This is the age of information and people demand transparency. Communication has evolved so much that it is now dominated by multi-party conversations. Information no longer largely flows in one way. Hence, I wrote to relevant government figures in 2020, just 10 days after Malaysia went through its first country-wide lockdown, requesting for more information to be made available to the public in regards of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In September 2021, Minister of Health at that time, Khairy Jamaluddin has announced the availability of COVIDNOW, a microsite with beautiful data visualisation based on several datasets related to COVID-19. The dataset was made public too via GitHhub.
Malaysian Ministry of Health (Kementerian Kesihatan Malaysia or KKM) took another step further when they improvised the portal to be KKMNow, which also includes other interesting data such as blood donation. Gone are the days when data is displayed in boring tables. Instead, visualisation can tell better stories to the public.
People demand transparency and the challenge now is even greater for the politicians as they pave their way to the 15th General Election in Malaysia.
Decisions made and their respective timing has surely yield different interpretations among the citizens. Dissolving parliament at federal and (some) state level, selection of candidates and whether to have a debate between PM candidates or not – people are watching how the events unfold.
#MalaysiaMemilih lets choose the best one to lead us.