Chief secretary to the government Ali Hamsa has instructed all ministries to identify any official or staff involved in last Saturday’s Bersih 5 rally in Kuala Lumpur.

He said he was informed that there were “one or two civil servants”, believed to be lecturers who were involved in the rally.

“Their (the individuals believed to be lecturers) participation was detected through closed-circuit television cameras and also photographs on the social media.

“I have asked the relevant ministries if their officials were involved. However, this will be verified. We cannot simply go after them,” he told reporters after attending the Public Sector CIO Convex 2016 conference in Sepang today.

Ali said action would be taken against civil servants who were involved in the rally, depending on the offence committed.

Last week, he reminded civil servants not to participate in any rally which had not been given permit, and if they did, they could face disciplinary action, including sacking or salary cut.

Meanwhile, in his speech at the launch of the conference, Ali said the government aimed at achieving 7,000 datasets published in the Public Sector Open Data Portal by 2020.

At present, he said there were 1,336 datasets which were already published in the portal to help government agencies and ministries innovate and create new solutions to benefit the people or spur the economy.

“The portal will not be successful unless there is much business value generated by the community or mobile apps generated using this data,” he said.

The two-day conference under the theme, ‘Digital Government Towards Digital Citizens’ is a platform for the agencies’ chief information officers (CIOs), strategic partners from the industry, as well as local and international experts to explore the digital transformation in the delivery of government services.

It aims to give recognition and appreciation to agencies which successfully implemented public sector ICT projects.

The conference provides a platform for debate, involving 16 international panellists and 19 local panelists with regard to justification and new ideas in consideration of a better ICT implementation in the public sector.

Networking sessions are also held after the panel discussion to enable participants to interact with one another and share experiences.

- Bernama