninja is another leadership and digital skills enhancement programme led by Surina which hones the youths’ innate know-how, provides exposure and inspires change-makers. As of 2019, 20 new projects were conceptualised and developed involving 407 students nationwide.

l To prepare graduates, MDEC also launched the Premier Digital Tech Institutions (PDTI) in August 2017, an initiative MDEC started in recognition of 16 top institutions of higher learning that can deliver first-class training in digital technology.

l In June 2019, MDEC also began a campaign called Empowering Women in Cyber Risk Management, a reskilling programme to encourage women to return to the workforce. 26 women were trained in 7 different sessions which ultimately saw 42 per cent return to the workforce.

l eRezeki is another programme designed to open-up opportunities for Malaysians to leverage their idle time, under-utilised physical assets or certain knowledge and skills via crowdsourcing and sharing economy platforms. Launched in June 2015, 333,130 participants (till end 2019) have benefited from this initiative and have reported earning an additional income. From Jan-June 2020, 585,662 have gained additional digital skill sets to earn supplemental income.

l Leveraging MDEC’s existing Global Online Workforce (GLOW) programme which assists those in need of crowdsourcing platforms to generate digital revenue, from January to June this year, the programme generated an income totalling RM190.8 million.

l Launched in July 2017, Go-eCommerce is an online learning platform with an internationally recognised curriculum for beginner, intermediate learners and advanced entrepreneurs. From Jan-June 2020, a total of 112, 803 participants from across the country benefited from this initiative. Under the ambit of this platform, MDEC also launched Project DESA which encouraged rural-based merchants to shift their businesses online and continues to drive cross-border trade for all merchants. SMEs were also advised to look beyond Malaysia, in search of new markets to expand into. Through the Digital Free Trade Zone, MDEC enabled 4,367 SMEs to engage in cross-border e-commerce.

l In a similar vein, The Global Acceleration & Innovation Network (GAIN) helped grow 130 local digital companies into global players.

l In May 2020, MDEC organised e-Dagang Expo (eDX) a week-long virtual event that engaged over 500,000 micro-entrepreneurs and SMEs looking to take their offline operations to the online space. Partnering with global e-commerce giants, the agency aimed to address the urgent needs of MSMEs to adopt e-commerce to better mitigate the immediate impact of COVID-19 and beyond.

l At the same time, MDEC also launched eBerkat, a platform to increase SME and B40 awareness and access to SLIP (savings, lending, investment, payment) digital financial services and instruments, an initiative that sees 2,000 MSMEs onboard with 13 per cent successful secured funding.

l In addition, investments have been seen in the digital sector in Malaysia, from January to June 2020 across multiple initiatives such as National IoT Framework (RM141.4 million), National Big Data Analytics Framework (RM264.4 million), The Global Testbed Initiative (RM124.5 million).

“It is an honour to be a part of the Agile 50 list. Agile policy development is vital in the Asean region and beyond unleashing the full potential of the Fourth Industrial Revolution across the digital content sector, digital financing, start-up space, e-commerce, automation and robotics, anything powered via the Internet of Things. MDEC is poised to prepare Malaysians for an evolving economy, particularly as we accelerate Malaysia’s digital society towards shared prosperity and Malaysia 5.0.

“2020 may have presented unprecedented challenges, but I believe 2021 is the year of execution which can coalesce expertise from business and government to drive regulatory reform that triggers innovation and rekindles economic growth!”, said Surina.

Source: NST