The infocomm industry plays a critical role in Singapore’s economy, fuelling the growth of other economic activities and the creation of jobs. In 2010, the infocomm industry contributed 7.3 per cent to the country’s overall GDP, with infocomm value-add growing by 12.8 per cent over 2009. Revenue from the sector grew by 12 per cent from S$62.74 billion in 2009 to S$70.39 billion last year. At the same time, the proportion of export revenue grew from 64.5 per cent to 66.2 per cent.
Building on this momentum, IDA continues to focus its efforts on creating a vibrant infocomm environment by creating the impetus for innovation among local companies and attracting MNCs and global startups to carry out cutting-edge activities in Singapore. The various programmes that have been put in place to support industry upgrading, capability building and innovation are gaining traction. At the same time, internationalisation initiatives provide opportunities for local companies to extend their reach to overseas markets.
The Infocomm Start-Up Programme (iStart) is a multi-pronged approach to assist, facilitate and nurture a self sustaining ecosystem for Singapore’s ICT start-ups to thrive. This is done by increasing the depth and potential of our start-ups through various programmes and initiatives.
To enhance the capabilities of our start-ups, four coaching programmes — Startup Weekend Singapore, Seedcamp, the Kauffman Fasttrac programme and the Founders Institute were supported. Sixty start-ups took part in these events where 133 trainees were coached by 94 mentors, particularly to introduce an international scale perspective to the start-ups’ business models. Sixteen developer-centric events were also held on topics in some of the latest technologies like Mobile App Development, Web 2.0, Cloud Computing, Ruby, and other programming methodologies for professionals to enhance their technical capabilities. More than 1,000 professionals took part in these Tech User Group and “Hack” events, such as The AppVenture Challenge, Geekcamp and CodeCom.
IDA also provides bootcamps, mentorships, business meetings and networking sessions for start-ups to enhance their knowledge of target markets and increase their access to overseas markets. iStart@Silicon Valley provided Singapore start-ups with an in-depth understanding of business-related issues in the United States. Start-ups also had the opportunity to undergo a series of pitching and mentoring sessions from successful founders of US start-ups and connect to various industry partners, investors and organisations. Nine local start-ups made the trips to Silicon Valley in November 2010 and January 2011. As a result of the connections made, the start-ups secured a total of nine customer pilot trials.
Locally, IDA supports a variety of start-up related events to support a more vibrant community and allow our entrepreneurs to collectively launch and pitch to their target audience including customers, investors and partners. Through our efforts, grassroots start-up launch platforms such as eChelon have been held in Singapore. eChelon 2010 was held in June 2010, attracting 650 attendees and 10 exhibiting start ups.
IDA has continued to partner SPRING Singapore on the Technology Enterprise Commercialisation Scheme (TECS) to provide support for start-ups with strong technology intellectual property and scalable business models. As of March 2011, 25 start-ups have been supported under this programme, generating S$12 million in project spending towards technical development of products or services and creating 170 new jobs.
IDA also partnered SPRING on the Technology Innovation Programme (TIP), where Singapore-based infocomm enterprises use technology to develop or improve products, processes or business models as part of overall business strategy. As of March 2011, IDA and SPRING have supported more than 40 enterprises, generating infocomm investments of over S$25 million.
To recognise excellence in infocomm innovation in Singapore, IDA and the Singapore infocomm Technology Federation (SiTF) jointly organised the National Infocomm Awards (NIA) 2010 last year. This biennial event is the industry's highest accolade for infocomm innovation in Singapore. Thirteen companies were presented the awards at a gala dinner attended by over 800 industry guests. Since its inception, NIA has served as a springboard for many industry players looking to extend their markets beyond Singapore.
To ensure that the infocomm industry remains globally competitive, IDA continues to place emphasis on programmes that strengthen the capabilities of Singapore infocomm enterprises (infocomm local enterprises or iLEs) and build infocomm manpower capabilities.
The Infocomm Local Industry Upgrading Programme or iLIUP continues to promote strategic and mutually beneficial partnerships between iLEs and MNCs. Since 2002, iLIUP has contributed over S$230 million in revenue to the infocomm industry and trained more than 2,000 infocomm professionals.
IDA continues to work with the industry to anchor key infocomm activities in Singapore so as to create more business opportunities for iLEs. To drive the development of more innovative infocomm solutions, IDA collaborates with MNCs to set up Next Generation Innovation Centres (NGICs) in strategic and emerging technology areas. Last year, IBM launched The Innovation Place to engage user enterprises to help them discover new business models and develop Next Generation ICT-powered services.
In the area of manpower, a key iN2015 strategy is to develop an infocomm-savvy workforce and globally competitive infocomm manpower. The aim is to create 80,000 additional jobs by 2015. As of June 2010, about 44,000 additional jobs have been created since 2005.
According to the 2010 Annual Survey on Infocomm Manpower conducted by IDA, infocomm employment grew by 0.4 per cent over the previous year to reach 141,300 in June 2010. Total infocomm demand increased by 9.7 per cent or 13,900 from 2009.
To ensure that Singapore's infocomm manpower continues to remain competitive, IDA announced its second manpower development roadmap in March 2011. A joint effort by the government and industry, the four-year Infocomm Manpower Development Roadmap v2.0 (MDEV 2.0) is focused on developing the local infocomm workforce to take on high-end, high value-added jobs.
It aims to achieve three outcomes - first, to develop talent with deep infocomm skills, the ability to exploit infocomm and the agility to respond to industry shifts; second, to attract a greater share of talent into infocomm; and third, to ensure that Singapore's manpower profile is more closely aligned to Singapore's role as a global hub.
Through its initiatives and programmes, MDEV 2.0 is expected to benefit more than 18,000 infocomm professionals, as well as school students in Singapore. IDA, with its partners, will be further investing about $30 million in these infocomm manpower development programmes over the next two years.
20 new Infocomm Clubs were set up in schools in 2010 to expose students to infocomm training and activities. This brought the total number of Infocomm Clubs in schools to 270. Over 3,000 students honed their infocomm skills in the National Infocomm Competition in 2010, with young infocomm talent coming from secondary schools, junior colleges, polytechnics/ITEs.
Through our talent attraction programmes, IDA also provided outreach to over 100,000 persons in 2010, through seminars, career talks, company visits and online career engagement platforms.
Programmes such as the National Infocomm Scholarship (NIS) and the Integrated Infocomm Scholarship (IIS) continued to attract top talent to infocomm. The IIS, which started in 2009, provides support to outstanding ‘O’ level students to pursue infocomm studies from polytechnic through to the university level. The second batch of scholarships was presented to 32 students in April 2010, bringing the total number of IIS scholars to 52.
In August 2010, 27 students from junior colleges, polytechnics and international schools were presented with the National Infocomm Scholarship (NIS), which is aimed at developing infocomm leaders. This brought the total number of NIS awarded to 208 since 2004. NIS scholars were able to choose from 27 sponsoring organisations to serve their bond, which included MNCs, government agencies and local companies. These sponsoring organisations will also provide the scholars with mentorship and work attachments of up to six months.
To develop talent in institutions, one of the initiatives introduced by IDA was the Enhanced Learning in Infocomm Technology (ELITe) Programme , which provides infocomm undergraduates with opportunities to acquire industry exposure and develop their skills through industry attachments, mentorship, projects and courses/certifications. To date, about 260 industry-ready graduates have been groomed under the programme, in collaboration with 42 industry partners. In 2010, 100 undergraduates joined the programme.
A key strategy under the first manpower development roadmap was the upgrading of talent. To articulate the competency requirements of infocomm professionals, a National Infocomm Competency Framework (NICF) was developed by IDA in collaboration with the Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA) and the industry. The third version of the NICF was launched in April 2010 with 250 job roles and over 550 competency standards.
IDA and WDA have also jointly established four Continual Education Training (CET) Centres to develop and launch NICF-accredited courses. Over 4,500 professionals have been trained through these centres to date.
Over 450 courses mapped to NICF have been endorsed under the Critical Infocomm Technology Resource Programme (CITREP) for professional training and certification. Under the current Enhanced CITREP initiative, companies and professionals are further incentivised to upgrade their skills and to embrace capability building through an increase in funding and the introduction of an ”Absentee Payroll” to defray the opportunity cost for organisations that send their employees for training during working hours. More than 12,500 infocomm professionals benefited from CITREP in 2010, bringing the total number to 46,000 since 2005.
A total of 36 professionals from 13 companies have also benefitted from the Infocomm Leadership and Development Programme (iLEAD) since it started. The programme aims to build a pipeline of infocomm experts in high-end, strategic growth areas such as cloud computing, green IT, infocomm security and network engineering. This is being done through local and overseas work attachments and specialised professional courses.
In June 2010, IDA launched the Applications-on-Multi-Platforms Simplify (AMPlify) initiative under iLEAD to provide local mobile application developers with the opportunity to gain advanced technical skills training and hands-on experience with leading mobile MNC partners such as Google, Microsoft, Nokia and Research In Motion.
Besides application development, iLEAD has also been enhanced to offer more training and attachment opportunities in two other niche technology domains: business analytics and infocomm in business domains.
The growth of the export market continues to outpace that of the domestic market. IDA’s Internationalisation Programme helps iLEs make inroads into key overseas markets.
IDA has sustained our efforts to promote the Infocomm Singapore brand, which helps iLEs market their products and solutions overseas using a single identifier. The initiative has seen good take-up by iLEs and the Infocomm Singapore is used extensively at international trade events.
The Internationalisation Programme also enables iLEs to leverage on established relationships such as bilateral agreements, Memoranda of Understanding (MOU), and strategic alliances as well as IDA International’s consultancy-led market development efforts to make inroads into foreign markets. IDA offices in China, India, USA and the Middle East have helped iLEs enter these markets.
In China, IDA facilitated the export of innovative ICT products and solutions by working closely with the iLEs in their internationalisation efforts and collaborating with the Infocomm Singapore Centre (ISC) to help these enterprises develop partnerships and business opportunities. In September 2010, IDA and ISC led a business delegation of five iLEs to Wuhan and a “smart city” seminar was organised. In addition, ISC has also signed a MOU with the Wuhan Software Association to create more opportunities for the iLEs and ICT companies in Wuhan to explore partnerships. In March 2011, IDA has also facilitated ISC to ink a MOU with the Chongqing Government, which provides a collaboration framework for our iLEs looking to set up operations in Chongqing.
IDA led a delegation of 10 iLEs to participate in South by South West (SXSW) in March 2011, held in Austin, Texas. SXSW is the largest interactive, film and music festival in the US, which attracted more than 20,000 attendees from all over the world. The event has a reputation for being a platform where the best digital media companies debut and spark trends in the digital media space. An Infocomm Singapore Pavilion featuring participating iLES was set up at the SXSW Trade Show, providing a high-profile avenue for iLEs to showcase themselves. They had the opportunity to network with industry representatives, potential business partners and venture capitalists while leveraging on the Infocomm Singapore branding to distinguish themselves from the large number of ICT start-ups present. On top of that, IDA was invited by SXSW to form a panel with iLEs at the inaugural SXSW International Tech Summit to share about Singapore’s digital media and entrepreneurship landscape. The iLEs regarded their participation in the SXSW event as worthwhile and useful in facilitating their entry into the US ICT market, expressing strong interest to attend again the following year.
In India, IDA has assisted iLEs through its network of “go-to-market” partners. Several iLEs are actively pursuing leads and business opportunities in the India and regional markets. IDA participated in entrepreneurship platforms to attract Indian startups, such as Bubble Ideas, i2i Telesolutions and ConnectM, to hub in Singapore. In April 2010, IDA’s senior management took part in a business development and promotion trip to India and met leading software vendors and industry leaders, encouraging many leading ICT companies to establish or increase their presence and activities in Singapore.
In April 2010, IDA led a delegation of Singapore infocomm companies to participate COMEX 2010 in Muscat, Oman. IDA shared the Singapore experience on Public-Private Partnership (PPP) at the COMEX CIO Forum, and Singapore infocomm companies showcased the e-Government solutions they had implemented in Singapore and around the world.