IDA continued to play an active role in developing a pool of globally-competitive infocomm talent and an infocomm-savvy workforce. At the same time, it helped drive consumer education initiatives to ensure digital inclusion and support the effective use of infocomm in community outreach efforts.

Manpower Development
The availability of skilled infocomm manpower continued to be a prerequisite to developing a strong infocomm industry and driving the effective adoption of infocomm by various business sectors in Singapore. The number of people employed in infocomm roles has been growing steadily over the years, with the latest figures putting it at 142,900 in 2011, up from 141,300 in 2010.

IDA’s manpower development efforts are guided by the Infocomm Manpower Development Roadmap 2.0. In its efforts to interest Singaporeans in an infocomm career, IDA has been reaching out to younger cohorts of students. The National Infocomm Competition, a series of challenges that allows students to hone their infocomm skills, was extended to primary schools in 2012. ( Read )

“As part of our efforts to support infocomm manpower development, SCS launched the ICT community InfoPier to strengthen the value of our infocomm professionals as they progress in their careers and to build a stronger ICT eco-system in Singapore. To date, we have over 3,000 professionals registered on InfoPier and we will be rolling out further enhancement to the registry to help our members match their competencies to the National Infocomm Competency Framework. SCS will also be launching a new Special Interest Group on Business Analytics in the first quarter of 2013 to further enhance professional skills development in this area.”

- Mr Chak Kong Soon, President, Singapore Computer Society (SCS)

IDA also continued to identify and nurture infocomm talent through its scholarship schemes. In 2012, 40 students received the Integrated Infocomm Scholarships, which supports outstanding “O” level students in their infocomm studies from polytechnic through to the university level. Another 17 received the National Infocomm Scholarships for undergraduate and postgraduate studies.  The IDA programme continued to receive strong backing from the industry, with 26 corporate partners offering scholarships in 2012. ( Read )

Community Development
To address the end-user side of the infocomm equation, IDA introduced several initiatives to ensure that the community as a whole has been able to make effective use of infocomm and that no one was left behind in Singapore’s digital journey.

A People Sector Infocomm Resource Centre was officially launched in April to provide infocomm advisory services and to assist people sector organisations in making use of infocomm technologies to enhance their public outreach efforts and to improve productivity and efficiency. The centre, a collaboration with Nanyang Polytechnic and the National Council of Social Service, is located at the polytechnic’s Engineering Building. ( Read )

One of the population segments that IDA has been focusing on in its infocomm awareness and education efforts has been the senior citizens. In 2012, IDA “upsized” its award-winning Intergenerational IT bootcamp initiative from the school to the constituency level. The Inaugural Constituency Intergenerational IT Bootcamp in August was organised with the support of Radin Mas grassroots organisations and attracted about 100 senior citizens. ( Read )

As one of the programmes under IDA’s Silver Infocomm Initiative, the Intergenerational IT Bootcamp aims to spur interest among senior citizens in learning IT together with their grandchildren. At this year’s Commonwealth Association for Public Administration and Management International Innovations Award, the initiative garnered top honours in the “Innovations in Citizen Engagement and Dialogue” category. ( Read )

“I started learning how to use the computer about three years ago from my children. However, I had this fear that I would accidentally delete their documents as I was using their computer. That put me off initially. Eventually I bought my own computer notebook and during meal times, when my children were around, I would ask them questions when I got stuck. It took a lot of hard work and perseverance but now, I can type out my proposals and save them onto the computer. I also signed up for an email account so that I can send and receive emails.”

- Madam Karney Ngai Ching Kwan, 65, grassroots leader and Chairman of the Yuhua Constituency St 31 Shop-Proprietors & Hawkers Association

Another major event under the Silver Infocomm Initiative, Silver Infocomm Day, had another successful run this year, with a series of seminars and IT workshops conducted over the period of one month and at eight locations across the island. This year's Silver Infocomm Day also saw the appointment of 30 Silver Infocomm Wellness Ambassadors as part of an IDA collaboration with the People's Association’s Active Aging Council to promote active aging and lifelong learning in the community. ( Read )

To facilitate access to infocomm training, two new Silver Infocomm Junctions (SIJs) were appointed at Woodlands Regional Library and Kampong Kembangan Community Club, bringing the total number of SIJs island-wide to 14. At the same time, the number of Silver Infocomm Hotspots, which provide senior citizens with connectivity and access to computing resources, has more than doubled to 100 island-wide, compared with a year ago.

Infocomm and You
IDA also continued to reach out to the wider public to demonstrate the potential and benefits of infocomm, in particular the Next Generation Nationwide Broadband Network (Next Gen NBN). iCarnivals were held at the Infocomm Experience Centre (iExperience) at Esplanade Xchange in March and September to give visitors first-hand experience of Next Gen NBN applications ranging from gaming and entertainment to business services such as videoconferencing, cloud computing and smart work centres. (Read New at iExperience and Intrigued, inspired, impresssed )

With more people going online, there has also been a concerted effort to raise awareness on infocomm security. During Singapore’s second Cyber Security Awareness Day in July, more than 630,000 pledges were received from individuals and organisations across public, private and people sectors to secure their computers, mobile devices, wireless equipments and online identities. This was more than twice the number of pledges received from various sectors in 2011. The Cyber Security Awareness Day was held alongside the Information Security Seminar 2012 that was jointly organised by IDA, the Association of Information Security Professionals and the Cyber Security Awareness Alliance. ( Read )

“Everyone in the company plays an important role in ensuring that our systems are secure. At work, we use strong passwords of more than eight characters with a mixture of alphabets and numerals, and we change the passwords monthly. We have an IT matrix to classify the different login modules for each staff in the company and we limit authorisation only to the relevant personnel. We also always logout when we are not at the workstation.”

- Ms Kezia Lim, an accountant with a local real estate developer