Its minister, Fahmi Fadzil, said the initiative undertaken by Mimos Berhad, in collaboration with several other agencies, has been used in several countries, such as Estonia, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

“There were claims that certain countries refused to implement it, but many countries have done so because of its numerous benefits. It will also reduce costs for application development.

“The data of all Malaysians will be safe from being stolen by malicious parties. Personal data security can be controlled,” he said in response to the allegations that some individuals were trying to scare the public on social media regarding the development of the initiative.

Earlier, Fahmi officiated the Malaysia-Japan Digital Transformation and Innovation Seminar 2023 at the Management and Science University.

According to him, the initiative and policy were not something new but had been announced in 2021.

“It is a policy to standardise, especially the ‘sign-in’ process across ministries, as we see that each ministry will have its own applications and registrations, which led to the information or database being held by many parties. That’s why we want to have the single sign-in registration in addition to solving security issues,” he said.

Before this, the media reported that the government had approved an initial allocation of RM80 million for the development of the Digital ID project in an effort to expedite the implementation of the self-verification platform, which is believed to further enhance the efficiency of public services.