FAKE NEWS: Malaysia's MyEG Services RM 800 million partnership with Singapore's TraceTogether

WARNING!!! FAKE NEWS!!!

KUALA LUMPUR: Rumors are circulating about final talks of Malaysia's MYEG Services Bhd and Singapore's Government owned app TraceTogether. It pertains the development of an app with real-time monitoring of COVID-19 as well as other health and criminal hazards in a given user's vicinity. The budget is rumored to be around 800 million Ringgit Malaysia to 1 billion. 

According to a statement by the Smart Nation Office under the Prime Minister’s Office in Singapore, there are about 1.8 million people who have downloaded the TraceTogether app, but "it is not enough," as the app does not currently cover the digitally excluded population including the elderly and young children who may not have smartphones. They hope to alleviate this by teaming app with Malaysia's MyEG team who have more experience in building apps that are more kid and elderly-friendly.

Another issue with Singapore's TraceTogether is that the app does not work reliably on iOS devices and can pose a significant drain on battery life, which will deter those who are using Apple devices such as the iPhone from downloading the app. The joint team hopes to solve this problem as well.

Not long ago, a research was conducted to study user acceptance of Malaysia's e-government services called MyEG via a theoretical framework. The results are compared to a similar research conducted in Singapore. The motivation and benefits derived from this research was utilized to improve the overall quality of services provided by MyEG and to enhance the efficiency as well as accountability of this e-government service.

This research was done by applying a theoretical framework known as TAM (Technology Acceptance Model) involving several factors such as intention to use, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, image, compatibility and trust. The research data was then validated by examining similar factors that had significance results, followed by the development of a simple prototype. 

The results obtained from this research would be beneficial to enhance the level of adoption among the citizens in Malaysia as well as in Singapore (and potentially in other ASEAN countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines). The identification of the different factors influencing the acceptance levels of users can also provide a better vision on the end-user perspective for MyEG developers and lead them to achieve better results in future platform developments. In addition, this study also fills the current existing gap in e-government research of Malaysia and contributes to the literature on the public users’ perspective of e-government services.

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