“Allahyarham Tun Ahmad Sarji talked passionately about UNIRAZAK helping the public service realise their aspirations contained in the MyDigital Blueprint including to strengthen the foundation of digital adoption and drive, inclusive of digital transformation,” recalled Encik Amil Izham Hamzah, UNIRAZAK’s CEO, at the launch of the university’s inaugural 3-day course on Digital Transformation & Digital Governance on 7 June 2022 at the Elements Kuala Lumpur.

Inspired by the late Tun, who was then the university’s Chancellor, UNIRAZAK partners with Chamrun Digital to craft and design the course aimed at developing an understanding of policy trends on digital transformation, core technologies of the fourth industrial revolution, and policy competencies for the planning of digital governments.

“It is easy for us to talk about changing the software and hardware when we talk about digital transformation. We should, however, always remember the importance of the human factor in such digital transformation. Any organisation that embarks on digital transformation must include the transformation of its people, equipping its people with skillsets that is consistent with the goals of the digital transformation.”

Professor Datin Paduka Dr. Samsinar Md. Sidin, UNIRAZAK’s Vice-Chancellor, who gave the closing address on the third day of the course, echoed similar sentiments and added that the starting point to reaching digital transformation and digital governance vision is the people and their project management.

“I think starting off with realising that one of the key components to digital transformation and digital governance is a centralised system and one digital citizen dashboard with synced data across all ministries. However, inter-ministry discussion needs to happen to decide whether centralised or decentralised dashboards is the best way to go, design a wishlist for the system, bearing in mind, what citizens want, and what are the components to achieve it, before procurement happens.”

The key areas discussed during the course included IR4.0 technologies such as IoT, AI, blockchain technology, among others. Knowledge sharing session of what works using the Australian digital government as a case study, helped participants see how data from these technologies can turn government services more efficient and personalised for citizens thus turning the negative narrative to a positive one.

Encik Izham also expressed his hope that participants will be the catalyst to help drive digital transformation in the government sector.

List of speakers included local and international speakers from Chamrun Digital, Google Cloud Malaysia, ASFO Global Technologies Sdn Bhd and IIUM. The course  was also fortunate to have strategists for the digital transformation for the Australian government as well as UNIRAZAK’s very own Dean for Tun Abdul Razak School of Government.

About 30 participants comprising of government ministries and agencies as well as UNIRAZAK’s governance and public policy academics attended the course. The next course is expected to commence in July 2022.

About UNIRAZAK and ChamRun Digital Partnership

ChamRun Digital is UNIRAZAK’s digital marketing partner and has garnered more than 41 million impressions for the brand and its academic programmes through their digital campaigns. ChamRun’s expertise in digital marketing and digital transformations and UNIRAZAK’s in-depth understanding of governance and public policy complements the drafting and materialising of the training programme aimed at empowering public sector managers with the right mindset, knowledge and skillsets to drive the country’s digital economy aspirations.