THE health minister should be applauded for his quick response to the allegation that went viral in alternative news media and blogs following a tweet by the opposition leader about the government selling the MySejahtera Covid-19 tracking app to a company in the private sector.

In the statement released, the health minister said:

1. MySejahtera data has always been under the Health Ministry’s (MOH) purview.

2. MOH does not share MySejahtera data with any government or private agency.

3. The confidentiality of public data is guaranteed and MOH assures the public that this aspect will never be compromised.

4. Management of MySejahtera data is subject to procedures set by MOH under the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases Act 1988, Medical Act 1971 and international guidelines, and the data, uploaded to a cloud server network every day, can be accessed only for MySejahtera’s use.

What started this issue was a question raised in Parliament in September last year by an MP, who is also Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chairman, who asked the government on the cost it had incurred for the development of the MySejahtera app, to which the prime minister in his reply said no payment was ever made by the government to the company that developed the system and application as part of its corporate social responsibility (CSR) for a period of one year ending March 31, 2021.

The PM in his reply also said the government was in discussions with the Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit, along with the MOH, Public Private Partnership Unit, Communication and Multimedia Ministry, National Cyber Security Agency and National Security Council, to decide on the amount and method of payment.

The PAC in a report said the government should not have paid for the MySejahtera application as it was developed without a contract with the company that created it as part of its CSR programme.

The confirmation from the minister, however, appears to have raised more questions and did not answer and address matters that were disclosed by a Finance Ministry (MOF) official and two MOH officials in their briefing to the PAC on March 8.

In the above briefing;

1. MOF official Rosni Mohd Yusoff, who is deputy secretary in the Government Procurement Division, informed the PAC that the cabinet had, in a meeting on November 26 last year, agreed in principle for MOH to hold direct negotiations to appoint a new company, MySJ Sdn Bhd, to receive the MySejahtera “system” developed by KPISoft Malaysia Sdn Bhd. Based on this decision, MOF granted approval to MOH to conduct negotiations with MySJ.

In his statement, the health minister said the cabinet in the November 26 meeting decided that MOH will establish a Price Negotiation Committee, comprising members from all stakeholder agencies, to negotiate procurement and management of the app with the company for two years, in line with the government’s procurement procedures. Approval was given by MOF for MOH’s application to procure the MySejahtera app on February 28, and negotiations are now in progress

2. Harjeet Singh Hardev Singh, deputy secretary-general (management) in MOH, informed the PAC that MOH had yet to negotiate with MySJ as it had only just received approval from MOF for direct negotiations, and MOH was deliberating between purchasing the entire MySejahtera system to “take full control”, where MOH would then have to decide who will operate and maintain the system or buy software services from MySJ. Harjeet also informed the PAC that he assumed MySJ was the new name for KPISoft and thus did not check on the background of MySJ, which has different shareholders and directors from KPISoft.

3. None of the officials at the briefing was able to confirm exactly what MySJ will receive from KPISoft on the MySejahtera system.

4. MOH’s Disease Control Division senior principal assistant director Dr Mahesh Appannan informed the PAC that MOH had been the owner of all data from “day one” while KPISoft is still a vendor designated to develop all MySejahtera modules. Mahesh also said that since its launch, the MySejahtera application has been utilised through the “software as a service” approach as the government needed to reduce the turnaround time to develop new software to manage the Covid-19 pandemic then, and MOH only used the platform provided by KPISoft for its data management, module management, etc.

Mahesh confirmed that from day one, the MySejahtera app had been used through the software as a service approach. In IT parlance, “software as a service” is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted, and clients own the data and have the right to retrieve the data located on the vendor’s servers.

In this case, it is thus presumed that KPISoft as part of its CSR programme licensed the platform it built to MOH for free for a period of one year while the data as continuously represented is owned by MOH. Effectively, KPISoft still owns the platform while MOH only owns the data.

If the MySejahtera app has been used as software as a service from day one as represented by Mahesh to the PAC, why the need to decide between purchasing the entire MySejahtera system or buy software services from MySJ, minuted to have been represented by Harjeet Singh to the PAC?

It is obvious that MOH will not have the capacity internally to operate and maintain the system unless it also “buys over” the entire team from KPISoft. If the intent, as stated in the statement from the health minister, is to negotiate procurement and management of the application with the company for two years, why the negotiations, which again as stated by the minister are in progress now, is not with Entomo Malaysia Sdn Bhd, the new name for KPISoft?

Why are the negotiations with MySJ, whose shareholders and directors differed significantly from those of Entomo Malaysia?

As represented by MOF’s Rosni, the cabinet had in last year’s November 26 meeting approved in principle for MOH to hold direct negotiations to appoint a new company, MySJ. MySJ was merely a company recently incorporated without any assets. Has MySJ purchased or acquired the platform from Entomo Malaysia? Without the platform, MySJ can’t perform the “software as a service” role for MOH, which still owns the data.

According to public documents, the ownership structure of MySJ Sdn Bhd is privately held and not by the government, MOH representatives or Entomo Malaysia. Thus, has Entomo Malaysia notified MOH that it has sold or will be selling the platform to MySJ? Rosni in her briefing to the PAC on March 8 said MySJ had received the MySejahtera “system” developed by KPISoft. The cabinet can’t be picking a name from thin air and authorising MOH to hold direct negotiations within that meeting.

Who recommended and proposed for MySJ to the cabinet? MOF? MOH? Or both?

Those officials from MOF and MOH know that lying to the PAC is a serious offence and thus there is no reason for the rakyat not to trust the veracity of their responses to the PAC.

It is presumed that the rakyat also believe and trust in the official statement issued by the health minister in his attempt to clarify this issue.

And both appeared to have some but not the full truth in their responses. – March 29, 2022.

* FLK reads The Malaysian Insight.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.