Amazon Web Services (AWS) said Wednesday it has signed a new Cloud Framework Agreement (CFA) with the Malaysian government, together with local information technology (IT) provider and AWS partner Radmik Solutions Sdn Bhd, to help accelerate cloud adoption in the public sector and help agencies save costs, boost digital skills, and drive innovation.
The CFA enables Radmik Solutions, an IT systems integrator and technology service provider in Malaysia, and now an AWS managed service provider, to provide consulting and technology services to government agencies and contribute towards the growth of Malaysia’s digital economy, AWS said in a statement.
According to the statement, AWS is the first international cloud service provider to have concluded and signed a CFA with the Malaysian government, as part of its long-term commitment to support Malaysia’s digital transformation.
The statement also said that Malaysia’s government agencies and departments can now access AWS Cloud services through a streamlined procurement model to drive innovation and digitize government services for citizens.
The CFA removes the administrative overhead for individual agencies and departments through favorable, pre-negotiated contract terms and conditions, which streamlines the cloud adoption process for government agencies and helps them save costs as a result of the economies of scale achieved from the aggregated procurement.
It said Malaysian government agencies now have a consistent approach to access and use all AWS services in any of AWS’s 84 Availability Zones spanning 26 geographic regions around the world, without having to negotiate separate contract terms. They will be able to leverage the breadth and depth of more than 200 fully-featured AWS Cloud services, including AWS’s industry-leading security capabilities, global infrastructure, and comprehensive security and compliance controls validated by third-parties.
“Aligning to Malaysia’s MyDigital initiative, the Government has published a ‘Cloud First Policy’ circular to provide guidelines for adopting cloud computing technology in the implementation of information and communications technology (ICT) projects to further improve public service delivery,” said Adi Azlan, Principal Assistant Director of the Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) at the Prime Minister’s Department.
According to AWS, the flexibility in access to AWS Cloud services encourages experimentation with new ideas to accelerate innovation within the Malaysian government, as well as the ability to deliver new citizen services more quickly and at a reduced cost. The AWS services offered include AWS Enterprise Support to provide close guidance and best practices, and AWS Professional Services for agencies that need to obtain more guidance on complex projects.
It also noted the CFA is part of AWS’s ongoing commitment to support the Malaysian government’s Digital Economy Blueprint, which is the country’s roadmap towards becoming a regional leader in the digital economy. AWS Malaysian customers include large public sector organizations, such as the Ministry of Higher Education and the Smart Selangor Delivery Unit in the Selangor State Government, as well as leading companies like Petronas and innovative startups like Storehub.
According to the statement, the Department of Polytechnic and Community College Education in Malaysia’s Ministry of Higher Education used AWS to reduce downtime in delivering education services on its cloud-based learning management system, Curriculum Information Document Online System (CIDOS). Their CIDOS is now the largest integrated cloud-based education platform in Malaysia’s public sector, delivering a full year of academic curriculum online for over 110,000 students and 7,000 lecturers across 36 polytechnics. Additionally, the Selangor state government adopted AWS Cloud technology to build and run its Citizens Electronic Payments Platform (CEPat), which enables citizens to access paid government services on their mobile or through the web.
It also said the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM), which collects national economic and social statistics, became the first Malaysian federal government agency to migrate to AWS in 2020. While the agency typically only takes three months to conduct Malaysia’s national census, it needed to maintain its costly on-premises infrastructure year-round. By switching to cloud services, DOSM now only uses cloud resources as needed, saving costs and improving scalability. DOSM migrated its citizen-facing services to the cloud using various AWS services and worked alongside AWS Partners Uberfusion and Integriti Padu (IPSB Technology) to handle traffic spikes, improve security, and help census workers access DOSM’s cloud-based e-learning solution. On AWS, DOSM’s census portal can handle 100 percent of its traffic at any time, including at a peak of 200,000 users. In total, DOSM helped nine million users access Malaysia Census Data on AWS.
AWS said it has an extensive network of AWS Partners in Malaysia, such as Maxis Enterprise and Radmik Solutions, who help support Malaysian businesses and organizations in their cloud journey. Radmik Solutions will offer consulting and technology services to government agencies as the local Managed Services Provider in the CFA.
“We are delighted to collaborate with the world’s leading cloud services provider to accelerate cloud adoption in Malaysia’s public sector. This collaboration will give us the speed and connectivity to foster greater innovation and accelerate our customers’ digital transformation,” said Adam Roslly, Managing Director of Radmik Solutions.
To help accelerate innovation with the Malaysian government, AWS said it will provide training support for selected federal government employees via on-demand digital courses, facilitated training events, and instructor-led classroom training. These initiatives aim to help government employees develop the skills and expertise needed to implement cloud technologies at scale, make better data-driven business decisions, and innovate new services to drive improved outcomes for citizens.
This training support is part of AWS’s broader commitment to help develop a digitally-trained workforce to power Malaysia’s digital economy. In January 2022, AWS launched the re/Start program in Malaysia, through free cloud computing courses offered by Malaysia-based UNITAR International University.
“We are excited to support the Malaysia government, in collaboration with AWS partner Radmik Solutions, to help build the digital future of the country. This CFA will make it easier for government agencies to procure AWS services, and enable them to use the cloud to rapidly experiment at a lower cost and with increased flexibility. It will pave the way for an accelerated cloud adoption journey in Malaysia by removing barriers in government technology procurement, allowing government agencies to focus their time and resources on their core mission of improving citizen services,” said Eric Conrad, managing director of worldwide public sector for ASEAN at AWS.