The Malaysian Health Coalition (MHC) is concerned with recent reports on the ownership and operations of the MySejahtera app.

We welcome the Health Minister’s official statement regarding the ownership of MySejahtera (issued on 27 March 2022), but we note the recommendation of the Public Accounts Committee (in March 2022) for the government to “take over the operations of the MySejahtera application without involving any additional costs”.

We underscore the importance of a centralized national contact tracing application in managing Covid-19.

We urge the government to safeguard the ownership of MySejahtera.

We highlight key issues that may arise if we do not have a trustworthy owner for MySejahtera, including breach in personal data privacy, misuse of public data, and decline in public trust.

This will subsequently erode the public trust in the governance and accountability; both which are key to successful transition into an endemic state for Covid-19.

We urge the government to rebuild public trust in MySejahtera through regular and transparent updates on privacy and data usage policies for MySejahtera.

This must include publishing legal documents that explain the data governance (such as which servers, who has access to the data, and how the data is processed).

The rakyat must know the legal structure of all private companies involved, as part of routine good governance.

Technical transfers of ownership for MySejahtera should not be made through direct negotiations without the rakyat’s knowledge.

MySejahtera has been an integral part of Covid-19 management in Malaysia. We call for continuous effort from the government to improve the balance between privacy and public health transparency.

The government and the MOH must institute measures, including possible legal recourse to increase public trust in MySejahtera.

Protecting the rakyat’s health and data privacy must go hand in hand and cannot be compromised at any cost. Public health needs trust to be successful.

Malaysian Health Coalition