Malaysia to integrate 95 percent of public services with MyDigital ID by 2030

The Malaysian government is moving to have more public and private sector services integrated with the country’s MyDigital ID as part of the strategy to expand adoption.

In a recent report by local outlet The Star, Digital Minister Gobind Singh Deo said some of the next services in line for integration are passport applications as well as wedding and death certificates.

Other services programmed for integration next year include payments for government services, police summons, some local council operations, tourism, public housing, and social protection services.

Already, telecommunications services are being integrated with the ID, requiring SIM cards, for example, to be activated using MyDigital ID.

The minister said while the MyDigital ID adoption is not compulsory, it is essential for facilitating access to a wide gamut of services provided by both government and the private sector. In line with this, he said the government is working to make the system secure and convenient to render it attractive for adoption.

According to Deo, close to 6.4 million people have already registered for MyDigital ID with an average of 50,000 new registrants each day.

“The national goal is for 95 percent of all federal government services to be fully online by 2030. This cannot be achieved if citizens rely on multiple logins or physical verification. MyDigital ID will be the standard secure credential for services from JPJ, Inland Revenue Board, Health Ministry and all other agencies,” Deo is quoted by The Star as saying.

Without the need to have multiple usernames and passport to log into different government services anymore, the government says access to services will become faster and more secure as identity theft incidence will reduce.

MyDigital ID is a decentralized digital ID system which the Malaysian government is relying on as the foundation for its ongoing digital transformation. The government had set a target to get 15 million people enrolled by the end of this year.

Launched in 2023, the MyDigital ID was met with a mix of challenges, but the situation is gradually changing thanks to an awareness field campaign that was led by a PR and marketing agency hired for that purpose, according to Marketech APAC.

The campaign, according to the outlet, set out to reverse the low awareness of what a digital ID is, fear and misinformation, and the lack of full trust in the system.

Thanks to the campaign, which ran in three phases from May to December 2024, mindsets changed and citizens have been embracing the system. Awareness level, for instance, reached 51.3 percent by the time the campaign concluded, up from 37.4 percent prior to it.

Article Topics

digital government  |  digital ID  |  government services  |  Malaysia  |  MyDigital ID