all about my kad

Ola Guys,

I was applying a new Mykad for the change of address last week when I thought to made my first entry about Mykad, something is very relevant to us yet we are forgetting its existence and appliances.

Through my reading at the Wikipedia, the major boom in smart card use came in the 1990s, with the introduction of smart-card-based SIMs used in GSM mobile phone equipment in Europe. With the mobile phones come into trend and necessity in Europe, smart cards have become very common. Sim card was first invented in way back in 1968. Just realizes that the technology is nearly 50 years old. However, I will not talk in depth about smart card but more into the information management issues using smart card and the readiness of our people to adopt the technology.

Before I continue writing, let us refresh who, when and why smartcard appliances introduced in Malaysia. Few things that I can recalled is that in February 1991 our former prime minister, Tun Mahathir came out with a project paper called to ‘Wawasan 2020” as direction for Malaysian’s to vision ourselves as a develop country. One of objective planned is to develop a civilized nation with science and technology literate. I could not trace when the direction towards becoming and IT Hub amongst Asian country was planned, but this direction has created MSC Malaysia.

MyKad is one out of seven MSC Malaysia’s projects. The Smart Card Project was first introduced in Malaysia in 2001 right after the evolutionary of identification card concept that was first introduced in 1948 up to 1999. Just to share a little bit of history; ‘kad pengenalan’ was introduced by the government to identify genuine citizen and communist

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What is so special about MyKad after all? Nothing is so special about MyKad except it was first introduced with applications to store personal data such as medical profile and financial profile. This has made Mykad to be different with other smartcards and was claimed to be the first in the world.

Cut short, is MyKad an effective measure to manage our personal data/information or is it true that it is good but only as off-line identification card?I would recommend readers of this entry to log in to http://www.jpn.gov.my/ to explore the more than 30 applications provided by the MyKad. Gosh..I was so surprised because when I first access the homepage I did not know it offers such a wide range of application. But you know what, I bet that many of us are not aware that we are underutilizing the smart card!

Without really using It, I have to admit that personal information and data can be efficiently managed with the full application of Mykad however I doubt the effectiveness. Guess what? I am not using all the applications yet I manage all of my own personal information and data well and secure. Hence, to preserve the technology MSC should re-assess the project to incorporate what are the benefits MyKad can offers to people other than convenience? They should also re-assess the people readiness to applies the technology. Additionally they should improve the security levels or re-assess the risk profiling of MyKad since it is easily stolen, hijacked or damaged.

Since we are 9 more years towards wawasan 2020, MSC should let us the people know what is the progress of the MyKad project, what have been achieved so far, what are lacking, what are the drawbacks and etc. As Malaysian I would think that the people will be more than grateful if the MyKad can assist them to manage their individual details in a meaningful way, safely, conveniently and effectively

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