MARCH 30 — How obscure can the entire deal surrounding MySejahtera be that not even high-level officials from the Health Ministry (MoH) and the Ministry of Finance (MoF), have the same understanding of what is exactly happening?

Reports on the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) hearing dated March 24, 2022 mentioned that Harjeet Singh, deputy secretary-general (finance) of the MoH, told the PAC that KPISoft Sdn Bhd (KPISoft) changed its name to MYSJ Sdn Bhd (MySJ).

At the same time, we also have Rosni Mohd Yusoff, deputy secretary at the Government Procurement Division from the MoF, reportedly stating that KPISoft and MYSJ are two different entities.

Through a press statement dated March 27, 2022, the MoH asserts that the Government owns MySejahtera, while mentioning nothing about MySJ. However, later on, Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin also reportedly pointed out that the negotiations with MySJ would not continue should MySJ disagree that the government owns the app.

Therefore, how can MoH assert that the government has "decided” that the MySejahtera application is owned by the government, while the ownership could still be in dispute? How can the MoH ignore MySJ’s ability to agree or disagree with this fundamental premise when it released the statement?

If we assume that MySJ has not agreed on the ownership of the app, what is the current fate of MySejahtera’s data?

As reported by CodeBlue, Entomo Malaysia is the owner of "all rights, title, and interest, including all intellectual property (IP) rights” related to the MySejahtera app, based on a share sale agreement on December 31, 2020, between MySJ’s shareholders. CodeBlue noted that this excludes "trademark and data collected through the operation of MySejahtera” that are owned by the Malaysian government.

It is unclear what the implication is of the Malaysian government owning the data without "all rights, title, and interest, including all intellectual property (IP) rights” of the MySejahtera app.

Questions may arise on the accessibility, privacy, and security of the data which may not be exclusive to the Malaysian government given that another private entity owns all rights.

On this note, Khairy reportedly said the following: "The data is kept by the government. It’s just that the new company needs to make a new deal in terms of platform maintenance. But we’re also in the process of looking at what services we need for the long term.”

Again, some key questions come to mind: