This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on April 11, 2022 - April 17, 2022

As Malaysia reopens its borders this month, the country is still not utilising a major tool to fight Covid-19 in the third year of the pandemic — data. Malaysia is not learning from nor adopting the best practices of other countries and implementing policies to help communities “coexist” with Covid-19.

To harness the power of data, the government should collaborate with the private sector to share information that can be utilised to generate value while providing a supportive and transparent regulatory environment. Data to combat the pandemic can help with virus detection, mitigation of spread, treatments and vaccines.

Public policy responses and private sector initiatives are equally informed by and reliant on data analytics. Access to data in real time is vital to understanding the epidemiology of the virus, calibrating public policy countermeasures, such as social distancing, accelerating research and encouraging development of diagnostics, treatments and vaccines.

Many countries have trialled and implemented best practices that the government should consider adopting or study for implementation before the next pandemic or natural disaster hits the country.

Malaysia should leverage the use of mobile positioning data (MPD) to track tourists in the country. Indonesia’s apex statistical body, Badan Pusat Statistik, in cooperation with its largest telecommunications provider, Telkomsel, uses aggregated and anonymised mobile positioning data (so that individuals are no longer identifiable) to track the movements of tourists.

First implemented in 2018, MPD measured visitors at the 18th Asian Games held in Jakarta and Palembang, as well as during the International Monetary Fund-World Bank annual meeting in Bali. This method provides a consistent data source in situations where the production of traditional tourism statistics is limited. It also furnishes granular data in time and scale that helps the authorities make better decisions, such as when to promote domestic tourism or establish bilateral and regional travel bubbles.

Other countries also use this approach to gather mobility data to understand human mobility and migration patterns caused by Covid-19. Statistics Korea (Kostat) and Data Ventures of Statistics New Zealand leveraged their partnerships with telecommunications providers in response to the pandemic. Kostat carried out population movement analysis before and after Covid-19, while Data Ventures developed a report on Covid-19’s impact on local councils’ central business district population. The data was then used to map the spread of the virus, design containment policies and evaluate the socioeconomic impact of lockdowns.

Bangladesh went a step further with the a2i (access to information) team of the Bangladeshi ICT Ministry negotiating access to MPD with several telcos at the onset of the pandemic to track its spread in near real time.

Since the onset of the pandemic, EU member states’ satellites have monitored traffic congestion at border crossings and mapped medical facilities, hospitals and other critical infrastructure. Collected from satellites and combined with artificial intelligence, the information provides public officials with models to understand and tackle the emergency. National authorities could make informed decisions on easing lockdown rules used to halt the spread of the virus.

The data was behind the development of the Galileo for Green Lane app for border officials and drivers, with the aim of monitoring, facilitating and expediting freight traffic at green-lane crossings, thereby enabling the transit of critical goods like vaccines and food. Malaysia can use the same method, especially during major festivals, to monitor the exodus from urban to rural areas and times of national disasters, like last December’s torrential floods.

The Singapore tourism analytics network (STAN) analyses data on tourist behaviour, such as spending patterns and length of stay in hotels. Tourism officials at all levels are able to draw insights from data and make decisions on tourism management during the endemic phase. The network (developed in partnership with Adobe) integrated more than 20,000 internal data domains and signed 15 data-sharing agreements with the likes of tech giants Grab, Tencent and Expedia.

The Singapore Tourism Board (STB), utilising STAN, is able to analyse visitor source markets and engage with tourists by reading key trends, target specific audiences and create personalised travel experiences. As countries reopen their borders, it is important for Tourism Malaysia to leverage data to grab a share of international visitors following two disastrous years for the industry and host tourism-related sporting and entertainment events.

There is a cautionary tale about data sharing as a lack of public trust can undermine the best initiatives, as seen in the recent MySejahtera controversy. The government can overcome this by addressing sensitivities and through efforts to protect privacy and security by adopting existing standards and practices. There have been two national policies implemented successfully in the region that support data sharing while protecting individuals. Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC) launched a trusted data-sharing framework to facilitate data sharing between organisations and consumers by providing strong safeguards and clarity on regulatory compliance related to sharing data.

The second initiative is in the Philippines, where the National Privacy Commission (NPC) issued new guidelines on data-sharing agreements to clarify how data can be shared with third parties through a contractual, joint-issuance document that contains the terms and conditions of the arrangement between two or more parties.

Malaysia’s Ministry of Health established a health data warehouse in 2017 to gather health-related data from both public and private hospitals, enabling providers to make more informed decisions for treatment. But more must be done to utilise this data while updating various regulatory frameworks, such as personal data protection, cybersecurity and intellectual property rights. The framework already exists for the government to adopt and build on what has been successfully implemented by other countries in their ongoing fight against Covid-19. The respective ministries should study these initiatives and implement those that will bring the greatest benefit to Malaysia.

Jamil A Ghani is a researcher at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia

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