Last May, CXpose had a brief chat with SAINS, or Sarawak Information Systems Sdn Bhd, the state-owned ICT company for the state of Sarawak. SAINS supports the digital economy and government agencies in Sarawak by developing and maintaining various software systems, infrastructure like data centres, contact centre, network monitoring centre, and even a security monitoring centre, or SMC.

Since its establishment about 30 years ago, SAINS has evolved from initially computerising state agencies, to now providing digital services, and upgrading legacy systems. Interestingly, SAINS offers services to clients outside of Malaysia (ie. Brunei, Papua New Guinea, Oman, and more), but since five years ago it has begun to focus on serving Sarawak’s government agencies and its digital economy ecosystem.

According to Nadia Suhaili, SAINS’ Customer Relationship Management Director, the Sarawak-based systems integrator and solutions provider has evolved to now managing end-to-end services for the state government, from application, to hardware, to end user computing equipment, the network infrastructure, and also third-party software products.

“We assist them to explore all these, together with partners and system integrators,” she said.

Core SAINS offerings

Last May’s regional conference and exhibition, APSEC, was organized by SAINS as the main agency because it recognized the need to build cybersecurity resources and resilience for Sarawak and the nation, overall.

During APSEC, or the Asia Pacific Cybersecurity Conference event in Kuching, Sarawak, SAINS’s Chief Information Security Officer, Dan Fadalini Sukia, was on stage talking about the agency’s cybersecurity offerings. He shared, “In order for us to be more effective, it begins with training. 

“We are one of, if not the first to develop talents for digital forensics and incident response and other security professionals. And we have specifically invested in talent development to do this.” Besides cybersecurity services as a main offering, another one is actually software development, and that includes security software development. SAINS has almost 300 developers in Sarawak, with a few also located in Kuala Lumpur. 

“We are one of, if not the first to develop talents for digital forensics and incident response and other security professionals. And we have specifically invested in talent development to do this.”

But first, data sharing needs to be addressed

SAINS’ applications; cybersecurity or otherwise, can be found across Sarawak’s state agencies, for example a land system for the Land Survey department, and a court system for the judiciary in Sarawak and Sabah (Syariah, Civil, and Native courts). Even the Forestry’s operations system and the Treasury’s finance system have been developed by SAINS.

Now, there is also Sarawak Net, the virtual private network for Sarawak’s agencies that hosts the government’s email system, explained Nadia who added that SAINS is responsible for upgrading and modernizing applications, infrastructures, and platforms used by the state’s agencies. 

Hence besides cyber preparedness, platform modernization is important as a foundation for further digitalization aspirations that Malaysia and all her states have.

The next wave – AI?

At the recent MDX event in KL, Minister of Digital Communications YB Fahmi Fadzil had also shared about federal level efforts spearheaded by the Ministry of Economics and the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM) to consolidate population and economic data for subsidies initiatives that address specific segments of the population, for example.

Data sharing and integration among government agencies is something that is on the Malaysia government agenda, according to YB Fahmi who shared that it was actually discussed during a cabinet meeting. 

YB Fahmi shared three key bills that will act as the fundamental basis for a lot of the work in terms of data unification, while still safeguarding issues around data sovereignty, data protection, and data portability.