E-Government in Malaysia: Its implementation so far and citizen's adoption strategies

The Electronic Government initiative was launched to lead the country into the Information Age. It will improve how the government operates internally, as well as how it delivers services to the people of Malaysia. It seeks to improve the convenience, accessibility and quality of interactions with citizens and businesses. At the same time, it will improve information flows and processes within government to improve the speed and quality of policy development, coordination and enforcement.

COME July 1, all government agencies will go online and all payments can be made using e-pay facilities in the Klang Valley.

However counter services will still be made available to those who prefer settling their dues this way. Through the streamlining of the e-payment systems, the Government's task force for facilitating businesses hopes transactions with government agencies will be made more efficient.

A total of 57 agencies had made available online payment for a total of 90 services. These include payment for renewal of competent driving licence (CDL) and payment of summonses to the Road Transport Department (JPJ). The others that have extended the online service included the Immigration Department, Land and Mines Department, Education Ministry, Finance Ministry and Public Service Department. Even the purchase of train tickets for Keretapi Tanah Melayu Bhd (KTMB) can now be done online. The Klang, Shah Alam, Selayang, Sepang, Nilai, Subang Jaya, Ampang Jaya, Kajang, Kuala Langat, Kuala Selangor and Petaling Jaya municipalities have also extended similar mode of payment for the people to settle their assessment dues.

The majority of e-government portals developed in Malaysian are not appropriate to their users. For instance these portals target only literate people which means that more than 60% of potential users are automatically excluded. And, for the less than 40% of the ‘de factor’ users, these portals suppose that the user has at least a good knowledge in manipulating and communicating with computers, and focus on technical aspects and not on the portal’s fundamental goal which should provide an easy, clear and quick online service delivery.

In brief, the objectives of e-government are to improve the accessibility, convenience and quality of interactions between citizens, businesses and the government; and to improve the speed and quality of information flow and the processes of policy development coordination and the enforcement of government operation.

Things to take note to prevent e-auction fraud when a consumer participating in an e-auction

Auction is market mechanism by which buyers make bids and sellers place offers, characterized by the competitive and dynamic nature by which the final price is reached. Electronic auctions (e-auctions) means auctions conducted online. There are some major limitations in e-auctions: lack of security, possibility of fraud and limited participation, long cycle time, monitoring time and order fulfillment costs.

According to Internet Fraud Watch, of all e-commerce activities conducted over the Internet, fraud is most serious in e-auctions. E-auction fraud accounted for 70 percent of the e-commerce fraud that occurred in 2001 (down from 87 percent in 1999). The average auction loss is $518 per complaint, and roughly $6.1 million was lost due to fraudulent activity in 2001.

Types of e-auction fraud:
- bid shielding
- shilling
- fake photos and misleading descriptions
- improper grading techniques
- selling reproductions
- failure to pay the auction house
- inflated shipping and handling cost
- failure to ship merchandise
- loss and damage claims
- switch and return
- other frauds, eg: sale of stolen goods, the use of fake ids, selling to multiple buyers

The largest Internet auctioneer, eBay, has introduced several measures in an effort to reduce fraud. Some are free, some are not. The company has succeeded in its goal: less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the transactions at eBay was fraudulent in 2001 (Konrad 2002).

The following are some of eBay’s antifraud measures:
- user id verification
- authentication service
- grading services
- feedback forum
- insurance policy
- escrow service
- nonpayment punishment
- appraisal services
- physical inspection
- verification
details

Corporate Blogging : A new marketing communication tool for companies.

A corporate weblog is published and used by an organization to reach its organizational goals. The advantage of blogs is that posts and comments are easy to reach and follow due to centralized hosting and generally structured conversation threads. All current browsers (including Firefox, Opera, Safari and Internet Explorer 7) support RSS technology, which enables readers to easily read recent posts without actually visiting the blog, which is very useful for low-volume blogs. Although there are many different types of corporate blogs, most can be categorized as either external or internal.

Internal Blogs --> An internal blog, generally accessed through the corporation's Intranet, is a weblog that any employee can view. Many blogs are also communal, allowing anyone to post to them. The informal nature of blogs may encourage: employee participation , free discussion of issues ,collective intelligence, direct communication between various layers of an organization ,a sense of community.

Internal blogs may be used in lieu of meetings and e-mail discussions, and can be especially useful when the people involved are in different locations, or have conflicting schedules. Blogs may also allow individuals who otherwise would not have been aware of or invited to participate in a discussion to contribute their expertise.

External Blogs --> An external blog is a publicly available weblog where company employees, teams, or spokespersons share their views. It is often used to announce new products and services (or the end of old products), to explain and clarify policies, or to react on public criticism on certain issues. It also allows a window to the company culture and is often treated more informally than traditional press releases, though a corporate blog often tries to accomplish similar goals as press releases do. In some corporate blogs, all posts go through a review before they're posted. Some corporate blogs, but not all, allow comments to be made to the posts.

External corporate blogs, by their very nature, are biased, though they can also offer a more honest and direct view than traditional communication channels. Nevertheless, they remain public relations tools.Certain corporate blogs have a very high number of subscribers. The official Google Blog is currently in the Technorati top 50 listing among all blogs worldwide.

Marketers might expect to have product evangelists or influencers among the audience of an external blog. Once they find them, they may treat them like VIPs, asking them for feedback on exclusive previews, product testing, marketing plans, customer services audits, etc.

The business blog can provide additional value by adding a level of credibility that is often unobtainable from a standard corporate site. The informality and increased timeliness of information posted to blogs assists with increasing transparency and accessibility in the corporate image. Business blogs can interact with a target market on a more personal level while building link credibility that can ultimately be tied back to the corporate site.

A list of externally available corporate blogs is available at The NewPR/Wiki.

The Corporate Blogging Book is now available in Mandarin Chinese on amazon.cn.

A review on a post on e-tailing from My E-Commerce Blog

Review on 1st Dell physical store in Malaysia!

There are two distinct categories of e-tailers are pure plays and bricks and clicks. A pure play e-tailer uses the Internet as its primary means of retailing. Examples of pure play e-tailers are Dell and Amazon.com. A brick and click e-tailer uses the Internet to push its good or service but also has the traditional physical storefront available to customers.

U.S. computer maker Dell Inc. on 23rd, Jan 2007 opened its first global business centre outside the United States to provide 24-hour engineering and technology support to its branches worldwide. Chief Executive Officer Kevin Rollins opened the 200,000 square foot (18,580 sq. metre) centre in Malaysia's high-tech city of Cyberjaya. Dell says the centre will employ 600 people by year-end and 1,000 within five years. more

DELL office in Cyberjaya

Dell is famous for selling it PC and laptop directly to their customers through the direct sales online which proved to be a very successful business model. However, Dell is slowly shifting away from this successful model when the growth of PC sales slowed. As Dell continue to strengthen their brick-and-mortar presence worldwide with especially in US and Europe, the computer vendor opened its first retail store in Malaysia at the Mid Valley Megamall's IT World section on 22nd Dec 2007.

Dell Direct Store
2nd Floor, IT World, Lot 15
Mid Valley Mega MallKuala Lumpur





It used to be that you could only go online to browse Dell products and the only way to order one was through the Internet or over the phone. That's changed. Dell has just arranged to have its products on display in 10,000-odd stores worldwide; some are Dell branded stores while others are joint ventures. The Malaysian store is a partnership with TecAsia, the retail arm of FTEC Resources Bhd, which also distributes its own range of notebook PCs.

Dell said the move was brought on by its aim to regain its lead position as the No 1 computer maker in the world from archrival the Hewlett-Packard Co. HP took the lead about a year ago. Dell has operated a manufacturing operation in the northern city of Penang since 1995, producing notebooks, desktop computers, servers and storage systems.

In 2005, Dell products accounted for 28 percent of Malaysia’s electronics equipment exports and currently employs more than 5,000 people in the country. Dell is vying with Hewlett-Packard Co. for dominance in the global personal computer market. For all of 2006, the two companies each registered about 16 or 17 percent market share, according to tallies by IDC and Gartner Inc. But in the fourth quarter, HP had a 17 to 18 percent of the worldwide market compared to Dell's 14 to 15 percent. more

E-tailers who take part in pure play–type business have the opportunity to turn higher profit margins, due in part to the fact that many of the overhead expenses associated with a physical retail space, such as labour, retail space, and inventory, can be significantly alleviated. Pure play allows for a retailer to be able to reach customers world wide, whilst still only maintaining one location for each and every customer to visit, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Many studies have shown that e-tailers are failing to meet the needs of online customers and that they generally only have one chance to make a good impression if they want their customers to return. It is said that the three most important things that e-tailers today must work on to ensure profitability are "search, support and promotion."

Credit Card debts: prevention and causes

Holding one card and paying off the balance on time helps establish your credit history. And you may need a card for travel expenses or emergencies. Aside from those cases, however, you should keep your credit card spending to the absolute minimum.

Following just five easy steps can keep consumers from falling into the pit that is credit card debt:

1. Establish a budget and then follow that budget exactly. In other words, don't be tempted to charge that plasma TV to your credit card on a whim when you haven't budgeted for it this month.
2. Carry a credit card balance for no longer than six months. The compounding of simple interest can produce a very expensive balance to pay off. If it helps, think of your credit card balance as a snowball that grows larger as it rolls downhill.
3. Know what you're doing with reward credit cards. Holders of these can end up spending more than the reward itself is worth if they don't pay attention to the fees and interest associated with their credit card.
4. Get a low interest credit card if your credit card's interest rate is excessive. The better your credit, the lower the rate for which you will qualify.
5. Be aware that balance transfer credit cards' teaser rates won't last forever. Six months is common now. The "normal" rate will return sooner than you think, so use that interest-free period to aggressively pay down balances.

Prevent Credit Card Debt Default Judgments

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVvTJ56oEsU

Electronic currency

Electronic currency (also known as e-money, electronic cash, digital money, digital cash or digital currency) refers to money or scrip which is exchanged only electronically. Typically, this involves use of computer networks, the internet and digital stored value systems. Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) and direct deposit are examples of electronic currency. Also, it is a collective term for financial cryptography and technologies enabling it.

Bitpass is a micropayment service that facilitates online content access transactions by integrating the processes involved in buying and selling content, and making it practical to charge very small amounts of money. In the BitPass system, transaction fees are paid by the content provider. For payments under $5, the charge is 15% of the cost. Micropayments are by definition very small sums, so the fee is usually just a few cents.

For the content buyer, the BitPass system works similarly to a pre-paid telephone card: you sign up for the service and put money into your account using a credit card or PayPal, which gives you credit towards the purchase of content. When the user agrees to pay the cost of access, their account is charged automatically rather than through a link to an external Web site for payment.

Although the micropayment concept has been proposed for several years, it's been a hard sell. After all, most online content has always been free, and people are naturally opposed to paying for anything they might reasonably expect to get for nothing. However, at least part of the reason that content has been free is likely that no one's found a viable way to get people to pay for it to this point.

On January 19th, 2007 Bitpass announced that they were shutting down, and operations officially closed on January 26th, 2007. No immediate reason for closure was given.

The application of 3rd party certification programme in Malaysia

MSC Trustgate.com Sdn Bhd is a licensed Certifacation Authority (CA) operating out of the Multimedia Super Corridor. MSC Trustgate was incorporated in 1999 to meet the growing need for secure open network communications and become the catalyst for the growth of e-commerce, both locally and across the ASEAN region. In present, MSC Trustgate has 12 million in paid up capital.

Trustgate has been licensed under the Digital Signature Act 1997 (DSA), a Malaysia law that sets a goal precedent for the mandate of a CA. Its core business is to offer complete security solutions and leading trust services that are needed by individuals, enterprises, government, and e-commerce service providers' digital certification services, including digital certificates, cryptographic products, and software development. They are committed to providing the finest Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to assist all types of companies and institutions conducting their business over the Internet. The state of the art back-end infrastructure that costs RM14 million is probably one of the best in the region.

Security is the primary concern of entering into the new Internet economy. The ever-changing paradigm of e-commerce requires a well-mandated security infrastructure. Trustgate is determined to become the leading service provider of Internet utility company, thus complementing the aspiration of the MSC to be a world-class e-environment.

Secure Socket Layer (SSL) is a protocol developed by Netscape in 1996 which was quickly adopted around the world as the method of choice for securing data transmissions across the Internet. SSL is an integral part of virtually all web browsers and web servers and makes use of a public-and-private key encryption system originally developed by RSA.

In order to establish an SSL connection, the SSL protocol requires that a server have a digital certificate installed. A digital certificate is an electronic file that uniquely identifies individuals and servers. Digital certificates allow the client (Web browser) to authenticate the server prior to establishing the SSL session. Typically, digital certificates are signed by an independent and trusted third party to ensure their validity. The "signer" of a digital certificate is known as a Certification Authority (CA), such as VeriSign.

Example: mphonline.com, maybank2u.com

SSL enables secure online transactions by combining the following three important elements:

(a) Authentication (b) Encryption (c) Message Integrity

Combining the three elements above, SSL becomes a simple yet extremely powerful security solution, enabling you to conduct authenticated and encrypted online transactions with visitors

to your Web site. With a VeriSign SSL certificate installed on your Web site,visitors will be able to submit credit card numbers or other sensitive information to you, with complete assurance that they are really doing business with you (and not an impostor) ad that the information they are sending to you can not be intercepted or tampered with during transmission. more

With the increased phishing and spoofing attacks on the Internet, your customers want to make sure that they are dealing with trusted parties when they conduct business with you online. They need to ensure that their information traveled over the Internet reaches the intended recipients and is safe from intruders. Trustgate offers the following SSL Certificates for your server security:

1. Global Server ID adopts today's strongest encryption commercially available for secure communications via Server Gated Cryptography (SGC) technology. GSID authenticates your web sites and enables 128- or 256-bit encryption to secure communications and transactions between the site and its visitors. Every purchase of GSID comes with a VeriSign Secured Seal that you can display on your web site. The seal is an instant proof that your web site is genuine because you have been verified by the World Leader of SSL Provider, and your customers can conduct business with you free of worry.
Example: Compaq, IBM, Javasoft, Lotus, Microsoft, Nokia

2. Secure Site SSL Certificates protect the transfer of sensitive data on Web sites, intranets, and extranets using a minimum of 40-bit and up to 256-bit encryption. It includes VeriSign Secured Seal.

Example: Compaq, IBM, Microsoft, Nokia, Novell, Oracle

How do SSL certicicates enable secure authenticated e-commerce on the Web?

By obtaining and installing an SSL certificate, you enable the use of SSL at your Web site. When a browser connects via "https" to a Web site with an SSL certificate, the browser and the server will exchange information during what is called the "SSL handshake." Once the SSL session has been negotiated, all information that passes between the browser and the server will be encrypted. Most all browsers are equipped to recognize VeriSign SSL certificates automatically, enabling almost every visitor in the world to safely exchange sensitive information and conduct e-commerce transactions with your Web site.

Seven reasons to choose VeriSign SSL Certificates to protect your business