Cukuplah on the advisors
Cukuplah on the advisors
The Anwar administration needs PEMANDU
Distributing tampons as a poverty eradication measure, and using an app dashboard to solve vegetable shortages are both measures that are not going to solve critical problems facing the nation at present.
The new Anwar administration is floundering. Instead of offering sound strategies to curb inflation, consumers are told to not to buy goods from retailers which charge high prices.
The reality is that some ministers, after two months haven’t found their own offices yet. There is a lot of inexperience and naivety in Anwar’s ministry. Some don’t know what to do, which is causing Anwar headaches. Anwar can’t solve every minister’s problems.
There are even calls from some sections of the community for certain ministers to be sacked and replaced.
It appears the primary criteria for being a member of cabinet was loyalty. Knowledge, experience, and expertise was only a secondary consideration.
Then came the pro bono relatives taking up advisory roles. This has been supplemented with an economics advisory board, (overlapping?), made up of establishment experts, who live and work within the ‘bubble’. This is not the best recipe for finding new approaches and paradigms for the nation’s developmental trajectory. If you come from a GLC, you are likely to think of GLCs.
It looks like the Anwar administration will become one congested with advisors, consultants, and advisory boards that will bog down process, and keep the Malaysian economy stuck in the same position it is in now.
The modus operandi of government will be ‘have a problem appoint some pro bono advisor’. The problem with pro bono is that it comes without any accountability.
Its time to look for new ideas
Malaysia doesn’t have to look too far. The Performance Management and Delivery Unit, or PEMANDU could be reconstituted (with some modifications). It was formed in 2009, and placed under the Prime Minister’s Office. It was recognized as a good innovation in public administration, at the time.
The objective of PEMANDU was to forge a sustainable and inclusive socioeconomic transformation at the time. PEMANDU was intended to be a catalytic approach to achieving a transformation of the civil service.
A reconstituted, hybrid PEMANDU could have the mission of evaluating particular problems faced by ministries, analyse these problems through situations audits, which include consultations with the community and stakeholders, determine a range of solutions, evaluate them and oversee the implementation. Solutions will have contingencies, should there be unforeseen barriers.
Malaysia is blessed with a wide and diverse talent pool of retired academics, researchers, civil servants, and business people. The general expertise to solve the nations problems are already within the community. Many of these people are only too willing to help the nation.
PEMANDU needs to be on the ground, within communities, rather than in the seminar rooms of five star hotels in Putra Jaya. These people could empower ministers to solve their respective portfolio problems.
Malaysia needs a bottom-up approach, rather than rely of top-down pro bono advisors. This could help prevent a policy malaise, where advisors just come up with the same old solutions.
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What was achieved with previous regimes having Pemandu
Also why are some in a hurry to get things done and pointing fingers at Anwar. Hello remember th 17000 GLC s and others who were terminated in their employment. Why no comment or criticisms then
I f we want this govt to succeed give them cooperation and time and work for the benefit of the nation. We must stop nitpicking.
PEMANDU was Najib's baby, so I doubt that the current government administration would be inclined to revive it.
Anyway, what you wrote below in your article makes a lot of sense:-
"PEMANDU needs to be on the ground, within communities, rather than in the seminar rooms of five star hotels in Putra Jaya. These people could empower ministers to solve their respective portfolio problems."
"Malaysia needs a bottom-up approach, rather than rely of top-down pro bono advisors. This could help prevent a policy malaise, where advisors just come up with the same old solutions. "
The idea for 1BestariNet was first conceived by some of the participants in PEMANDU’s Communications, Content and Infrastructure, National Key Economic Area (CCI NKEA) labs (workshop), which PEMANDU proposed to the Ministry of Education, which introduced it to Malaysia's schools in 2011.
However, the failure of the 1Bestarinet online learning platform for schools was due to insufficient or no consideration having been given to the realities for its end-users (the students, teachers and their parents) on the ground.
The key component of 1Bestarinet (when it was launched) was the FROG Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), which in order to fully benefit students, would require that they all have access to PCs, tablet device or smartphones especially at home, that they all have either fixed, WiFi or cellular broadband access at home, their their parents are savvy enough to interact with their teachers through the system, that the students won't use their online access to engage in frivolous or time wasting activities instead of doing using the facilities for study, how many families can afford to provide each of their school-going children with such equipment and broadband access, also imagine a situation where say five students in a family have to queue up to do their homework and assignments on the one PC with broadband access at home and so forth. Did the participants in the lab at PEMANDU who conceived of 1Bestarinet look into these issues facing the end-users on the ground?
In late October or early November 2012, I attended a conference by YTL Communications and FROG Asia (A YTL company) to announce their winning the contract to implement Phase 1 of 1Bestarinet. Below are the two parts of my article on the event which is straight reporting according to what I was told at the event.
Frog – For More Holistic Learning
https://www.enterpriseitnews.com.my/frog-for-more-holistic-learning/
Leapfrogging to the top, thanks to Frog
https://www.enterpriseitnews.com.my/leapfrogging-to-the-top-thanks-to-frog/
However, I had my doubts about the actual effectiveness of 1Bestarinet within real-world conditions on the ground in Malaysia. So I wrote a commentary which was published on 23 November 2012.
Will 1BestariNet really benefit all school students?
https://www.enterpriseitnews.com.my/will-1bestarinet-really-benefit-all-school-students/
Almost three years later on 22 October 2015, Free Malaysia Today wrote:-
Teachers scoff at ‘advice’ to use 1BestariNet
http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2015/10/22/teachers-scoff-at-advice-to-use-1bestarinet
The FMT article is no longer online but I had included it in my blog post on IT.Scheiss on 22 October 2015, in which I summarised my critique of 1Bestarinet.
Teachers' union says 1BestariNet useless for online learning from home
http://itsheiss.blogspot.com/2015/10/teachers-union-says-1bestarinet-useless.html
As it has turned out, 1Bestarinet is a flop, though the Ministry of Education is carrying on with 1Bestarinet using Google Classroom and Google Meet instead of YTL's FROG VLE after the Pakatan Harapan government did not renew YTL Communications' contract in 2019.
However, when the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to close and students to lean online from home, it turned out to be the same sad story as is highlighted in my IT Scheiss blog posts:-
20 April 2020
WELL SAID - Y.B TUAN P. RAMASAMY!
https://itsheiss.blogspot.com/2020/04/well-said-yb-tuan-p-ramasamy.html
22 April 2020
DIGITAL DIVIDE IN "AFFLUENT" AND "SOPHISTICATED" HONG KONG
https://itsheiss.blogspot.com/2020/04/digital-divide-in-affluent-and.html
27 May 2020
TEACHER's UNION FORESEES POORER STUDENTS WILL BE DISADVANTAGED WHEN IT COMES TO ONLINE LEARNING
https://itsheiss.blogspot.com/2020/05/teachers-union-foresees-poorer-students.html
In this blog post I described the problems a friend and neighbour whose son began Standard One in primary school by having to learn online from home, as well as the problems some parents of fellow students in his class faced:-
23 January 2021
A VIABLE COUNTER PROPOSAL TO E-LEARNING ?
https://itsheiss.blogspot.com/2021/01/a-viable-counter-proposal-to-e-learning.html
21 February 2021
WHY NOT ALLOW SCHOOLS TO OPEN ONLY IN AREAS WITH LOW DAILY NEW COVID-19 CASES ?
https://itsheiss.blogspot.com/2021/02/why-not-allow-schools-to-open-only-in.html
Also, at the rate at which newer versions of PC hardware, operating systems and applications software are coming out, as well as PC hardware which wears out, can the Ministry of Education afford to keep up with the need to repair or replace broken down hardware, upgrade or buy new and more powerful PC hardware to be able to comfortably run the newer operating systems and application software being released, whilst older versions are withdrawn from the market and rendered obsolete.
Basically, can the Ministry of Education, as well as the parents afford to spend the money required to run like hamsters on a treadmill to keep up with the "latest and greatest" PC hardware, operating system and application software on the block, as earlier versions are rendered "obsolete" as part of the suppliers' planned obsolescence, so they can keep on making repeat sales?
Meanwhile, the latest opinion amongst educators worldwide is that after over 30 years, computer-based learning has not proven to be superior to traditional "chalk and talk" classroom learning, as it was touted to be in the 1980s and 1990s.
However, some say that the present government's Menu Rahmah programme for balanced meals costing under RM5 is based upon the Menu Rakyat 1Malaysia (MR1M) programme implemented during the Najib Razak administration more than a decade ago, when it is said that a chain of restaurants known as Restoran Ukhwah was established and some 1,115 eateries participated in the initiative to provide side dishes for RM3 to RM5, inclusive of beverages.
So perhaps a rebranded version of "PEMANDU 2.0" may be acceptable to the present government, though hopefully, it will not produce a "2Bestarinet" which also turns out to be a flop.