Of inept apps and cobwebby sites

That’s what’s ailing most government digital tools and portals.

MOBILE applications, aka apps, are all the rage. Just about every company and organisation tries to entice us to download their apps so that we can access their services, discounts and benefits.

But there is nothing altruistic about their intentions: The artificial intelligence in these software programmes can track us, enabling them to collect data on our lifestyle preferences, spending habits and trends.

No surprises that governments too have apps to collect such valuable data. According to statistia.com, there are 2.65 million apps in the Google Play Store and the figure includes the 200 apps linked to the Malaysian government.

This was made public when Special Functions Minister Datuk Dr Abd Latiff, in replying to MP for Kluang Wong Shi Qi’s question in the Dewan Rakyat, said as of July 2022, there were 200 apps developed by 93 government agencies.

Actually, there are 203 apps from 94 agencies listed on the Gallery of Malaysian Government Mobile Applications (Gamma), which is under the Prime Minister’s Department’s Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (Mampu).

There were 61,429,082 downloads in total, of which 41,181,444 were for MySejahtera which was, until recently, a controversial must-have app during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Reactions to the news about the government’s 200-odd apps have been mostly negative. For example, the Health Ministry’s MOH Clinic Appointment System had 339,112 downloads but earned a mere one-star rating with lots of angry reviews describing the app as “inconvenient”, “nonsense”, “useless”, “time-consuming” “user- unfriendly” and “total crap”.

One does wonder whether the agencies simply rolled out apps to meet their KPI and to justify the allocation in their budgets but failed to ensure quality, usefulness and functionality.

One government app that did better was the Agriculture Department’s 100 Tip Tanaman (Plant Tips) with 14,081 downloads and a 4.8 star rating with praise for being useful, informative and easy to use.

I downloaded it and, yes, it is very easy to use because it is really basic.

One just scrolls through the tips and some are quite useful like those on making natural pesticides but others are rather pointless like Tip 61 that states cili kulai is popular because it’s resistant to disease, is spicy and liked by many. Wah, really?Malaysians online also voiced their worries about cybersecurity. One tweeted that the apps are “200 more ways for our private data to be hacked, leaked and scammed”.

That is certainly a legitimate concern in view of the massive cyberthievery going on.

“Some (apps) probably have no or very weak data security, with no consistent upgrades – perfect for hackers,” the person added.

Others wanted to know how much money was spent on the apps with one critic remarking, “Seems like most of these apps were designed for some people to make a big profit”.

MP Wong says she intends to follow up on the issue and get more information. Well and good. I would like her to expand the scope to ask how much money is spent on government websites too. I have a huge beef with them.

With rare exceptions, the sites are disappointing because they lack well-written and visually strong and helpful content.

Many appear to be designed to be promotional platforms for the ministers and senior officials, highlighting their activities instead of being portals of useful information for citizens and foreigners.

Case in point are our tourism- related websites. Now that countries the world over are trying to restart their economies by luring in tourists, to me, these sites are economic frontliners that must be well-crafted.I compared our tourism.gov.my with the tourism websites of Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, and only ours had its home page plastered with announcements like “Tourism Malaysia lancar risalah gastronomi senarai restoran makanan laut di Sabah dan Labuan (Tourism Malaysia launches gastronomy brochure with list of seafood restaurants in Sabah and Labuan)”; “WCT malls, Tourism Malaysia and Visa partner to revive the country’s retail and tourism industry”; and “Minister Datuk Seri Nancy Shukri meets with Asean ambassadors and high commissioners to discuss tourism development”.

Good grief, would any tourist be interested in such information?

Our neighbours’ websites, on the other hand, get in the game right from the landing page, luring in the visitor with attractive, vibrant and engaging content. And their English versions are fully in that language as they should be because these are the portals tourists visit for information. Ours unfortunately are, in Malaysian parlance, “half-past six”.

I thought it was very clever for the Philippines site to have a map of the country on which you can click on every province to find out its attractions.

But my vote goes to Singapore. Its tourism website is immediately lively and draws you in with all the information nicely presented and well-written in perfect English.

The same goes for its National Museum and Esplanade, Theatres on the Bay. Both institutions and their websites are truly world class.

In comparison, our National Museum website, muziumnegara.gov.my, looks like the work of sleepy amateurs who put minimal effort into creating their website.

They must have used Google Translate because there are grammatical mistakes in the English version of the site, like the write-up on the museum’s origins: “The idea of establishing the National Museum has initiated by the First Prime Minister of Malaysia Yang Teramat Mulia Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra Al-Haj.

“The present building has built on the site of the former Selangor Museum (1906-1945). The construction of the museum began in 1959 and has completed in August 1963.”

And there is gobbledygook like: “An architect named Ho Kok Hoe has made the design of the National Museum building by the architecture of the castle rulers and the local Malay community.

“The front wall has also decorated with two murals made of Italian mosaic glass that display a string of Malaysian history and handicrafts.”

As for “What’s On” at the museum, nope, nothing much. There are posters of current and past exhibitions listed with no write-ups to indicate what the exhibitions are about.The same goes for our grandly- named Istana Budaya (Palace of Culture in English) which can’t hold a candle, no a tealight even, to Singapore’s ambitious and beautifully-planned and designed Esplanade and its exciting, chockablock website.

The palace’s neighbour in Kuala Lumpur, the National Art Gallery, is no better when it comes to information on its website.

I found it really strange that a tender calling for “The Service of Supplying and Installing Canvas Awning and Maintaining Motorized Retractable Awning (Arm Type) Including Related Works” is listed under “Latest Exhibition”.

How in the blazes are we going to compete with our neighbours for tourists with such shoddy efforts?

Most other government agencies aren’t any better. Who checks on the quality of their websites? Does Mampu, since Gamma comes under its purview, or is it a KPI case of the more the merrier?

There are thankfully rare exceptions, like the Malaysian Investment Development Authority’s excellent website.

One may argue that apps and websites are minor considerations in a bureaucracy. My counter argument is that these are important digital tools that connect the administration to the public. We should be concerned about such poor quality and lazy results because it could be an indication of a less-than-desirable work ethic in some quarters of the civil service. What’s more, these apps and websites are what we can actually see, like the tip of the bureaucratic iceberg.

Jaded citizens will agree that the late American newspaper columnist Charley Reese hit the nail on the head with this wry observation: “Government is inherently incompetent, and no matter what task it is assigned, it will do it in the most expensive and inefficient way possible.”

The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.