Within the National IT Agenda (Nita) plan for the three-phase informatisation of the nation is a building block we call SJ2005. Its goal is to help the Subang Jaya community migrate to the electronic (e-) world by this year, under the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) initiative.

The objective is to e-enable the Subang Jaya municipal council (SJMC) to "become responsive to the public services needs of the residents" sooner rather than later.

Today, more than eight years later and after Selangor has declared itself a 'developed state', Subang Jaya is no better off than many other local authorities, in electronic terms. Why?

The Sun's cover story on Oct 8 was on local authorities and their lack of transparency, as well as the need for greater accountability at this lowest level of national governance. Interestingly, the New Straits Times too highlighted the issue.

Perhaps the credit for raising this issue should go to People's Progressive Party (PPP) president M Kayveas, a former deputy minister of the housing and local government ministry. He has always argued that there is lack of the kind and quality of transparency and accountability that the residents of modern urban electorate require and expect.

By the time of the next elections, I dare predict that if his critique is not taken seriously by the cabinet, more "opposition or independent candidates" who stand on particular localised issues will surely get elected, as the voters of Ipoh Utara and Ipoh Barat demonstrated in the 2004 outing.

It is time for the government to take such views and perspectives (mine included) of the electorate in urban areas more seriously.

SJ2005 programme

To better understand this core issue of local governance more accurately, we have to dig below the surface of the symptomatic evidences raised. Let me therefore state my experience with the SJ2005 programme.

Make no mistake. Subang Jaya probably has one of the most ICT-savvy state assemblypersons in the country. An accountant by profession and a very hands-on person by practice and style, Lee Hwa Beng, is one of the greatest supporters and promoters of the SJ2005 programme. Also action-oriented and ICT-savvy were then MPSJ president Ahmad Fuad and his deputy.

In fact, Subang Jaya was selected by the NITC after we 'failed' with the Bangsar pilot e-community project. The project did not get off the ground because the three residents associations could not even agree to work together for a common e-agenda.

In Subang Jaya we had all the ingredients of success: the political will of the state government, MPSJ president and the elected representative; the technical skills of the residents (the majority of whom are between the ages of 30 and 40 year with ICT skills, high connectivity (80 percent of the community) and the council's financial capacity.

The programme period ends in December and Selangor has already declared itself a 'success' in terms of 'development'.. Herein lies our problem with words, terms and phrases in the k-world, which do not have much substance but have all the form!

After the years spent trying to roll-out SJ2005, allow me to highlight the reasons why I think we failed. And, with this goes my apologies to Malaysians for a personal role in the failed experiment, since we are talking about accountability and responsibility.

Maybe it is more important now that we learn, unlearn or relearn from the failed experiment, than to look for scapegoats, which seems to be the current mainstream way of handling such an issue. As a result, we miss the real lessons to be learnt.

Reasons for failure

Why has the e-LA21 Agenda and experiment in MPSJ failed?

While at Intan and co-ordinating a National Productivity Measurement Programme in 1985, we coined a phrase and strategy for effective change management for Public Services Management which we called, WSS or the Will-Skill-Strategy approach.

Our theory was that if we mobilised the political will, defined clearly the technical skills to get the job done, and refined the financial/business model, any change programme, we believed, could become a success.

A similar strategy was therefore deployed in the SJ2005 programme, viewed fundamentally as a change management agenda. First, the political will was developed and achieved by presenting the concept of the SJ2005 right to the highest levels of the Selangor government; nothing less than to the state ICT council meeting, then chaired by Menteri Besar Abu Hassan Omar. That was in 1998.

The second stage was evolving the community support. At the Multi-Media Asia 1998, a public workshop was held to 'propose, present and review the SJ2005 Agenda'. The community, the government and the private sector were all invited to the workshop. Then Selangor ICT exco member led the Selangor delegation and the current deputy secretary-general of the housing and local government ministry led the government delegation.

The community group was led by one of the leading bloggers in the nation today. All said 'aye' to the agenda, but why did it still fail? What in our theoretical model was incomplete and what can we all learn from this?

Maybe the right technical skills were not present in Subang Jaya? Not true. Today, if we look below the surface, a number of leading ICT entrepreneurs live and work within Subang Jaya. Even today, in my view, SJ not CyberJaya or Putrajaya can become the Silicon Valley of Malaysia. Many success stories abound in this vicinity and in fact the most active cyber-community in the nation is found within this geography.

Was the NITC business model or financing strategy not relevant? Again, not true because the DAGsmodel followed a fairly open and transparent risk-sharing approach. Some of the most successful public-listed cyber entrepreneurs were also directly involved in many aspects so the translation of the SJ2005 experiment. These included GLC-linked partners and companies. But, why did SJ2005 still fail, much like all the other MSC flagships?

With 2020 hindsight, these were the failures (not in any order of priority) that I would record:

1. The mindset of the formal environment was still archaic and set within a feudal hierarchy. Formal approvals and hierarchical lordships defined all decisions. 'Perfect decisions' made at the wrong time were irrelevant to the opportunities lost. Some call this the ailment of paralysis by analysis.

2. Although MPSJ gave formal support to the SJ2005 programme, too much self-interest and sub-optimisation interests governed much of the decision making. Although, even the current premier came to be personally involved in the SJ2005 programme, the grassroots local governance leadership could not transform SJ2005 from 'show-business into real-business'.

3. At grassroots level also, there was no trust in mutual community building and development. Although the e-community programme was an outstanding success within the section USJ18 community, it could not migrate to the other communities in Subang Jaya. Even within the community, 'cyber-entrepreneurs' allowed personality issues to cloud the larger public interest issues. In the language of the former NITC secretariat, there was no 3W2R1A or win-win-win, risk-taking and reward sharing and a single common agenda.

4. The Silicon Valley culture of 'real entrepreneurship based on risk-taking and then, reward-sharing' was also absent within most of the formal systems of the public and private sectors. Although many talented individuals who had 'very successful cyber-companies' were living in Subang Jaya their aspirations and the newer business models were never formally understood or appreciated. The formal system always relied on the older and decrepit 'purchasing or procurement model'. The SJ steering committee could not steer the whole business-model experiment vide a persuasive and dynamic entrepreneurial leadership model of risk ventures of Silicon Valley. My only intelligent guess therefore is that they did not have sufficient experience and funds with the Silicon Valley-type venture capital-based business culture of the newer e-commerce model.

5. Finally, in Malaysia, we lack the experience and expertise of 'the new entrepreneurs' or those Ian Angell calls the 'new barbarians' in terms of the winning business models out there. Most of our so-called entrepreneurial class are older leaders were successful based on who they knew rather than what they knew, to create and innovate value.

Which way forward?

Some of us who call ourselves k-Malaysians believe that Malaysia can still achieve 'the ICT leapfrog phenomenon' which formed the fundamental thesis of the MSC agenda.

We are prepared to develop a k-MAP on how Malaysia can achieve the requisite k-competitiveness, and become a global leader among developing countries who achieved developed status in our own mould, but without reducing or compromising standards by 2020.

But, all this starts with improved governance at the lowest levels of government. If there is no "real democracy and good governance at the lowest levels of the nation", how can we ever claim to be 'developed'?

Development is not a value-neutral word; in fact, it is a value-laden word. Therefore, unless we remove the presence of societies "run in secrecy' at the level of local governance and stop seeing our local governance agenda from the perspective of the seven blind men with each describing the same phenomenon in different words, we are doomed to every state defining development in their own set of words and self-declarations.

Selangor is a 'developed state' and Kota Bharu is an 'Islamic City'. But, where is the values-based knowledge society envisioned under Nita?