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Cabinet to appoint chief data scientist

PUTRAJAYA: The government will appoint a chief data scientist to better manage the massive amount of data on various platforms.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak said the cabinet would consider a list of candidates before making the appointment.

“We must push the country’s digital economy and face the challenges as the nation races towards achieving the status of a high-income and developed nation by 2020,” he said after the 26th MSC Malaysia Implementation Council meeting yesterday.

Also present were Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, Communications and Multimedia Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Shabery Cheek, Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC) chairman Tan Sri Abdul Halim Ali and MDeC chief executive officer Datuk Yasmin Mahmood.

Najib said the government had noted the need to shift the awarding of university scholarships from traditional disciplines towards new areas with high-demand skills, such as data sciences.

“To overcome the skill gap (in data sciences), the government has decided to instruct the scholarship agencies, including the Public Service Department, Education Ministry and the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission, to provide scholarships to produce more data scientists with bachelor’s, master’s or even PhD degrees.”

The prime minister said the government had noted the role of big data analytics (BDA) as a major area to boost the competitiveness of Malaysian businesses.

Najib said MDeC would implement three high-impact talent development projects:

SETTING up the Asian Institute of Data Science in collaboration with leading universities, such as Carnegie Mellon;

THE opening up of government open data, through data.gov.my; and

THE setting up of a private-sector led BDA Innovation Centre of Excellence to nurture Malaysian talent in data science, and drive usage and growth of BDA in the country.

Big data refers to the huge volume of data that will be difficult to analyse and handle using common database management tools. Computational analysis of the data can reveal patterns, trends and correlations between subjects, such as human characteristics and interactions.

The prime minister also presented the MSC Malaysia Asia-Pacific ICT 2013 Prime Minister’s Best of the Best Award to S5 Systems Sdn Bhd for developing the National Foreigner Registration system that addresses issues involving foreign nationals.

MDT Innovations Sdn Bhd also won the award for its smartphone SIM tag that eases business-to-business and business-to-consumers monetary transactions.

SJK (C) Yuk Chai Petaling Jaya walked away with the Special Jury Award for its intelligent nursing system — a robotic system that reminds patients to take their medication at the right dose, at the right time.

-NST

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