How do you tell if a Government is serious about building its strength in the information technology and knowledge economy?

It’s not by forcing companies to setup their IT offices in no-man’s land.

Or having an unreliable internet service provider. If that’s not bad enough, we’re not allowed any alternatives. All other ISPs inadvertently links back to the last mile infrastructure- Telekom Malaysia Berhad.

I just heard from a Singapore friend that their government is giving a one-year domain fee waiver for every new .sg account registered. In Malaysia, not only we don’t get it free, we are even charged double the rate of a normal .com domain.

See the difference? I can’t help but suspect that our policymakers are all infected with the ‘migrant mentality’.

Simple waivers like these will benefit directly the entire population netizens who are venturing into their first online business ventures. I am afraid this will be very difficult to pull off in Malaysia, simply because anything that benefits the people directly will take ages to implement. If the proposal is to setup a RM500 million server hosting for technopreneurs, which will benefit a ‘group of people with vested interest’ (read: cronies), I am sure proposals of such nature will get the green light faster than you can say Numa Numa. Not being skeptical here, but there are so many real-life scenarios which I am sure you can also relate to.

Whatever issue at hand is secondary. The first question will always be “What’s in it for me?”

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