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KUALA LUMPUR – The government’s ongoing negotiations to secure a subscription deal for the MySejahtera contact tracing app raises doubts as to whether Putrajaya actually has ownership of the software, lawyers said.
On Monday, Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said the government is negotiating with private entity MySJ Sdn Bhd – which he described as the license holder of MySejahtera – on service subscription terms for the application.
Senior lawyer Derek Fernandez said it does not make sense for the government to enter a subscription agreement to use an app that it claims to own.
“It is unusual. I can’t understand how you can say you own it when you’re still negotiating fees,” he said when contacted by The Vibes.
“That means if you don’t agree to the fees, what happens? You cannot use the software. If you cannot use the software, it means the software is not yours.”
Khairy has said that the government is the owner of MySejahtera and all the data collected via the app.
However, a Public Accounts Committee report released last week revealed that the government was mulling whether to enter a contract of service with the company that developed MySejahtera to manage the software or outright buy the company to secure full rights over the application.
The government may have some legal basis in claiming ownership of MySejahtera and all of its data, if it can be established that it had commissioned for the development of the app for its intended purpose, according to intellectual property lawyer Tan Jue Ann.
However, Tan said an ongoing legal dispute between MySJ and another company involving an intellectual property deal over MySejahtera may put the government in a legal quandary.
A shareholder of MySJ has filed a suit against MySJ and other parties involved in the deal for alleged breach of a share sale agreement, according to a report by health news portal CodeBlue.
“If MySJ or the other company comes and says now I have control over this personal data that I collected from all these users, then it could pose a bit of a problem where as a user, I never gave consent for you to collect these personal data; my consent was given to the government of Malaysia,” Tan said.
“(If this happens), there could be a breach of the Personal Data Protection Act 2010 on the part of these two companies.”
Lembah Pantai MP Fahmi Fadzil said the MySejahtera developers should consider just offering full ownership to the government for free, considering that they first offered it as a free service for a year as a corporate social responsibility programme.
He said the responsibility for explaining the debacle should also fall on former health minister Datuk Seri Dr Adham Baba, who held the portfolio when MySejahtera was co-opted by the government for its Covid-19 management.
“He should also explain why MySejahtera was not done with an understanding to build, operate and eventually transfer MySejahtera to a completely fully owned subsidiary of the Health Ministry after the CSR period was over,” Fahmi added. – The Vibes, March 30, 2022
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