KUCHING: Sarawak Multimedia Authority (SMA) emerged as the first place winner in the 10+3 (ASEAN+China, Japan and Republic of South Korea) Digital Economy Innovation Awards Competition with its Sarawak Smart City Operating System entry.
SMA was among 200 entries and 26 finalists from Asean countries, China, Japan and South Korea. Among the well-known names were MYEG Services Berhad and Tencent Cloud Computing (Beijing) Co Ltd.
The award was handed over by SMA general manager Dr Zaidi Razak to Premier Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Abang Johari Tun Openg, who is also SMA chairman, during the SMA members meeting on Friday (March 25).
The 10+3 Digital Economy Innovation Forum 2021 was presented last year on Dec 8.
The competition was organised by the China Academy of Information and Communication Technology together with the Department of Industry and Information Technology of Yunnan Province.
SMA was led by Tan Chee Kang, with Dulcy Pani, John Wong and Alexander Chu as other key team members.
Tan said that SMA’s entry covered its past, present and future initiatives especially those which related to the Kuching Smart City Masterplan by the Premier of Sarawak on October 5, 2021.
“The Sarawak Smart City Operating System is Sarawak’s model for implementing service-oriented, people centric smart city. It will be a very comprehensive ecosystem which will comprise of hardware components, shared services, end user services and its governance.
“In a nutshell, the Kuching Smart City Masterplan is a strategy to promote synergy, collaboration and ownership of services towards betterment of society and economy for Sarawak.
‘’Kuching Smart City Masterplan has been developed with the computer operating systems concept at the core to synchronize, connect and harmonise smart city ecosystems in each city and throughout Sarawak.”
He added that based on public feedback, the plan maps out initiatives to develop components of the core operating systems that relate to the private sectors, communities and other government agencies aiming to enhance the city ecosystem in 2022 and beyond.
Tan also stressed that the participation in such a competition arena is a huge opportunity to promote Sarawak to the outside world particularly to countries that are championing in digitalisation.
‘’We want to showcase how Sarawak is indeed ready for digitalisation. Thus, a competition arena like this allows us to promote Sarawak in order to attract investments and digital partners for even greater digital innovations.”
He also expressed hope for such participation to enhance Sarawak’s branding in the global stage.
Meanwhile, Zaidi stated that such a prestigious award provided a great assurance on the various efforts undertaken by Sarawak in empowering digitalisation and digital economy.
He also said the achievement would allow SMA to better gel all the stakeholders in moving forward to achieve Sarawak’s aspiration to become a high income and developed state as enshrined in its digital economy agenda.
Zaidi also said that Sarawak was among the first in Malaysia to go forward with initiatives revolving around digitalisation and digital economy. ‘’We want Sarawak to have a presence in the global arena as well.”
