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Press Statement

by Lim Kit Siang  
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(Parliament, Monday) : In the past five days, I have received numerous requests for copies of the Zahid Higher Education Report which was tabled in Parliament last Thursday but I had to disappoint them as there is neither soft nor hard copy available for  interested stakeholders of our society.

The Zahid Higher Education Report had made several recommendations about quality audit of the institutions of higher learning in the country as well as the fullest use of Information and communication technology (ICT) in higher education.

However, it  is clear that equally important as the revamp of the Malaysian universities to ensure that excellence, quality and meritocracy must be their new hallmarks if they are to gain international repute  and the country recognized as an international centre of academic excellence, there must equally be a revamp of the Higher Education Ministry to instill in the minds of its bureaucrats the “first class mentality’ which the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi had underlined in the Ninth Malaysia Plan.

Clearly, we have yet to have a “first class”  Higher Education Ministry bureaucracy – or how else to explain the failure in the most elementary of knowledge management in ensuring that the Zahid Higher Education Report is easily available and accessible to all interested Malaysians, whether  academics, undergraduates or members of the civil society?

When Higher Education Minister, Datuk Mustapha Mohamed responded to my blog last week, he disclosed that  the Zahid Report “will be made public as soon as possible, to allow for public consultations”.

How could there be any “public consultations” when only MPs are given copies, while no one else among the public could access the report except to get an MP’s copy?

Didn’t the  responsible Higher Education Ministry officials  concerned anticipate the need to  make the Zahid Report easily accessible to the public in order to create the conditions for  meaningful “public consultations”?

If the answer is in the negative, then it is time for the whole set of Higher Education Ministry bureaucrats to be replaced by forward-thinking ones who understand the meaning of “first-class mentality”.

Why hadn’t anyone in the Higher Education Ministry thought of the most convenient and fastest way to make the Zahid Report accessible to interested stakeholders – by posting the whole  Report on the Internet, as is the practice in developed “first class” nations?

After ten years of promoting the Multimedia Super Corridor for Malaysia to make the quantum leap into the information society and knowledge-based economy, there can be no place in a critical Ministry like the Higher Education Ministry to lag behind or to have  bureaucrats who do not have even the most  rudimentary notions about the application of  ICT to disseminate information.

Or are Higher Education Ministry officials fighting a rearguard battle in their opposition to Mustapha’s decision to table the Zahir Report in Parliament in the first place?

Mustapha should issue an immediate directive to the bureaucrats in his Ministry to post  up the Zahir Report on the ministry website by tomorrow.  In fact, let this be a test of the ICT expertise and preparedness of the Higher Education Ministry bureaucrats.

Mustapha at present is not in the country, as he left on Saturday night to join the Prime Minister for  a  two-day visit to Jamaica beginning tomorrow.

However, in this age of instant communication where information travels at the speed of light, he should be able to transmit his directive to the bureaucrats in his Ministry as if he had not left the country.

One of the members of the 11-men Zahir Higher Education Committee is none other than Prof. Datuk Dr. Hassan Said, Director-General of  Department of Higher Education, who should realize better than anyone that the Higher Education Ministry must set a role example in excellence, quality, ICT and knowledge management in view of the many recommendations of the Zahir Report directly concerning  these issues.

For instance, the Zahir Report made the following five recommendations about quality control and audit of local universities:

35. Ditubuhkan Agensi Kawalan Kualiti, Akreditasi dan Audit Pendidikan Tinggi Malaysia (Quality Control, Audit and Accreditation Agency, QCAAA) di bawah satu Akta Parlimen.

36. Fungsi QCAAA adala seperti berikut:

      (a) Menjalankan audit kualiti IPT setiap lima tahun sekali.

      (b) Melaporkan keputusan audit kualiti IPT kepada Parlimen.

      ©  Merumuskan, membuat semakan berkala dan mengemaskini criteria-kriteria akreditasi institusi.

37. Lembaga Pengarah ACAAA terdiri daripada tujuh orang ahli, seperti berikut:

      (a) Lima orang yang dihormati serta berintegriti tinggi, memiliki pengetahuan yang mendalam dalam pendidikan tinggi, dan sedia berkorban serta komited kearah pembangunan kesarjanaan dan pendidikan tinggi secara keseluruhannya.

      (b) Dua orang sarjana luar negara. (dipilih oleh sebuah jawatankuasa pemilihan yang ditubuhkan oleh KPTM – Kementerian Pengajian Tinggi Malaysia).

      © Ketua Eksekutif agensi ini bertindak sebagai ex officio.

38. QCAAA digerakkan oleh sebuah secretariat yang ditubuhkan oleh KPTM dan diketuai oleh seorang Ketua Eksekutif yang memiliki ijazah Ph.D dan menyandang pangkat JUSA A.

39. Setiap IPT membina dan mengembangkan petunjuk kualiti masing-masing dan menetapkan tanda aras kecemerlangannya sendiri.

40. KPTM menggalak dan menyokong pembinaan Instrument Petunjuk Kualiti (IPK) dan pengumpulan data berkualiti untuk mentaksir kemajuan pendidikan di peringkat pendidikan tinggi.

The Zahid Report also made numerous recommendations on the smart use of ICT and knowledge management in higher education, including:

51. Satu dasar digubal untuk mewujudkan persekitaran  e-Pendidikan Tinggi (eHigher Education atau eHiEd) yang bersepadu bagi memastikan keupayaan ICT dan pengurusan maklumat dipertingkatan.

52. Sebuah Majlis ICT Pendidikan Tinggi berpusat dibentuk bagi menyelia keseluruhan strategi dan pelaksanaan persekitaran eHiEd. Majlis ini hendaklah dipandu oleh KPTM dan dijadikan badan strategik ICT pendidikan tinggi peringkat kebangsaan.

53. Aplikasi Penyelesaian Sumber Terbuka (OSS) diguna pakai dalam kegiatan pengurusan dan pembangunan di KPTM dan semua IPT.

54. Digiatkan pembinaan rangkaian yang selamat dengan menggunakan Gigabyte Ethernet dan teknologi tanpa wayar di semua IPT untuk menambahbaik jaringan dan pautan antara penuntut, fakulti dan para pentadbir.

55. Pusat-pusat Perkongsian Perkhidmatan (Shared Services Centre) ICT diwujudkan untuk semua universiti awam, politeknik dan kolej komuniti. Misalnya adalah dicadangkan KPTM menubuhkan satu Pusat Perkongsian Perkhidmatan bagi kawasan utara Semananjung Malaysia untuk semua IPT di zon utara.

56. Semua universiti awam, politeknik dan kolej komuniti dalam lingkungan eHiEd mewujudkan Pusat Pemerolehan Semula Data (Data Recovery Centre) dengan menggunakan perkhidmatan yang ada di Pusat Perkongsian Perkhidmatan ICT di bawah eHiEd.

57. Pembangunan perisian dan kandungan e-pembelajaran oleh para pakar ditingkatkan. Ganjaran sewajarnya hendaklah diberikan demi menyemarakkan minat dalam kegiatan pembangunan perisian dan kandungan e-pembelajaran di semua universiti awam, politeknik dan koleh komuniti.

58. Perpustakaan Negara menjadi tempat penyimpanan digital utama bagi e-journal, e-berkala, e-buku, dan seumpamanya, untuk kegunaan semua stakeholder IPT.

59. Keupayaan ‘pengurusan pengetahuan’ dibangunkan dan disebarluaskan ke semua IPT. Seterusnya, setiap institusi bertanggungjawab meningkatkan keupayaan pengurusan pengetahuan yang bersepadu bagi membolehkan setiap institusi berkongsi dan berkolaborasi pengetahuan dan inovasi masing-masing.

60. KPTM mempunyai akses untuk membuat analisis dan mengkonsolidasi maklumat terkini semua IPT menerusi penggunaan Sistem Maklumat Eksekutif (EIS), Data Warehousing (DW) dan Enterprise Integration (EI).

The Higher Education Ministry bureaucrats must “walk the talk” of quality benchmarks  themselves if they are not to forfeit credibility and  respect of university administrators and academics, raising the fundamental question  what moral authority they have to demand a revamp of universities when the ministry itself urgently needs  to be revamped to remove the mediocre, deadwood and  indolent.

(01/05/2006)