PUTRAJAYA (Dec 29): No issues were identified during the trial run of the Central Database Hub (Pangkalan Data Utama or PADU), which started in November, comprising one million households in the Klang Valley, according to Minister of Economy Rafizi Ramli.

As such, PADU will be launched by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim as planned on Jan 2, 2024, and will be open to the public to validate their data until March 31, Rafizi said. 

PADU comprises 39 main information themes. This includes general information, home address, education, household, occupation, income, financial commitments, and existing government aid — which will be automatically compiled based on existing information stored by various government agencies and government-linked companies.

The main focus of PADU will first be to implement the unity government’s targeted subsidies on petrol, which is targeted for roll-out in 2H2024. Then, PADU will also be utilised for other government digital initiatives, the minister added.

Individuals in urban areas with internet access can update their information via the PADU portal at www.padu.gov.my, while individuals in rural areas with no internet access can register manually via submitting a physical form.

“In terms of UI [user interface] and the system, there are no bugs. But what remains to be seen is how much bandwidth do we prepare, because the bandwidth costs money. So we need to optimise the bandwidth because if we spend too much of government allocation, that would be a problem too.

“We have a hypothesis on how much we need based on previous data, and I am hoping it will be like that — as we expect,” Rafizi told journalists during a press conference on PADU here.

“If the volume is low we don’t have a problem, but if it is shooting up to the roof, then it will be a problem — and this we can’t test through a dry run, because we will only know once we launch,” he added.

Rafizi said there is no issue if individuals fail or opt out of updating their data, as it will only mean that the government will use the existing data on the individuals in their system.

Touching on ownership of PADU’s data, Rafizi said it will fall under the respective government agencies who are already custodians of the respective data in accordance with various legislation.

For example, individual personal data were sourced from the National Registration Department while data on household income were retrieved from the Employees Provident Fund and Inland Revenue Board.

He underlined that these various legislation prevented agencies from sharing data in the past, but noted that data sharing agreements have been inked to enable the data to be compiled into PADU.

This data sharing agreement is pending the gazetting of the Omnibus Act, which will be tabled to the parliament in 2024, to formally allow sharing of data between all government agencies via PADU.

Addressing the concern of bad actors inputting false information into the system, Rafizi noted that PADU’s algorithm will be able to flag any mismatches by cross-checking with specific data sets and existing data stored by government agencies.

“As we go through this, this is where the algorithms can be developed from time to time. The first round will look at different anomalies, as an example: you declare RM500 in income, but have two Mercedes-Benz — this, the system will be able to flag,” Rafizi said.

“But, when you administer this for 32 million, then the categories of anomalies or false declarations will be more complete and that will allow PADU to develop a more in depth algorithm to detect false information,” he said.

Instead of relying on government bureaucrats to manually validate the information, Rafizi explained that PADU will utilise its algorithm to cross-check the data.

“There will be different classes of data matching, one would be the ‘gold standard’ where it matches correctly, while others will stand out as anomalies.

“There will be bad actors, and this has always been a challenge to government agencies in the past. That risk is one of the biggest motivations to implement PADU, [as it aims] to minimise it,” Rafizi added.

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