KUCHING: Regulating data flow at the international level has become more urgent, according to Utility and Telecommunication Minister Datuk Julaihi Narawi.
He said cross-border data flow is a new kind of international economic flow which leads to a new form of global interdependence.
“Current regional and international regulatory frameworks tend to be either too narrow in scope or too limited geographically, failing to enable cross-border data flows with an equitable sharing of economic development gains while properly addressing risks.
“Thus, there is a need for a new regulatory framework, ” he said in his address on ‘Charting Sarawak’s Digital Transformation’ at the Digital Economy Leaders Summit 2023 in Kuala Lumpur on Sept 19.
Julaihi added that data plays an increasingly important role as an economic and strategic resource, a trend reinforced by the Covid-19 pandemic as many activities moved online.
“The digital economy has evolved since the middle of the 1990s, reflecting how quickly technology is developing and how organisations, governments, and consumers utilise it. The ‘internet economy’ was the focus in the late 1990s as more people began to use the internet.
“Since the middle of the 2000s, digital economy has concentrated on how digital technology, goods and services, processes, and skills are spreading across many industries and economies,” he said.
According to Oxford Economics, he said by 2025 the digital economy will contribute on average 24.3 per cent or US$23 trillion to the world economy with the growth predominantly driven by frontier technologies.
“Increasing digitalisation of the economy and society is changing the ways people act and interact. One of the distinguishing features of various digital transformations has been the exponential growth in machine-readable information, or digital data, over the internet.
“The global internet traffic had reached 400 exabyte per month in 2022 with Asia-Pacific accounting for nearly 40 per cent of the traffic,” he said.
He said such data dubbed as new currency, is core to all fast-emerging frontier digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence, data analytics, blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing and all internet-based services that are needed for the digital economy.
