1BestariNet becomes political hot-button issue
(fz.com) – 1BestariNet will cost the Malaysian taxpayer RM1.5 billion (nearly US$500 million) at least, and would take 13 years.
ONE of Malaysia’s most ambitious technology-in-education projects has been dogged by controversy and has become a political hot-button issue.
The vision is bold: To propel all the nation’s 10,000 schools into the digital age with laptops for every child and Internet connectivity for every school, thus creating a virtual learning environment and in the process, transforming teachers and the education system as a whole.
Dubbed 1BestariNet, the project will cost the Malaysian taxpayer RM1.5 billion (nearly US$500 million) at least, and would take 13 years.
The first steps had already begun more than a year ago and was later folded into the National Education Blueprint that the Barisan Nasional government unveiled late last year.
The project was mooted at one of the many labs or brainstorming sessions organised by the Performance Management & Delivery Unit (Pemandu) of the Prime Minister’s Department as part of the Malaysian Government’s Economic Transformation Programme (ETP).
Then in 2011, a tender was announced with 19 companies making bids. By August, they had been shortlisted to six: Celcom Axiata, Jaring Communications, Maxis, Multimedia Synergy Corp, Telekom Malaysia/Time dotCom Bhd (which submitted a joint bid) and YTL Communications.
Then something unusual happened: In October of that year, without much fanfare, the Ministry of Education posted a notice on its website that the project had been awarded to YTL, which operates the YES 4G wireless network – then took down the notice two hours later.
Those two hours were enough to foment murmurs of discontent throughout the industry, especially since the VLE solution would be provided by another YTL-owned company, FrogAsia.
This was followed by a period of silence until May 2012 when YTL Communications, part of the politically-connected YTL Power International Bhd, officially announced that it had been awarded the project and would be rolling out the first phase.
In April this year, the Malaysian Government announced that 10 million schoolchildren, teachers and parents would be provided laptops for free – but only if Barisan Nasional is returned to power in the general election.
And the laptops would be Chromebooks running Google Apps, the Mountain View, California tech giant’s cloud-based solution suite – a move that was lauded by the company’s chief executive officer and co-founder Larry Page.
Industry sources on three fronts – those which wanted to provide the Internet connectivity, the software and/ or the hardware – that Digital News Asia (DNA) spoke to then and even as recently as last month have complained about the tender’s evaluation process.
None wanted to speak on the record, but sources in a few different companies said they felt that their solutions were not given a fair shake, and that request for meetings with Ministry officials to make their pitches were rebuffed.
“We were blocked at every turn; it was as if they had already made up their minds,” said one source who requested anonymity.
The murmurs of discontent have moved up the grapevine to become a political issue, with Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim promising to cancel the project, describing it as a crony deal, if his Pakatan Rakyat alliance were to form Malaysia’s next government.
‘Don’t politicise the issue’
Just about every aspect of the project rollout has come under attack. Teachers at one school where 1BestariNet has rolled out complained to DNA they could only get Internet access in one room, and connections dropped when they moved around the school compound.
