Under the Intelligent Nation 2015 masterplan, Singapore has made good progress in transforming key business sectors and enhancing their competitive advantage through infocomm.

In 2013, for the fourth year running, Singapore was placed second in the world in harnessing the power of infocomm technology (ICT) to boost productivity and increase social development. The ranking was made by the 12th edition of the Global Information Technology Report (GITR). Released by the World Economic Forum, GITR analyses 144 countries in the use of ICT to nurture economic growth.

Singapore also topped the Waseda e-Government ranking for the fifth straight year, and was held up as a model for small-population countries to learn and apply e-Government.

Going forward, the country is positioning itself for the next wave of infocomm and media opportunities.  An Infocomm Media Masterplan Steering Committee has been formed to lead the development of a combined masterplan that will chart the country’s vision for infocomm and media until 2025. The 14-member committee is expected to release its recommendations in mid-2015.

Spurring collaboration in e-Government

As part of its strategy to drive social innovation and deepen co-creation efforts with the citizens, the Singapore Government announced during the eGov Global Exchange that it will release more data to the public. To date, more than 8,700 datasets have been made available on the government data sharing platforms data.gov.sg and OneMap, and these are being made machine-readable.

Aimed at promoting thought leadership, the eGov Global Exchange took place in June alongside the Infocomm Media Business Exchange. Themed “Engaging Citizens, Co-creating the Future”, the event brought together some 700 attendees including ministers and senior government officials from 65 countries/regions.

Another significant event in the e-Government calendar in 2013 was the inaugural eGov Excellence Awards (GEA) ceremony on 30 April. In all, 18 e-Government services were recognised for  their efforts to continuously innovate and deliver excellent government services electronically to the citizens. Separately, the eCitizen portal was recognised for “Outstanding Achievement” in the Government category of the Interactive Media Awards 2013, an international competition that recognises excellence in web design, development, marketing and innovation.

The Singapore Government has also reiterated its commitment to continue investing in IT. For 2013, it said it was looking to maintain its IT spending at S$1.2 billion but will be adopting a smarter procurement approach focusing on more “agile” software development.

Showcasing eEducation efforts

In March, the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) partnered the Information Technology Authority of Oman to hold a joint eEducation seminar alongside the COMEX 2013 ICT Exhibition, which took place at the Oman International Exhibition Centre in Muscat. During the event, six Singaporean ICT companies and Nanyang Technological University shared their project implementation experiences, discussed the benefits of e-learning programmes and showcased best practices in ICT adoption by educational institutions in Singapore. IDA also shared its experiences with Singapore’s EdVantage programme, which was implemented to meet the diverse needs of learners through the innovative use of infocomm.

Securing transactions in Financial Services

The adoption of OneKey , the nationwide two-factor (2FA) authentication device for users of online services, gained further traction in 2013. In March, NTUC Income came on board as the first insurer in Singapore to adopt the device, which is offered by the IDA subsidiary, Assurity Trusted Solutions. Assurity is the first authentication operator under Singapore’s National Authentication Framework, which seeks to develop a secure and trusted infocomm infrastructure to facilitate the delivery of safe online services offered by the public and private sectors. In August, CIMB Securities became the first broking firm to require the use of OneKey for added security, while demonstrating that enhanced security could go hand in hand with a better user experience.

Facilitating remote monitoring in Healthcare

Chronic disease patients are being monitored remotely using wireless devices under the Outpatient Telehealth Initiative project, which was developed by myHealth Sentinel Pte Ltd under the Telehealth Call-for-Collaboration (CFC) by the Ministry of Health and IDA. As part of the project, doctors from National University Health System and Frontier Healthcare Group issue wireless medical devices to chronic disease patients to monitor their conditions at home. The aim is to reduce the length of time required to diagnose new chronic conditions in patients. For existing chronic disease patients, timely intervention will also help prevent a deterioration of their condition and reduce the number of visits to the doctor.

Introducing paperless solutions in Trade and Logistics

Fourteen air cargo and logistics companies are reaping the benefits of adopting new paperless solutions under e-freight@Singapore , a sector-level initiative that aims to enhance efficiency and accuracy in airfreight documentation processes across the air cargo supply chain. Announced in June, the solutions were developed by three consortia led by Innosys Pte Ltd, Kewill Pte Ltd and vCargo Cloud Pte Ltd. The consortia were earlier selected by the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore and IDA in 2012 through an industry CFC.

Driving tech adoption in Small and Medium Enterprises

A new S$42-million initiative was launched in August to step up the collective adoption and innovative use of ICT by small and medium enterprises (SMEs), in order to boost productivity and drive business transformation in their respective sectors. The Sectoral Productivity CFC is a multi-agency effort led by IDA in collaboration with agencies such as SPRING Singapore and the Singapore Tourism Board, as well as trade associations. In line with the National Productivity Agenda, the CFC seeks proposals that are able to deliver sector-wide impact by aggregating demand, integrating supply chains or strengthening cross-sector collaborations amongst enterprises through the use of ICT.

Another initiative aimed at boosting technology adoption amongst SMEs is the S$21-million Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) CFC , which is aimed at spurring demand for high-impact SaaS solutions that will address homogenous business requirements within respective sectors. In April, 13 proposals targeting six sectors were awarded under the first wave of CFC evaluations. These sectors included early childhood, real estate, F&B, travel, private education and retail. The CFC is a collaboration between IDA and SPRING Singapore, Ministry of Social and Family Development, Ministry of Education and National Trades Union Congress’s e2i (Employment and Employability Institute).

Developing analytics solutions for Tourism, Hospitality and Retail

Consumers and retail businesses can look forward to new interactive experiences made possible through location analytics, with the rollout of projects under the Mobile Positioning and Analytics Services (MPAS) CFC . The MPAS programme is an initiative by IDA to establish shared services that will help lower deployment costs and catalyse the adoption of innovative location-based technologies to improve customer engagement and business operations in the retail sector. In March, IDA announced the award of the MPAS CFC to four consortia – StarHub and Changi Airport Group; Cold Storage, YFind and SangInfo; YFind and Perennial Real Estate; and YFind and Tangs.

IDA has also published an Open Positioning Framework , which is a set of standards and protocols that will help reduce the time and costs involved in developing and deploying MPAS and enable more businesses in various sectors to reap the benefits of location-based services.

In a separate initiative, IDA has partnered the Federation of Merchants, Singapore to identify common problems faced by different groups of heartland retailers and the potential ICT solutions that can help to meet these challenges. This was announced at the 5th HDB Retail Seminar in August.

To help businesses improve productivity and competitiveness, a suite of Retail Analytics shared services has been progressively made available to retail enterprises since mid-2013. Deployed on shared infrastructure, these services provide technology and manpower capabilities in Customer and Marketing Analytics, Inventory Optimisation and Operations Analytics to retail and wholesale enterprises at a lower cost of adoption and in a shorter implementation time. They have enabled retailers and wholesalers to enhance their competitiveness by understanding consumer purchase patterns in order to offer more relevant promotions, automating and optimising stock replenishment, and optimising manpower resource utilisation. The business impact of the shared services is currently being evaluated by the early adopters, who have already reported some initial successes in terms of improved productivity and sales.

Bridging the digital divide in People Sector

A new Silver IT Care initiative was launched in October to provide senior citizens with a dedicated helpdesk that they can approach for assistance in solving technical infocomm problems. The collaboration involving IDA, Organisation of Senior Volunteers and The Council for Third Age was announced at the opening of the seventh Silver Infocomm Day (SID) in September.

The 2013 SID, which comprised hands-on training workshops, an exhibition and talks featuring the latest in infocomm lifestyle trends, attracted some 5,000 seniors. It took place over one week and was held at three venues – ITE College Central, ITE College West and Temasek Polytechnic.

There was also strong response to the 2013 Intergenerational IT Bootcamp , which comprised 17 IT sessions and involved 15 schools within the Ang Mo Kio Group Representation Constituency. About 300 active seniors were guided by some 300 students aged between 10 and 18 years during the hands-on IT workshops.