KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 10 — The Central Database Hub (Padu) is expected to undergo a trial run in November before being accessible to the public in January 2024 for personal information verification.

Minister of Economy Rafizi Ramli said so far the development of Padu, which collates the socio-economic information of every Malaysian household, is going smoothly as scheduled.

"The Padu timeline in terms of framework, use case, interface and functionality is expected to be completed by October before testing from November to December using the data from a group of Malaysian citizens registered earlier.

"Insya-Allah, if all goes well, Padu will be ready to hold (gather) the entire Malaysian population’s data in January 2024,” he said after appearing on Bernama TV’s "Buletin Bernama” programme, here last night.

On May 15, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim agreed to set up Padu to combine the socio-economic information of every household in the country to streamline the implementation of targeted subsidies.

Rafizi added that the Padu hub will cover 270 databases from ministries, federal government agencies, state governments and statutory bodies through existing data sharing agreements.

However, he said that when the Omnibus Act is passed in Parliament later, it will takeover the governance of data sharing and supersede these agreements.

He said one of the objectives of the Omnibus Act, which will be tabled in Parliament in June 2024, is to safeguard security to facilitate the process of data sharing. — Bernama