The National Security Council (NSC) said the developer of the MySejahtera application, the federal government's official tool to track the spread of Covid-19, is an international company with Malaysian roots.
This was after the Malaysian Association of Bumiputera ICT Industry and Entrepreneurs (NEF) complained they were sidelined by the government in favour of foreign companies.
"KPISoft is a local company with MSC (Multimedia Super Corridor) status which was founded in 2010. The founders include two Malaysians, namely Anuar Rozhan and Raveenderan Ramamoothie.
"To date, they are the bigger shareholders of the company," the NSC said in a statement today.
It said that with the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation's (MDEC) guidance, the company went international in 2014 by opening its Asia Pacific office and subsequently expanded to the US, Middle East, Europe, Singapore, and India with a total of 15 offices across the globe.
"This company is amongst the local companies that succeeded in expanding at the global level. The applications it developed are used by Fortune 500 companies.
"Even though this company has expanded globally, KPISoft's main management team is still based in Malaysia.
"Anuar is the CEO of KPISoft Malaysia and Asia Pacific. Its global chief financial officer and application development lead architect are also Malaysians operating globally from Malaysia," it said.
The NSC said that in the initial stages, the Health Ministry had asked the National Cyber Security Agency (Nacsa), NSC, and the Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (Mampu) to evaluate an application developed by KPISoft Sdn Bhd on a corporate social responsibility basis.
"Considering the Health Ministry's urgent need, the evaluation by Nacsa, NSC, and Mampu found the application (by KPISoft) was the readiest for national implementation compared to other applications offered to the government at the time.
"The development of the (MySejahtera) app is a result of strategic cooperation between the NSC, Health Ministry, Mampu, Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC), and the Science, Technology, and Innovation Ministry," it said.
Yesterday, NEF posted a statement on Facebook criticising Putrajaya for granting such a large scale project to "foreign companies".
"The government's current policy also does not favour products and solutions by local companies.
"For example, MySejahtera was developed as a joint venture with a foreign company, KPISoft Inc from the US which has an Asian headquarters in Singapore, for Covid-19 contact tracing," said NEF president Khairil Iszuddin Ismail.
It also criticised the Education Ministry's Digital Education Learning Initiative Malaysia which it claimed did not emphasise on local content and the Social Security Organisation's (Socso) MyFutureJobs portal which it claimed used technology from the Netherlands.
"It is inappropriate for foreign companies with huge capital to benefit from the government and taxpayers' money for their benefit when local companies are struggling," Khairil said.
Despite this, he said local firms have voluntarily developed applications to aid in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. - Mkini
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