Ministry wants Facebook to share data on Covid-19 management

 

The Communications and Multimedia Ministry is keen for Facebook to share its experience in Covid-19 vaccination in several countries as a guide for Malaysia to carry out a similar programme, said its minister Saifuddin Abdullah.

He said Facebook is involved with many countries in the management of Covid-19, including in countries that have conducted Covid-19 vaccination programmes using Facebook software to manage data, such as data of vaccine recipients and areas involved.

Through such a collaboration, Saifuddin said, Facebook would have identified countries with best practices for vaccine management to address the pandemic.

"Certainly there are best practices even though it is new. For example, country A, its vaccination management is successful and smooth, and country B, with many hiccups. So, we do not want to be like country B," he told Bernama.

Saifuddin said this after a virtual talk with the United States-Asean Business Council (US-ABC) yesterday.

The minister said he forwarded the government's wish to a Facebook representative who was also present at the US-ABC discussion and said "they seem to agree to share their experiences".

“I ask them to share the best practices because we cannot fail in this programme due to the high cost of the vaccination, which is very much needed for the country. So, learning from other people's experiences is not a loss," he said.

Saifuddin said Facebook could share their experiences with the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation and also the Ministry of Health directly, or through the Communications Ministry as an intermediary for the two ministries.

Besides Facebook, others involved in the US-ABC discussion included Amazon, Cisco, C&M International, Oracle, Qualcomm, Seagate, Stripe, and Google.

Saifuddin said the discussion, which lasted more than an hour, touched on cybersecurity, cloud-first policy, regulations related to digital service taxation, digital transformation, connectivity and Covid-19 pandemic management.

- Bernama