Talk : E-Rezeki by MDEC (GLOW)

MDEC is a short term for Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (formerly known as Multimedia Development Corporation) is the lead agency in driving the digital economy in Malaysia under the Ministry of Communications and Multimedia Malaysia. MDEC is a government-owned agency which launched in 1996 in order to pioneer the transformation of Malaysia’s digital economy. MDEC pursues a digital future that unlocks the significant of economic, environmental and social value within the nation. MDEC is also responsible to ensure that Malaysia plays an integral part in developing and nurturing talent to drive digital innovation around the world, while attracting participation from global ICT companies to invest and develop cutting edge digital and creative solutions in the country. The industrial talk given is about e-Rezeki (GLOW) which is one of the programs under MDEC. The talk is given by Cik Nur Ashikin binti Halil (graduate from UiTM – Bachelor of Management and Technology) which is one of the successor and actually one of the mentor of GLOW programme.

The objective of GLOW programme is to produce global competitive freelancer. Not just in Malaysia, but also in global. Then, provides alternative source of income among Malaysians with skills set. There are many people that have the skills but did not have the opportunity to get the admired jobs. So, people can use their skills and be a part-time freelancers. Lastly, GLOW provides business and technical support services for Malaysian freelancers. The success story of the successful freelancers will be the inspiration for the freelancers all over Malaysia.

The name of E-Rezeki was converted into GLOW which stand for Global Online Workforce. E-Rezeki is a programme based on crowdsourcing concept with specific focus on B40 as the “crowd” providing services to earn additional income. It is a programme designed to train, mentor and nurture crowd workers to earn digital income on global platform by winning and performing skills-based jobs/projects. The person work in this platform called Digital Worker. This programme focus on the family which categorised in B40 which want to help them to get better lifestyle. Participants will be profiled, trained, qualified and matched against suitable tasks or work on digital platforms. B40 (below 40 percent of household based on income) refers to individuals from household with monthly income below RM4000 per month. There are different categories of skills for freelancers in this platform. The skills are digital micro task, digital work and digitally enabled (crowd services). The target group for digital micro tasks are the SPM levellers, non-executives, general labourer, unemployed, housewives and single mothers and armed forces retirees. The example for digital micro tasks are data entry, data extraction, dropshipping, content sharing, mobile apps download and referral programmers. The target groups for digital work are unemployed graduates, underemployed graduates, college students from B40 family, retrenched workers and retirees. The example of digital work are programming or coding, mobile apps developer, creative work, game tester, content writing and accounting. The example of digitally enabled are running errands, delivery services, cleaning and housekeeping, plumbing and fixing.

MDES assist the enterprise to discover the potential of crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is a digital revenue method where job are being offered and being held on digital through global platform. Enterprise crowdsourcing is corporation obtaining services via digital platform that provide solution for business problems. Enterprise can source and use the right crowd effectively. Firstly, enterprise will break the task down. Then, identify the task that can be performed by the crowd. And finally, match the right task with the right crowd. For example, the right crowd for content writer is the category of knowledge and expertise. While the programmer is in the category of technology and data science. For designer, the category of ideation and creation. Enterprise should consider crowdsourcing as one of the place to get income because of the growth of high speed internet and coverage in Malaysia.

The use of internet is getting wide. Most of the people face the internet every day. And most of them feels more comfortable to deal with other people through internet. Then, digital shift which is customers attracted by digital driven offering.  After that, there are abundance of talent in crowdsourcing platform. Lastly, the budget to undergo some project will reduced. When the budget reduced, departments expected to deliver more.

There are many benefits that people can gain by joining this programme, the benefits are the participant will get extra income. This is because people can make side income by working part-time as a freelancer. Next, participants can work anywhere and anytime and also save money. As a freelancer, participants did not have to go to office so they can work at home. When this happen, they do not have to use transport that needs money. They are their own boss. Lastly, participants get to increase knowledge and upgrade skills and abilities. Skills can be learned and upgraded to increase the value of themselves to get promoted.

There are a few ways MDEC get people to join GLOW, which through collaboration with many universities around Malaysia such as University of Technology Malaysia (UTM) and University of Technology MARA (UiTM). There is a program called GLOW@HLI’s programme. This programme focused on students from the universities. This program is free and students can join the programme by make it one of the elective subject which is for a semester. Another programme that GLOW provide is Fast Track programme. This programme is free too and the duration for this program is just two days. People can join this programme in order to be a professional freelancer with just two days. Other than that, MDEC get people to join GLOW by giving the talk to the people. So people will be provided with the knowledge about the freelancer and getting interested to join them. Furthermore, there are many advertisement that MDEC provided through social media platform.

People that are interested can try to join the programme. The people that can join GLOW programme are students from IPTA and IPTS, skilled retrenched workers, skilled retired workers, housewives, young professionals, and freelancers. There are many criteria that GLOW looking for in order to join the programme. Firstly, qualification and skills. Skills are the most important because in this platform, workers provided their skills to the clients. Without the skills, work will be undone. But, skills can be trained and be learned. Some of the skills required are in the field of IT which are programming, mobile application and others. Then, have the skills in design and creativity, administrative support, sales and marketing and finance and accounting. Last but not least, skills in linguistic and foreign language such as translation, transcription, and other language like Mandarin, Arab, French and etc.

GLOW is a platform that take nothing from us but giving us benefits that help us to solve problems in this real world especially in Malaysia. There are many people out there that do not having enough money to undergo their daily lives. GLOW is the platform that want to help the people. GLOW is giving positive impacts to Malaysia. One of the impacts of GLOW is decreasing the number of unemployed Rakyat in Malaysia. This is because Rakyat can work as a digital worker and getting jobs. Then, by joining GLOW, GLOW help people in Malaysia to get a better lifestyle by getting side income through digital platform. So, this will reduce the amount of poor family because they have their own work. Lastly, GLOW has market the service and skills of Rakyat Malaysia to the global platform. This will make Malaysia one of the known country in the world.