COMMENT | My name is Rais Hussin, and I am deeply honoured and pleased to address you today as Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation's (MDEC) chairperson.

Digital transformation is a personal passion of mine, to which I have dedicated my professional and academic efforts for many years, culminating in the publication of a book entitled "4IR: Reinventing a Nation" which I co-authored with one of the world’s leading blockchain experts, Dinis Guarda and was launched globally at Frankfurt book fair in October 2019.

The book was designed as a blueprint of sorts to assist governments of developing nations in their digital transformation agenda. Digital transformation presents both challenges and opportunities to us all.

Those who succeed can use Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies to create a better life for all, including new and more meaningful jobs, reskilling of the workforce, better health and education, and smarter and greener cities.

At the cusp of the 4IR, we are blessed with the chance to re-engineer the human experiment using technologies that decentralised authority and de-emphasised divisions along the lines of colour, creed and country – what the Japanese have coined as "Society 5.0".

The term describes the next stage of the evolution of societal communities. The quest for Society 5.0 is built around...