Smart nation, or what is interesting about Singapore’s digital transformation experience?

Recently, Moscow hosted a round table “How to Form a Smart Nation”, which discussed the experience of digital transformation of public administration in Russia and Singapore. In this post, we want to tell you more about the achievements of the Asian state and the issues that have been posed by new film “Smart Nation”.

Much has been written and said about the “economic miracle” of Singapore. This city-state is consistently among the world’s leading economies in terms of GDP per capita, and has long become a technological and financial hub for international companies. It is a sales center for innovative technologies in the region – cloud solutions, artificial intelligence, data analysis solutions – for various industries, including healthcare, energy, aviation, education and others.

In the fall of 2020, the country topped the Asian Digital Transformation Index, which once again confirmed the level of digital transformation of public administration, urban infrastructure and public life.

“Singapore is one of the states that is cited as an example when talking about digital transformation and public administration reform. Delegations of our civil servants within the framework of foreign modules of educational programs have repeatedly come to this country to exchange experience. We came to the understanding that the valuable experience of Singapore, to which so much attention has been riveted on the part of specialists, must be made widely available to all who may find it useful. And at the same time, film “Smart Nation” can be called the tip of the iceberg, because a 40-minute video costs hundreds of hours of footage, which are used in our educational programs, ” – emphasizes Maria Shklyaruk, Academic Director of the Center for Training Leaders for Digital Transformation of the Higher School of Economics, RANEPA.

What is the secret of this small country, which, having gained independence from Malaysia in 1965, only owned a port?

If we’re ordinary we just won’t be

This is how the author of the “Singapore economic miracle” Lee Kuan Yew formulated the essence of the city-state development strategy. And although the state was the largest transport hub in the region, the country’s government staked on investments in electronics and technology. For example, in 1998, a massive high-speed Internet connection program was launched, and five years later, 65% of homes and workplaces were connected to the network. Thus, the state has formed an IT infrastructure and created a wide layer of people who can work in a post-industrial economy and create intelligent products. As a result, Singapore focused on IT technologies, actively attracting international innovative businesses and developing its own.

Like most countries in the world, Singapore is also faced with corruption, bureaucracy, and a lack of smart heads and hands to move conventional economic models and governance patterns. According to the participants of the film “Smart Nation”, the key driver of change was the “engineering” spirit of the Singapore government and the desire to use technologies that best solve the problems of public administration and society.

What is Smart Nation?

Exactly 6 years ago, Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Hsien Lung launched the Smart Nation initiative. According to the authors of the concept, “this is an ambitious program that will take the city, its inhabitants and the government into the digital age – and maybe even further.” For example, since 2017, the government has allocated billions of dollars to support and purchase state services from technology startups, thereby stimulating the development of its own IT sector in the country.

The developers of the Smart Nation initiative have actually created a testing ground in the city for testing technological solutions to urban problems to make life easier for city dwellers in high population densities. Tens of thousands of sensors installed throughout the country collect and transmit all data related to housing, amenities and public infrastructure to the Smart Nation Sensor Platform (SNSP).

The Smart Nation and Digital Government (SNDGO) Group and State Technology Agency (GovTech) under the Prime Minister’s Office are leading the development of a national digital identity system for online transactions between citizens and businesses, building on the current SingPass system.

In the health sector, the Singapore government has launched a senior citizen surveillance system and has invested in telemedicine services. Interestingly, not only the state, but also private companies participated in the deployment of the infrastructure. At the time of testing technologies, the government of the country assumes all costs for the development and implementation of projects, and then transfers them to non-state companies to scale and maintain the system of digital services. And, oddly enough, such monetization of Smart Nation initiatives has borne fruit: business does not risk its investments in technology, but develops solutions that have already proven their effectiveness.

While Russia is discussing the launch of a unified digital platform for the transport complex, Singapore has become one of the first countries in the world where the implementation of the Smart City program has begun. These are not only hundreds of thousands of sensors that track the position of each vehicle, but also telematics platforms that collect and process data in real time.

These and many other initiatives form the virtual Singapore ecosystem. Just imagine, all data about the city is collected on one platform – from traffic movements to measurements of air quality, water and electricity costs, pedestrian traffic and many other parameters that determine the quality of life in Singapore.

What can you learn from Singapore?

Today, Singapore has 23 roadmaps for digital transformation in 80 industries. And due to the fact that new technologies are not introduced declaratively, but are supported from above and implemented in cooperation with business, the country achieves high results.

Interestingly, Singapore does not stop there. For example, during the premiere of the film “Smart Nation”, Ambassador of the Republic of Singapore to the Russian Federation Premjit Sadasivan stressed that even after many years of implementation of the government initiative of Singapore “Smart Nation”, the Republic is looking with great interest at successful cases of digital transformation in Russia, in particular, at development strategy of Moscow “Smart City”. Digital transformation for Singapore, according to the Ambassador, is not separate measures to digitalize the work of specific ministries and departments, but a complex task covering the entire public and private sector in the country: “Our digital transformation experiment is not limited to Singapore alone, we really want our efforts in this direction to be in demand around the world“.

Indeed, many successful Singaporean ideas have been gleaned from the experience of other countries and corporations. For example, the rating system for civil servants is a revised practice from General Electric. The potential rating is a concept from the Shell oil company. The police structure was borrowed from Japan. Thus, the positive experience of Singapore in many ways suggests that you need to learn from those who have already achieved something, to adopt skills and knowledge.

Oleg Logvinov, Deputy Head of the Analytical Center for the Government of the Russian Federation, notes: “Russia is ready to learn from the experience of Singapore, and we have many points of mutual interest, in particular in industry: production of oil and gas platforms, microelectronics, supply chain management“.

An equally important topic remains the training of personnel – people who are able to drive digital transformation at the state level, substantiate the importance of digitalization projects for business and society and achieve significant results.

Ksenia Tkacheva, Director of the Center for Training Leaders for Digital Transformation at the Higher School of Economics, RANEPA stressed:In Singapore, the process of training civil servants and the development of personnel in the field of digital is systematically built. And we would like to develop cooperation in this direction: our Center is ready to receive representatives of educational organizations in Singapore, I am sure that we have something to share with colleagues. “

You can see documentary about Singapore, filmed by the Center for Training Leaders for Digital Transformation of the Higher School of Economics, RANEPA. It will also be interesting to know your opinion on the experience of Singapore and its application in Russia. Leave comments, join the discussion!