Thirdly, the people must be the centre of the National IT Agenda and Action Plan by giving the people the know-how to use the new information appliances and applications.
This is why a “IT For All” nation-wide campaign to popularise IT-literacy, accompanied by a “One Family, One Computer” programme, should be the centrepiece of the National IT Action Plan to educate the people that IT and computers are nothing to be afraid of and to remove the social, educational and psychological barriers to people who would like to know more about using the information technologies.
In fact, I would call on the Government to adopt “IT For All, All For IT” as a national motto and be the thrust of a national campaign to ensure that every individual - evert adult and every held - to be confident in using the latest technology to develop their potential and enhance their lives and that all our businesses - large or small - to be in a position to seize the opportunities offered by the latest technology and make it work for them.
The vision of the “IT For All, All For IT” national motto and campaign is to reach out to all those who are not currently involved in IT so that every Malaysian to be part of the emerging Information Society.
National, state, district and local “IT For All, All For IT” committees should be set up with round-the-year programmes to popularise the IT awareness and use among Malaysians.
An important plank of this nation-wide “IT For All, All For IT” campaign is to raise the Internet take-up rate of Malaysians, so that Malaysia could be one of the top nations in the world in terms of per capita connection to the Internet. In the United States, which already dominates in having about two-thirds of the world’s internet users, there is a public education campaign involving the US Government to urge Americans to “Get Connected to the Information Age”!
It is a matter of grave concern that the number of Internet subscribers to Jaring have plummeted from a 22 per cent growth a month to some five per cent growth a month.
As a result, there is going to be a great shortfall from an earlier MIMOS estimate that Malaysia would have 150,000 Internet users by the end of 1996 and 500,000 Internet users by the end of this year - as the present estimate for the number of Internet users in Malaysia in the first quarter of this year is only between 150,000 to 200,000.
It is shocking and inexplicable why the authorities are indifferent to the drastic slowing down in the Internet take-up rate of Malaysians, which is not in keeping with a society trying to make a quantum leap into the Information Age.