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The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Malaysian Administrative Modernisation And Management Planning (MAMPU) and Asia Online Publishing Group(AOPG) to launch the Big Open Wrangle went off without a hitch at the MAMPU office in Putrajaya today.

The event begins

To represent MAMPU, Yang Bahagia Dato’ Dr. Mazlan Yusoff Director General of MAMPU was on hand for the signing, while on the side of AOPG, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Melina Hwang was present.

Dr Mazlan says that there have been much promotion and publicity being carried out by MAMPU in order to address the Open Data initiative.

“We provide (the) platform for (the) government sector, to meet people from industry, from the business world, from the academia, to have a matching (on) how to fulfill their demand when it comes to open data. This has been done and we will continue to do it more agressively in the years ahead,” he said.

Seated for the signing

He explained that the Big Open Wrangle (BOW) is a competition to develop a simple mobile application. It began on the 5th of October and will be ongoing until March 2018.

“It is our hope that the program will indirectly enrich or enhance the usage or the application of open data through research, publication, resource sharing and expertise sharing. It is very important to continue this collaboration in our effort to strenghten innovation in going through the wave of IR4,” he added.

He went on to say that he hopes the efforts by both parties will be a success while at the same time thanked AOPG for agreeing to be part of the initiative and in taking on the responsibility of making the agenda a success.

All gathered and ready for the ceremony to begin

Speaking to AOPG CEO Melina Hwang, she shared the immense potential of open data and gave examples from across the globe that ranged from applications and projects which have delivered better access to medication or projects that have improved congestion and traffic flow which originated from open data projects.

“But the very interesting thing is very often, the work that had been done, to develop these applications or projects, has come from (the) private sector. But they’ve used the data thats come from (the) public sector. By government. So the collaboration is very important,” she added with AOPG, being an IT news publisher, they have a good handle on the pulse of the nation by providing news that has attracted the right audience for this initiative.

“Big Community is a news protal that covers Big Data, IoT (and) Artificial Intelligence. Because we cover those areas, we have something like 6,000 subcribers, all of whom are data analysts, Big Data Professionals, some from government but the majority are not. And these are people with real skills in analysing data.”

She went on to share that the company hoped to help MAMPU and the country in general, derive more from the open data initiative through the direct access they have to the people who could make excellent use of the open data platform.

The BOW is open to all Malaysian citizens who wish to either add to, enhance or begin a project with the open data source. Simply register here with Big Community or get in touch with us to know more details.