KUALA LUMPUR (Dec 28): Economy Minister Mohd Rafizi Ramli has denied allegations from "voices of dissent" claiming that the development of the government’s Central Database System (Padu) is a waste, as it involves contracts worth hundreds of millions of ringgit.

Rafizi said Padu was fully developed by civil servants from three agencies (the Ministry of Economy, the Department of Statistics Malaysia or DOSM, and the Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit or Mampu) in collaboration with all other agencies.

“For me, the strength of Padu lies in the fact that it involves the expertise of the entire civil servants, not consultants and external contractors,” he said in a post on his Facebook page here on Thursday.

He said civil servants developed the system using existing allocations and infrastructure without the need to open new tenders to private entities, thus not incurring additional expenses, as is often the case whenever a new system is introduced to the government.

“It surpasses all projects involving systems implemented by private entities in the past in terms of the capability to complete systems that cater to the needs of the government and the people in such a short period,” he said.

Rafizi said Padu was developed within seven months (May to December this year), and would not involve annual payments to private system providers, because it belongs to the government.

“Padu was completed within a short period by civil servants who worked day and night for seven months without additional allocations.

“I threw a challenge to the core team from the Ministry of Economy, DOSM and Mampu, saying that it is an opportunity to prove the expertise of civil servants,” he said, adding that kudos should be handed out to the civil servants.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim will launch Padu on Jan 2. The system will be open for three months for Malaysian citizens to verify and update their socio-economic data.

“When you enter Padu, information in all government databases (over 270) is already available — for example, personal information (the name, identification card, age, gender, etc), information on income, vehicles, children, dependents, and so on.

“But the information must be verified and updated to ensure that the government data is applied fairly to the people, because data from Padu will be used to target subsidies for eligible groups in the future,” he said.

According to him, Padu involves the development of the largest data system ever made by the public sector, and possibly the largest in the country’s history, because it involves details for each of the 32 million Malaysians, forming hundreds of millions of data points.

“Thank you to all civil servants and the whole team from various agencies for their hard work since May 2023 until Padu can be officially launched by the prime minister next week,” he added.