LETTER | MySejahtera data confirmed to have zero value

LETTER | ‘Two weeks after MySejahtera scans are no longer mandatory, usage plummets 97 percent nationwide.’

The above was the headline in a mainstream newspaper and it speaks for itself. The data was gathered from what was published on the Health Ministry’s Github portal.

The difference was stark across the board in the statistics for daily check-ins, unique locations checked in, and unique users logged.

Even in the federal administrative capital of Putrajaya, whose occupants are mainly civil servants, supposedly more compliant with the rules than the ordinary rakyat, saw just 1,163 daily check-ins on May 14 compared to 116,184 on April 30 - a difference of 99 percent as well.

Whoever and whichever party has the intention to commercialise the data in MySejahtera - the subject of which are matters pending before the courts arising from disputes between the shareholders - there is no value from which they can “squeeze” from the data in MySejahtera.

On April 29, 2022, under the heading ‘MySejahtera data is worthless according to its own website’, I wrote that users’ check-in data is only stored for a period of 90 days and would be purged thereafter and the information collected, which is not shared with other organisations for other purposes unless specifically stated, is used for monitoring and enforcement purposes by government authorities in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Thus, if the users are faceless and the MySejahtera app only has 90 days of data of each user that continuously evolves every day, with the past history deleted and replaced with new data, marketers will have a hard or impossible time building a profile of all and each user for target marketing purposes unless data stream mining is conducted.

Thus, does the app really have value? Just two weeks into the app being removed as a necessity for its users to scan when entering premises, the check-in numbers just confirmed that people conformed to the requirement for scanning out of necessity and in compliance with the regulations imposed.

When it is no longer mandatory and compliance is not necessary, the data that remains in MySejahtera are just personal details of its users and not their history and their movements.

Under this circumstance, there is really no reason for the government to pay for the app, which was given free to the country and its people except for the hardware necessary to maintain the personal details while Covid-19 is still deemed endemic in the country.

Does the government still need to engage an external party to manage and maintain the apps?

Well, we just have to wait for some interested party to conjure and come out with another outlandish justification for the government to maintain and manage the app for the future.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.