This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on December 7, 2018

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia Digital Economy Corp (MDEC) chief executive officer (CEO) Datuk Yasmin Mahmood (pic) has resigned after serving four years and three months in the role, citing to pursue a new job as reason.

“It is with a heavy heart that I am tendering my resignation as CEO of MDEC to pursue a role with a tech venture in Jakarta,” she said in a statement issued by MDEC yesterday.

Yasmin will step down from her position effective Jan 15, 2019. She was appointed MDEC CEO on Sept 15, 2014 after previous positions as managing director of Microsoft Malaysia and general manager of HP and Dell.

According to MDEC, a management committee will be activated as part of the group’s 2019 transition plan to oversee the agency’s operations during the process of appointing a new CEO.

Communications and Multimedia Minister Gobind Singh Deo said: “We thank Datuk Yasmin for her stewardship in leading MDEC and all her contributions to the digital economy ecosystem. Her passion, commitment and energy in seeing things through to the very end has benefited Malaysia throughout the years.”

In July, Yasmin was reported to have gone on voluntary leave pending an investigation into the organisation’s Asean Data Analytics Exchange (ADAX) project. The probe was said to have been initiated by Gobind after concerns were raised over the project being conceptualised to build critical mass of talent in the big data analytics segment and develop the ecosystem for it.

Yasmin was subsequently cleared of any wrongdoing over the graft probe and returned to work in August.

According to MDEC’s website, ADAX enables the development of the entire data analytics ecosystem through building human capital, infrastructure, data aggregation and community.

At its launch on March 28, 2017, ADAX CEO Sharala Axryd stated that its aim was to produce 20,000 data professionals by 2020, out of which 10% would be data scientists.