Open Government Malaysia

Executive Summary

Open government is about much more than transparency and citizen participation.  Collaboration between government and citizens is a key driver of development. Creating an open government, is a joint programme of the whole public sector. It includes ministries and agencies on the national level and municipalities on the local level. The main goal is to increase the trust of citizens in government and to stabilise it on a high level. This is only possible if the structures of the government and its functions, services and reforms are understandable to citizens and if participation in policy-making and service planning is feasible. Enhancing open government needs to be part of daily work and development of the public administration.

To ensure better and functional government reforms, the government is urged to commit to the principles of transparency and open by endorsing the Open Government Partnership (OGP) declaration. In order to uphold the principles of OGP, the government should promote accountability by enabling journalists, researchers, government officials, and the public to scrutinize, question, and ultimately improve how government works. The key elements include:

  1. Enhance citizens’ possibilities to participate in the preparatory work of public administration, decision-making and development projects; 
  2. Contribute to open data and meaningful access, by providing valuable data and information to the society, through user-friendly information format including infographic visualisation; 
  3. Openness in the public sector, public servants and/or government officials need support and training to develop interaction and new information management skills to foster a better participation of the public. 

This document includes the definition of Open Government Partnership, the importance of open government policy, and the existing open government initiative in Malaysia that should be given priorities. Malaysia is currently well poised to join OGP, as well as with the efforts led by The Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU), and just needs a Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) for which the Legal Affairs Division (Bahagian Hal Ehwal Undang-undang-BHEUU) has already begun the process in collaboration with civil society. This document also shows examples of the successful implementation of open government in other countries. 

[Download the full Policy Brief here: EN | MS]