June 1, 2006

What do you see when countries negotiate in the bilateral and multi-lateral trade agreements? I see perpetual catching-up in economic divides if we are not careful when dealing with issues that involve patents, copyrights and intellectual property rights.

That said, it’s quite disturbing to hear that Malaysia will pass the Patents Act (Amendment) Bill as the country has decided to accede to the Patent Co-operation Treaty (PCT) by the end of 2006.

As it is, apart from the PCT, Malaysia is also acceding to three additional treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), namely the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT), the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT) and the Budapest Treaty on the International Recognition of the Deposit of Micro-organisms for the Purposes of Patent Procedure, or in short, the Budapest Treaty.

Patents can be easily related to escalated costs in building quality of life, and there is sufficient evidence to support this argument, with patented medicines as a solid example. Patented anti-retrovirals administered on AIDS patients used to be US$15,000 per patient per year. The generic versions, which are just as safe and effective, are US$150 per patient per year.

May 16, 2006

How did you file your income tax returns this year, by manual submission or e-Filing? Let me tell you this, I tried e-Filing. I gave up, and returned to paper submission.

Despite the hype, the Inland Revenue Board just isn’t ready with the electronic tax returns processes. My benchmark is the electronic visa application process employed by the US Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, which has a similar methodology. You need Internet connection, filling of electronic forms and final output in PDF. It’s done in a jiffy, as all information submitted electronically will be verified with the government’s backend databases. In contrast, our IRB is half-baked with their processes, with loopholes in between.

May 1, 2006

Before becoming the Minister of Energy, Water and Communication in 2004, Datuk Seri Dr Lim Keng Yaik manned fort as the Minister for Primary Industries. His tenure took him through the rigorous period of massive development during the late 1980’s and the doldrums of the Asian Financial Crisis. It was his mettle in the palm oil industry that has unquestionably helped ascertain Malaysia’s continued foreign exchange income during those stormy years of the late 1990s. Despite the extended economic gloom, palm oil outshined other commodities in export revenue and provided the country much shelter in managing its fiscal shortfall that seriously impacted the neighbouring countries.

However, sitting in his new ministry where water, energy and communications industries are housed in one, his responsibility tripled. Leaving energy and water industries aside, to what extent is he going to leave behind a legacy that equalled his days spent in primary industries?

Currently, he has a plateful of unresolved issues. Fast-track broadband penetration; propelling the development of content to make broadband pervasiveness relevant; mobile-number portability; faster broadband speeds, operators’ lukewarm response to the registration of prepaid cellular service users. All are in a deadlock. How are to further liberalise the telecommunications industry when the telcos continued to resist the country’s public policies?

April 16, 2006

When big corporations as diverse as Nintendo and Cirque du Soleil are adopting ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’ in their marketing campaigns, you better watch out. Smart CEOs around the world are having a new book for their bedtime reading.

The book is titled: ‘BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant’ co-authored by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne (Harvard Business School Press, 2005). It deals with new approaches to tackle competition in the market place.

In the book, the authors use the ocean as a metaphor to describe the competitive space in which an organisation chooses to swim. Red oceans refer to the frequently accessed market spaces where the products are well-defined, competitors are known and competition is based on price, product quality and service. In other words, red oceans are an old paradigm that represents all the industries in existence today.

In contrast, the blue oceans denote an environment where products are not yet well-defined, competitors are not structured and the market is relatively unknown. Companies that sail in the blue oceans are those adept at beating the competition by focussing on developing compelling value innovations that create uncontested market space.

Kim and Mauborgne’s book is based on a study of 150 strategic moves that spanned more than a hundred years (1880 – 2000) and thirty industries. Ther authors argue that tomorrow’s leading companies will succeed not by battling competitors, but by making strategic moves which they call “value innovation”. It’s a grand design to create powerful leaps in value for both the firm and its buyers, unleashing new demand, thus rendering rivals obsolete.

April 1, 2006

There is absolutely no Internet surfer experience without a browser. But why did Microsoft, which professed to dominate in Internet-enabled applications as its core business, take browser so lightly that it had allowed Internet Explorer (IE) to age for the last five years without fundamental upgrades?

Many a Microsoft detractor views the software giant as a business strategist good at knocking off emerging competitors. Some believe Microsoft allows nimble players to R&D new applications, but it will not hesitate to move in to eat their lunch if situations warrant it.

You remember when Microsoft was an industry joke when it launched Internet Explorer 1.0 in August 1995? People thought Netscape was a better product for web browsing. Microsoft worked hard for six years to gain dominance in the browser war, and IE6.0 was finally introduced in October 2001, though still full of bugs. But IE6.0 was epoch-making as it effectively resulted in the premature retirement of Netscape, and Internet visionary Jim Barksdale. The web browser became but a conquered territory.

March 16, 2006

There is a distinct differentiation between multimedia and network service providers in the developing and developed countries. While both blocs continue to have under-served areas within their respective countries, the former keep their sight on rolling out telecommunications infrastructure, and the latter focus on providing solutions to emerging communication needs, which see a rapid change in digital lifestyle.

The business case behind this lifestyle change is the convergence of information and communications technologies. Leading brands in the world, the First World to be exact, have been swift in tapping into this emerging trend, and come out with new gadgetries, applications and lifestyle solutions to excite and humour the digital generation. Some of these big names form strategic alliances to tap into each other’s strengths and dominance in the life of their respective end-users. Novelty, an oft-tried and perishable form of trapping customer loyalty, has been rudely replaced by old paradigms honey-coated with new flavours. Buzzwords: Mobility, Innovation, and Day-to-Day Problem-solving.

For most of us in the productive generation, we are living in a world signified by Blackberry, 3G, blogs and Google search. Our lifestyle has become an undetachable part of the big rat-race. We need information on the tap to make informed decisions in business and in privacy, incessantly. Solving day-to-day problems and myriad challenges, both in the office and at home, is now a lifestyle by itself. So much for digital generation, you may say.

March 1, 2006

By now, Malaysia would be seeing more than two licensees given the blocks of 3G spectrum to operate the third generation cellular networks, and the market place should see keen competition in play.

The rollout of 3G services in Malaysia is like a jumbo-jet stuck on the runway, lots of power-hype but you don’t see it take off and fly. More than two years had passed after the licensees and blocks of spectrum were issued before Celcom could roll out its 3G services in May 17, 2005, in conjunction with the World Communications Day. Maxis, the market leader for 2G GSM, followed suit and launched its 3G services a month later. However, take-up rate in the last eight months has been lukewarm with less than 100,000 subscribers.

Why didn’t mobile users warm up fast to 3G? Suffice to say, this is not uniquely a Malaysian problem. Apart from Japan, 3G has seen the same lacklustre in Europe and Asia, particularly the region seen as holding the highest market potentials for 3G.

In my radar screen, I noticed two major blunders that caused this slow market up-take. Firstly, the consultants had sold 3G like snake-oil salesmen do their trade. Secondly, the network operators did not understand 3G and its target audience.

February 16, 2006

The egalitarian world of the Internet is inclined for a new challenge when AOL and Yahoo, two of the world’s largest email service providers, recently proposed to charge a fee for the delivery of spam-free emails along the originating and destination route.

According to media reports, AOL and Yahoo will introduce a system that would guarantee speedier delivery to companies that pay between 0.25 and one US cent for each message. While AOL and Yahoo would still accept email from senders who do not pay for preferential treatment, the business bias is that the paid messages would bypass spam filters and other barriers which strip off pictures and other images, enabling the emails to land more quickly in in-boxes.

Are we seeing the prospect of a two-tier Internet from now? Notably, AOL and Yahoo’s proposed new business model came in the wake of intensifying debates on the future of the web as the US Congress prepares to institute the first major update of telecommunications legislation since the birth of the Internet.

The centre of debates is on the principles of Internet Neutrality. It is the principles that had been followed through over the last decade of commercial Internet, under which data has been disseminated without discrimination or preference ever since the birth of the World Wide Web.

February 1, 2006

What will the Malaysian ICT industry be looking at in pushing the envelope for Open Source this year? We can’t be keeping the evangelical talks after the government has started to incorporate Open Source solutions into its procurement procedure since 2004.

Despite the fact that budget allocation and expenditure for Open Source solutions are relatively miniscule at the moment, it was a good start since the Open Source endorsement policy came into being. Our next job is to show the government the next step. Yes, we need to take that bigger step to realise the benefits of adopting Open Source in terms of innovation and justifiable alternatives in resources planning in the ICT sector, both in the government agencies and the commercial world.

In 2005, I noticed there had been some missteps on the part of the industry’s flag-bearer, the Association of Computer and Multimedia industry Malaysia (PIKOM), with regards to its position on adopting Open Source. For the record, PIKOM during the time when Mr Looi Kian Leong was the chairman was instrumental in the creation of an Open Source Special Interest Group (OSSIG). Some monumental results were produced, one of which was a white paper on adopting Open Source software and solution in the public sector, which was presented to the then Ministry of Communications and Multimedia. The gist of the white paper was also presented at inaugural Public Sector CIO Conference organised by MAMPU in 2002.

However, during the General Public Policy Conference (GPPC) 2005 hosted in Kuala Lumpur by PIKOM, the present PIKOM leadership was reported by the mainstream media that it was reviewing its position on Open Source vis-à-vis the 2002 white paper on Open Source it endorsed via the PIKOM-OSSIG. As a founding member of the OSSIG, I was made aware of the protracted debates that ensued behind the scene within the OSSIG.

January 16, 2006

There are several execution flaws to the Government’s directive to register all prepaid phone account clients, irrespective of new or existing ones, starting January 1. This is a follow-through of a 3-month pilot project in Penang and Malacca launched in the last quarter of 2005. At the nationwide level, a 6-month timeline is tied to the exercise, whereby the respective service providers must terminate the phone numbers if the users did not comply with the requirement.

There are three major issues involved. One: There is no legal framework pertaining to the guarantee of security and confidentiality of personal data, and the attorney power of the data custodian is not clearly defined. Two: Registration of user data is relegated to the retail/dealers level and there is no guarantee of quality of custodians of data in transit before the data is transmitted to the mobile operators. Three: Mobile operators are non-committal to a professional workflow while industry regulator, the MCMC, does not provide a clear guideline for operators to adhere.

Let’s take a look at the registration procedure. Recently, media reports said that the government and cellular operators were very satisfied with the cooperation of the public to the registration exercise. But the claim has been challenged, the validity of the statistics and information severely questioned.

January 1, 2006

Bill Gates and his wife Melinda, alongside Irish rocker Bono, have been jointly named "Persons of the Year 2005” by Time magazine for their charitable work and activism aimed at reducing global poverty and improving world health.

Interestingly, the honour, especially for Bill Gates, has nothing to do with personal computer and software that made him a legendary figure in information technology. Instead, the Gates are honoured for their philanthropic contributions via the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation - the world's largest foundation, valued at US$29 billion, which spends almost the same amount each year as the World Health Organization (WHO).

Time said the Foundation has saved at least 700,000 lives in poor countries by investing in vaccination programmes, has donated computers and Internet access to 11,000 libraries, and has sponsored the biggest scholarship fund in history.

It’s a thought-provoking event as the honour bestowed on Gates is exactly twenty-three years after the PC, the device that created much of his personal fortune, was named Time’s "Person/Machine of the Year" in 1982.

The irony is, Gates would rather dispense his wealth through philanthropic activities than to allow his company to offer affordable copies of Microsoft Windows in the resource-impoverished developing countries targeted by his foundation. What does that tell us?

SEPTEMBER 16, 2002

International banks are noted for their advocacy for business process outsourcing (BPO). By farming out some of the customer interfacing activities to outside vendors, banks are said to be able to boost efficiency and trim headcounts, thus maximising profits.

When a bank engages outsiders for BPO, it is often done unilaterally without making prior disclosure to the customers. We hear of complaints from customers who fear that their personal data and critical information may be comprised once they are placed in the custody of these outsiders with whom they do not enter any contractual agreement. To dispel customer concerns, a bank which practices BPO will normally make some form of public proclamation on its guarantee on data integrity and security.

Citibank, for example, publishes a global guarantee called “Citigroup Privacy Promise for Consumers” in its global websites, including Malaysia. Among others, the bank promises that, “whenever we hire other organisations to provide support services, we will require them to conform to our policy standards and to allow us to audit them for compliance”. Is that really so?

Recently, Citibank came under the spotlight of consumer-protection agencies in its home country. It engaged an outside company (Axciom Corp.) to gather email addresses of its credit-card customers, and then hire another outside company (Touchwood Technologies) to send emails offering recipients online access to sensitive financial data without verifying each address actually belonged to the customer. What stands out prominently was the fact that the subject of the emails carry the name of the cardholder whose account they refer to.

FEBRUARY 1, 2002

Early last year, I received multiple invitations to subscribe to an international news weekly. Again, I received another round of mail spamming several months ago, asking me to subscribe to the same magazine. All these invitations came with a red dart-like ballpoint pen that people use for golf score. I have collected bundles of these trinkets by now, but every time I set sight on them I get goose pimples. How did those guys ever get me? Has my personal data been exposed and compromised?

Somehow, I managed to track down the possible sources that have traded off my personal data without my express consent. The culprits are most likely the financial institutions (FI’s) with which I maintain my credit card and checking accounts. I have assigned different correspondence addresses for my monthly banking and credit card statements. I have also selected different ways to have my name inscribed on my credit cards. To ease accounting purposes, I have my birth certificate name spelt on my personal cards, and “Jeff Ooi” for my corporate cards. Thus, it is rather easy to catch the culprits who “blew my cover” by looking through how my name and addresses are being captured onto those junk mails. This is the simplest digital trail left behind by mass transferring of data fields. Using this rule-of-thumb, I detected two of those junk-mail invitations bearing my personal data that is identical to those used for my personal cards, and another two used for my corporate cards, respectively.

I had another invitation using my name and address reserved exclusively for my checking account, and another that I used for a charge card that I had terminated months ago. Can you imagine this: six junk-mail invitations that sourced my personal data from four separate FI’s I have relationship with, of which three are Malaysia-incorporated foreign-owned, and one local bank.

That’s not the end of it. My other junk-mail invitations came from stables of international trade and news journals that I have subscribed through the years. All of them shared a common trait: my business address and my designations, past and present.

I believe the trading of customers’ personal data is not limited to the FI’s and the publishers.