KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s civil servants are becoming more productive with the adoption of digital technologies, but a prevailing culture of secrecy remains a major obstacle.
World Bank Lead Economist for Malaysia Apurva Sanghi said the world’s largest survey of civil servants, involving over 16,500 officers across all 28 federal ministries, in collaboration with the Public Service Department, revealed that artificial intelligence (AI) is saving civil servants an average of 2.5 hours a day.
"However, the gains vary, with the Digital Ministry and the Investment, Trade and Industry Ministry (Miti) taking the lead, while the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry and the Finance Ministry are lagging,” he said in a post on X on Friday (Oct 3).
From the GovTech Skills Survey of Malaysian Public Servants 2025, the Digital Ministry recorded the highest frequency of AI tool usage, with 78 respondents answering "at least once a week” usage, while the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry recorded only 42.
Malaysia was also found to outperform both Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries and Asean peers in several areas
According to the Global GovTech Maturity Index (GTMI) 2022 by World Bank, Malaysia scored 1.0 in cloud platforms, disruptive technologies and Government Service Bus (GBS), compared to OECD averages of 0.81, 0.86 and 0.74 and Asean averages of 0.74, 0.61 and 0.60, respectively.
GBS is a central platform for digitally integrating government agencies, allowing them to exchange data and provide integrated e-services to the public.
Malaysia also performed strongly in enterprise architecture with a score of 0.80, surpassing OECD's 0.63 and Asean's 0.65, while in open-source software, the country scored 0.62, ahead of Asean (0.38) but slightly behind OECD (0.59).
However, he noted that Malaysia's "secrecy-by-default” culture poses a significant barrier to progress.
"Malaysia shares statistics, but not as much service or outcome data. The lack of a proper legal framework reinforces secrecy, while cross-agency data sharing remains a key barrier,” said Sanghi.
The data shows that Malaysia lags behind OECD countries in the disclosure of service delivery data across 23 indicators, with only 26.1% of Malaysia’s data published externally, compared to 35% for OECD members.
However, Malaysia performs slightly better than the Asean countries, which average 22.3%.
More than 54.5% of Malaysia’s service data is not published at all, which is higher than the OECD average of 49%, but better than Asean, where 64.7% of data remains unpublished.
Meanwhile, the Global Data Barometer (GDB) further places Malaysia in the mid-range between its OECD and Asean peers, performing reasonably well in governance and capabilities but weaker on data availability, use and impact.
He said that while Malaysia scores well on digital metrics and civil servants feel more productive, the real measure of success is improved outcomes for the people.
"This requires a shift from ‘secrecy-by-default’ to ‘openness-by-default’. A strong Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) will be the key,” he said.
Sanghi cautioned that although Freedom of Information (FOI) laws are important, they are often undermined in practice as governments may stonewall requests, impose high fees or invoke national security.
He added that the effectiveness of Malaysia’s FOIA will depend on how well it addresses these challenges, while balancing its provisions with those of the Official Secrets Act (OSA). —Bernama
