Source: GovTech Singapore website.
Infographic, Singapore’s _Digital
Government Blueprint. _
Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister, Teo Chee Hean, who also oversees National Security, recently introduced the Digital Government Blueprint (DGB) at the Smart Nation Innovations Week Opening Symposium. This blueprint outlines the government’s goal to utilize data and emerging technologies to enhance services for citizens, businesses, and public officials. It also aims to foster a digital economy and society, aligning with Singapore’s Smart Nation vision. The blueprint emphasizes user-friendly services, allowing citizens and businesses to engage with government services seamlessly from any internet-enabled device.
DPM Teo highlighted Singapore’s standing as a highly networked economy due to investments in accessible and affordable high-speed broadband internet. He emphasized the need for advanced nationwide systems to fully capitalize on these technologies. These systems will not only improve the user experience for various e-services but also introduce crucial national platforms like SingPass Mobile. Launching later this year as part of the National Digital Identity system, SingPass Mobile will provide a secure two-factor authentication system, enabling citizens to conduct transactions and access government services without physical tokens or SMS passwords.
DPM Teo also mentioned the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s collaboration with industry partners to strengthen the National e-Payments ecosystem. The focus is on creating unified backend systems while accommodating various user-facing e-payment platforms. This approach aims to simplify the user experience while ensuring a flexible, open, and competitive e-payment landscape.
The blueprint outlines ambitious targets for 2023, including achieving a 75-80% satisfaction rate among citizens and businesses using digital government services. Other objectives include universal e-payment integration for all services, enabling digital signatures, and pre-filling forms with verified government data. Additionally, the government aims to achieve almost 95% digital completion for end-to-end transactions, excluding specific services or individuals due to legislative reasons or accessibility challenges.
The blueprint further emphasizes workforce development, aiming to equip 20,000 public officers with data analytics and data science skills and ensure basic digital literacy for all public officers. Ambitious goals include implementing 30 to 50 transformative digital projects, with a focus on high-impact data analytics initiatives across government agencies. Streamlining data integration and accessibility is another key objective, with targets for machine-readable data formats and API-driven data sharing.
To bolster its digital economy, Singapore is focusing on nationwide digitalization efforts. DPM Teo cited the Infocomm Media Development Authority’s collaboration with businesses, industry associations, and unions to accelerate this process. He emphasized the importance of the services and digital economy, referencing the S$19 billion Research, Innovation and Enterprise 2020 Masterplan. This plan aims to drive digital innovation in sectors like advanced manufacturing, healthcare, and urban sustainability. DPM Teo highlighted Singapore’s strength in artificial intelligence, citing examples like aircraft engine design and precision medicine development using resources from the National Supercomputer Centre.
DPM Teo underscored the significance of the National Digital Identity program in enabling secure and reliable virtual transactions. He highlighted Singapore’s adoption of the Pan-European Public Procurement On-Line e-invoicing standard to facilitate seamless exchange of machine-readable e-invoices.
DPM Teo acknowledged the escalating threat of cyberattacks and their potential global impact, emphasizing Singapore’s proactive approach to cybersecurity. He mentioned the annual cybersecurity exercises conducted to assess the resilience of critical infrastructure, including a nationwide exercise encompassing 11 critical information infrastructure sectors. DPM Teo emphasized the ongoing need for collaboration with international partners, particularly global financial hubs, to exchange knowledge and enhance collective capabilities in responding to cyber threats.
Leslie Ong, Country Manager, Southeast Asia, at Tableau Software, stressed that while innovation is crucial for the success of Singapore’s Smart Nation initiative, data alone is insufficient. Ong commended the government’s focus on data comprehension and analysis as key to unlocking innovation’s potential. As public officers enhance their data analysis skills, public service delivery is expected to improve significantly.
Ong emphasized the importance of public-private partnerships in knowledge and expertise sharing, citing Tableau’s collaboration with GovTech since 2017 to provide public officers with visual analytics tools. He reiterated the vital role of data analytics in realizing the Smart Nation vision, advocating for continued investment in public servants’ data skills to harness data’s transformative power fully.
The essence of Singapore’s Digital Government Blueprint is to establish a government that is “Digital to the Core, and Serves with Heart,” emphasizing secure and user-centric services for citizens and businesses. The blueprint’s summary outlines two guiding principles: leveraging data, connectivity, and computing to revolutionize processes, technology, and service delivery, and prioritizing automation to enhance citizen-centric service experiences. It also sets four key outcomes for citizens and businesses (ease of use, seamless experience, security and reliability, and relevance) and two outcomes for public stakeholders (digitally-enabled workplaces and a digitally confident workforce). Six strategies underpin the blueprint: integrating services around citizen and business needs, strengthening the link between policy and operations, developing common digital and data platforms, operating reliable and secure systems, enhancing digital skills to drive innovation, and fostering co-creation with citizens and businesses to promote technology adoption.