KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian civil servants are saving an average of 2.5 hours daily through artificial intelligence adoption according to the world’s largest civil servant survey.
World Bank Lead Economist for Malaysia, Apurva Sanghi revealed these findings from a survey of over 16,500 officers across all 28 federal ministries conducted with the Public Service Department.
He noted significant variation in AI adoption between ministries with the Ministry of Digital and Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry leading implementation.
The Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development and Ministry of Finance are lagging behind in AI tool usage according to the GovTech Skills Survey of Malaysian Public Servants 2025.
The Ministry of Digital recorded the highest AI usage frequency with 78 respondents reporting weekly usage compared to only 42 from the women and family ministry.
Malaysia outperforms both OECD countries and ASEAN peers in several digital government technology areas according to World Bank data.
The country scored 1.0 in cloud platforms, disruptive technologies and Government Service Bus compared to OECD averages of 0.81, 0.86 and 0.74 respectively.
Malaysia also surpassed OECD and ASEAN averages in enterprise architecture with a score of 0.80 against 0.63 for OECD and 0.65 for ASEAN nations.
The country scored 0.62 in open-source software usage ahead of ASEAN’s 0.38 but slightly behind OECD’s 0.59 average.
Sanghi identified Malaysia’s “secrecy-by-default” culture as a major barrier to further digital government progress.
He noted Malaysia shares statistics but lacks service and outcome data publication due to inadequate legal frameworks and cross-agency data sharing challenges.
Malaysia publishes only 26.1% of service delivery data externally compared to 35% for OECD countries though performing better than ASEAN’s 22.3% average.
More than 54.5% of Malaysia’s service data remains completely unpublished which is higher than OECD’s 49% but better than ASEAN’s 64.7% unpublished rate.
The Global Data Barometer places Malaysia in the mid-range between OECD and ASEAN peers with reasonable governance but weaker data availability.
Sanghi emphasized that true success requires shifting from secrecy-by-default to openness-by-default through effective Freedom of Information legislation.
He cautioned that Freedom of Information laws often face practical challenges including government stonewalling, high fees and national security claims.
Malaysia’s Freedom of Information Act effectiveness will depend on balancing provisions with the Official Secrets Act while addressing implementation barriers. – Bernama