Govt has never sold MySejahtera app, data confidentiality guaranteed - Khairy

KUALA LUMPUR: The government has never sold the MySejahtera app to any private company and it remains government owned, Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said.

He said this was as per the government's decision on Nov 26 last year that the Health Ministry (MOH) was appointed as its main owner for the country's public health management.

"MySejahtera data is under the ministry's supervision since it was first used with all data management undergoing a data administration process set by the ministry," he said in a statement as a response to questions surrounding the app's ownership status posed by several parties yesterday, including Port Dickson MP Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

Khairy also said that the government never made any payments to KPISOFT (M) Sdn Bhd (KPISOFT) that developed the app throughout the duration of its use from March 27, 2020 to March 31, 2021.

According to him, the company offered the use of the app to the government for a year's period without any payment as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) principles.

After the CSR period ended, Khairy said the government decided on March 31 last year to continue with MySejahtera's services due to its technology's robustness and dynamic capabilities and implemented serveral function upgrades till it reached the version used today.

Therefore, on Nov 26, 2021, the government determined that the MOH establish a price negotiation committee to conduct procurement price negotiations and app service management with the company for two years, in line with the government procurement guidelines, he said.

The procurement, he said, was agreed to by the Finance Ministry in a letter dated Feb 28 for implementation and the negotiation process was ongoing. He stressed that they would ensure due diligence was conducted in the process to protect the interests of the government.

Khairy explained that the scope of the procurement encompassed the operation of the MySejahtera platform, development of additional modules, maintenance, third-party database management and service, including subscriptions to Google Map and Places Application Programming Interface and Short Messaging Service.

Khairy said since its launch, the use of MySejahtera was based on the software as a service (SaaS), approach, as it helped the government reduce the turnaround time needed to develop a new software.

According to him, the use and management of its data needed to comply with the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases Act 1988 (Act 342), the Medical Act 1971 and international standards and would not be shared by the MOH with any government or private agency.

"The ministry hopes that the public will continue to use the MySejahtera app without any concerns. Data confidentiality of the public is ensured, and the ministry will always ensure this aspect is not compromised," he said.

He added that data transactions from the current MySejahtera app has over 10 modules as well as 38 million registered users who upload to the cloud server network daily and can only be accessed for the use of the MySejahtera app.

-- BERNAMA