IT Bill may be dumped, says MOSTI - By Shannon Teoh December 13, 2011

PUTRAJAYA Dec 13 — The Science Technology and Innovation Ministry MOSTI said today it would discard the controversial Computing Professionals Bill if the industry can find a better way to boost the local industry towards meeting world-class standards.

Deputy Minister Datuk Fadillah Yusof told reporters after the ministry’s open day on the Bill that it is up to the IT sector to find ways to “uplift the IT profession ”

“There is no decision on whether it the Bill is going to be done or not We can use any other mechanism “That is why we have this open day It is up to the profession to decide how to protect themselves ”

The Petra Jaya MP said IT professionals voiced concern over the Bill when a draft surfaced online last week saying registration under the Board of Computing Professionals will hurt the billion-ringgit industry by shrinking the pool of eligible professionals.

But the ministry’s ICT policy division which is facilitating the process of formulating the Bill told The Malaysian Insider today it would have “no problems” if the industry were to offer a better alternative

Under Secretary Amirudin Abdul Wahab said the move was to reverse Malaysia’s sliding standards in computing as reflected by its drop from 50th place to 56th place in the International Telecommunication Union ICT Development Index between 2002 and 2008

Datuk Halimah Badioze Zaman who is part of the working committee drafting the Bill also said the Bill is not yet finalised having gone through 17 revisions so far “This is the fastest vehicle for us to get there to international standards If not what would be another vehicle to bring us forward ” the National Professors Council member said at the open day.

The Bill was earlier criticised for being unnecessary by about 50 IT practitioners who attended the open day with several accusing the government of “creating a crony club” for favoured companies

The current draft of the Bill seeks to establish a board that will certify individuals and firms who qualify to bid for the government’s Critical National Information Infrastructure CNII projects as computing professionals and computing service providers respectively

The panel of MOSTI advisers said today they were still working on a clear definition of the CNII with the definition used by the government’s cyber security agency being one of the templates Cyber Security Malaysia defines CNII as systems and functions that are vital to the nation that their incapacity or destruction would have a devastating impact on national economic strength image defence public health and safety and the government’s ability to function.

(Sources - http://www.themalaysianinsider.com)