Malaysia Government Transformation Programme (GTP) roadmap towards Vision 2020 unveiled

On 28 Jan 2010, the detailed roadmap of Malaysia Government Transformation Programme (GTP) was unveiled.

This GTP roadmap is crucial to catch up the progress to reach Vision 2020 in time, and it is indeed well written. It is better late than none that, after almost 2 decades Vision 2020 launched, and only left with 1 decade to fulfil, finally the government come out with a more solid action plan on how to achieve the vision.

The GTP roadmap details the objectives, outcomes and the initial set of actions in areas identified as National Key Result Areas (NKRAs) and Ministerial Key Result Areas (MKRAs, mentioned in Budget 2010 speech).

The NKRAs cover 6 areas which have been the long time concerns (and frustrations) of the citizens:

• Reducing crime
• Fighting corruption
• Improving student outcomes
• Raising living standards of low-income households
• Improving rural basic infrastructure
• Improving urban public transport

Since his ruling, Najib has come out with a few propagandas and slogans such as 1Malaysia, NKRAa, MKRAs, MKPIs, GTP, etc. It is hope that they put real action in it towards a real transformation and a better future, if not, probably we should elect for an alternative ruling party to bring in the long awaited transformation (perhaps... reformation).

Click here to visit the official website of GTP.

Click here to download the GTP Roadmap documents.

11 principle elements of a good manager

There are many perspective to view someone as a good manager. The following 11 principle elements of a good manager are listed in a management course I've attended, which I find the list is a good measurement as well as direction.

• Know yourself and seek self-improvement
• Be technically proficient and know your job well
• Seek responsibility and take responsibility for your actions
• Make sound and timely decisions
• Set the example and be a good role model
• Know your people and look out for their well-being
• Keep your workers informed
• Develop a sense of responsibility in your workers
• Ensure that tasks are understood, supervised, and accomplished
• Train as a real team, not just a group of people
• Use the full capabilities of your organization by developing a team spirit

Good manager are made, not born. Therefore, we should develop ourselves to be better and better.

Show PageRank and Alexa ranking of websites in status bar of Firefox / SeaMonkey / IE with SearchStatus

By using the SearchStatus add-on, you can show at the status bar of your browser, the Google PageRank and Alexa popularity ranking of all the websites you are browsing.

This allows you to have a rough idea about the website's link importance and traffic importance, which is referenced by major search engines and Internet advertising services.

It could be useful to bloggers and webmasters in improving SEO for their websites. For example, you might want to get the high ranking websites to link to your own website, and SearchStatus can immediately tell you if the website you are visiting is of high ranking or not.

SearchStatus is available as add-in extension for Firefox and SeaMonkey. Beside Google PageRank and Alexa popularity ranking, it can also show the Compete.com ranking and SEOmoz Linkscape mozRank as well. It is also able to provide many Internet search related information of the website through its extensive menu items.

For Internet Explorer users, SearchStatus is included as a plug-in in the IE7Pro add-on. IE7Pro is a very famous plug-in which can be used in IE 6, IE 7 or IE 8 to enhance tremendously the IE features and usability.

Note that the last version of IE7Pro is 2.4.7, released on 16 Sep 2009. Its development and maintenance has stopped at this point.

The SearchStatus plug-in in IE7Pro is not on by default, but it is very simple to turn it on and include it in the IE's status bar.

Note that in order to gather information to produce the ranking statistic:

• Google PageRank sends your current URL and a hash of it to Google
• Alexa ranking sends your current URL domain, your local IP address and a unique constant to Alexa Web Services
• Compete ranking sends your current domain and a unique constant to Compete
• Linkscape ranking sends your current URL to Linkscape.

Click here for more information and download of SearchStatus for Firefox and SeaMonkey.

Click here for more information and download of IE7Pro for Internet Explorer.

You are welcomed to inform me if there are similar tools for other browsers such as Chrome, Opera, Safari, etc.