Singapore on the path to being global IT hub

Singapore aspires to be a global IT hub, its Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts (MICA) Yaacob Ibrahim said recently while outlining his ministry’s vision and upcoming projects.

“We have always positioned ourselves as a global IT hub – and global trader – and our vision is to have IT not just as infrastructure but as an enabler to allow Singaporean citizens/residents to access the latest technology so as to let them do the things they want to do that will benefit them,” Ibrahim said.

Besides ensuring IT infrastructure was up to speed, they would maximise it to extract values, Ibrahim said. A new data centre with modern security and an energy-efficient cooling system would soon be built to allow companies to manage data properly. The Data Analytics (DA) capacity would be built to let companies mining data to understand data and trends. Singapore is inviting San Francisco’s Silicon Valley companies over, so they could train people, he said.

IT would be applied and useful applications developed for various verticals, Ibrahim said. For instance, the healthcare vertical would see information shared across departments, the transportation vertical would see information generated for different users, and the social sector would see low-income families’ information gathered for charity organisations to aid them.

The upcoming Personal Data Protection Act would ensure that personal data was protected, he assured, and the “National Do-Not-Call (DNC) Registry”, which comes into effect in January 2014, would spare people from unwanted advertising phone calls and messages.

He said Singapore had laws including those protecting against libel through untrue and tarnishing messages. He said messages that tampered with the country’s racial harmony, online or elsewhere, would have face the law, while a programme would be launched to improve media literacy so that people become immune to misinformation on the Internet.

“Our position is that Internet is an open platform and we do not want to contain it, but we hope the people use it responsibly,” he said. The position also covers new media (Facebook, Twitter or Youtube) – which he described as “a healthy development” to communicate with people – agencies and politicians.

Since accessibility was also the key, the ministry had projects, including the “NEU PC Plus Program”, he said. “We collect old PCs, upgrade and give them to low-income families, then we bundle it with 18 months of free Internet, so they can access the Internet,” he explained.

Guided by the “intelligent Nation 2015 (iN2015)” (2006-2015) master plan, agencies especially the Infocomm Development authority of Singapore (IDA), are inching towards the goals, said IDA Strategic and Policy Planning Division deputy director, Adrian Ong.

The goals include: a two-fold increase in value-addition of the infocomm industry to 26 billion Singapore dollars; a three-fold increase in infocomm export revenue to S$60 billion (S$58.7 billion in 2011); creation of 80,000 additional Infocomm jobs in Singapore (as of 2011 there were 31,500 such jobs created annually), increase in broadband usage in all homes to 90 per cent (85 per cent in 2011) and 100 per cent computer ownership in homes with school-going children (97 per cent in 2011). 

The “Wireless@SG” project also realised pervasive connectivity with 7,500 wireless hotspots across 1,196 venues with speeds of up to 1Mbps.

Ibrahim was speaking during a meeting with Thai journalists as part of the 9th Singapore-Thailand Journalists’ Exchange Programme from August 6-10.