GTP 2.0 - Prime Minister's Office of Malaysia

CoRRuPtIoN
“We continue to be very impressed with
the building blocks for the anti-corruption
infrastructure in Malaysia,” said Hershman, who
is one of the founding members of Transparency
International.
“This is starting to pay dividends and will
continue to pay dividends in coming years. I
already see what I believe to be a slight change
in the culture about how business ought to
be conducted and this is particularly true of
corporations here.”
The panel is pleased to see a shift in
emphasis from enforcement to prevention and
education in GTP 2.0. The Fighting Corruption
NKRA introduced the Education and Public
Support workstream into its overall framework
for the second horizon of the GTP, which will
begin with anti-corruption education begun
in schools and to all members of parliament.
The Panel further noted the initiatives that
will be taken in GTP 2.0 on strengthening the
work done by MACC with the setting up of the
Special Committee on Corruption to answer
questions concerning MACC Annual Report
and the Executive Review Committee. The
proposed tracking of actions on findings in the
Auditor General’s Report through an online
dashboard is commendable. The publication of
more than 6,600 government contracts online
is encouraging and we would encourage this to
be extended to other government commercial
agreements, subject
to commercial-in-confidence limitations.
The IPR also made the following specific
suggestions that they would like to see
incorporated into the GTP going forward:
ethics training for all public servants within
Malaysia at both the federal and state level;
greater action taken on political finance
reform;
the continued expansion of the
e-procurement system through faster growth
and the inclusion of higher cost contracts;
the creation of an independent anticorruption
prosecutor to complement the
special corruption courts;
appropriate oversight over intermediaries
and special officers whom are often the
progenitors of corruption; and
promote the independence of the media and
investigative reporting in the media.
198 Government transformation Programme—Annual Report 2012 IPR 199
Government transformation Programme—Annual Report 2012 IPR
EDuCatIoN
The IPR Panel was encouraged by the plans going
forward under the EDU NKRA, and reserved
special praise for its use of technology to
broaden its reach to all students in Malaysia.
They were, in particularly, happy with the plan
to test all English teachers in Malaysia for
language proficiency, the expansion of the LINUS
programme to include English and the specific
testing done for both literacy and numeracy.
However, the Panel expressed concern about
declining student outcomes in the benchmark
Trends in International Mathematics and Science
Study (TIMS).
“The TIMS scores, which are beginning to
decline and are not where we hoped they would
be is something that you need to look at more
deeply, to try and find the cause behind that,”
said Michael Thatcher.
He added that though there has been good
use of technology and focus on technology to
improve student results, he encouraged greater
exploration of innovation to further increase
capacity.
“There has been an absolute tremendous
use of technology and focus on technology
towards solving some of the problems with
regard to increasing reach, creating new
opportunities and looking at how we can upskill
some of the shortfalls with the teaching faculty
and students,” he said.
“One thing we encourage you to do is
keep looking at new innovative approaches
for development. For example, while the use
of technology has become pervasive, using
technology as an educational tool itself, should
be made part of teachers training curriculum. The
Skills needed for the 21st Century Workforce are
different. It is essential to ensure that academic
education is adapted to ensure that these skills
are developed. Technology itself can be used to
scale a transformational education.”
CRImE
The decline in the crime rate was a positive
take-away for the IPR Panel, who was encouraged
by the use of technology and data to direct
limited police resources to areas that need it the
most under the Hotspot Initiative.
“You have a fundamentally larger police
force hitting some of the key hotspot areas [and]
this has been a very good initiative, which has
allowed you to focus on specific areas,” he said.
“One of the questions that came to us though
was, ‘How do you analyse and respond to some
of the root causes driving crime?’ and we think
more investigation needs to be done there.”
The question was raised in the earlier IPR
panel discussions where the panel members and
the NKRA team discussed catalysts of criminal
activity, such as drug addiction, and their
impact on crime numbers. The IPR Panel agreed
that more needed to be done in the areas of
prevention, such as getting drugs off the street.
The other issue, the Panel reported, was the
fact that public perception of crime continued to
worsen despite the reduction in reported crime
rates. More work needed to be done to identify
and manage the issue, it added, including
addressing the question of whether the indexing
system used by the police force were adequately
capturing the country’s criminal patterns. We
understand that GTP 2.0 will be addressing this
issue.