PETALING JAYA: State governments should be included in the federal Data Centre Task Force (DCTF) to ensure sustainable planning and resource management, says Datuk Seri Amirudin Shaari.
The Selangor Mentri Besar said collaborative planning between federal and state authorities is vital to determine the exact volume of data centres needed to drive Malaysia’s ambition of becoming an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered nation by 2030.
"I recommend to the Digital Minister for all state governments to also be represented on this task force so that we can collaborate, plan better, and analyse the exact volume of data centres needed nationally," he said during the launch of the NEXTDC KL1 facility here on Thursday (May 14).
Amirudin also announced that the state government is currently drafting a White Paper on AI to comprehensively study its benefits and risks, including privacy, national security and sustainability issues.
"That is fundamental to strike a balance between progress and security. That is the only way we can gain the trust of the people to take advantage of the potential of AI while understanding there will always be certain risks involved," he said.
Addressing local concerns surrounding the rapid development of data centres, such as high water and power consumption as well as potential noise pollution, he noted that developers must be proactive in communicating sustainability efforts to the public.
He commended NEXTDC's approach for the KL1 facility, which utilises air cooling over conventional liquid cooling and incorporates rainwater collection to reduce environmental strain.
The RM1bil facility is the first Tier IV data centre in Peninsular Malaysia.
The 65MW, NVIDIA-certified infrastructure is geared towards large-scale use cases, including high-volume e-commerce, cloud service providers, and critical sectors like health and defence that require zero downtime.
