Standards play an important and integral part in facilitating the development and adoption of new technologies. Hence, IDA is working with various industry partners and standards organisations here and overseas to make standards a part of Singapore's ICT eco-system.
The IDA Standards Team plays a key role in fostering and facilitating the industry's participation in local and international ICT standards forums. It is the Secretariat to the IT Standards Committee (ITSC), an industry-led effort supported by SPRING Singapore and IDA, chartered to drive and lead infocomm standardisation activities in Singapore and represent Singapore in the international standardisation forum of ISO/IEC JTC1 on Information Technology.
The ITSC is one of the nine Standards Committee under the national Standards Council appointed by SPRING Singapore, It is led by Mr Robert Chew, Partner of Accenture Pte Ltd and comprises more than 300 volunteers from the industry.
Infocomm standards in Singapore are developed on a consensus basis and are the results of the collaborative efforts amongst the government agencies, tertiary institutions, professional bodies and the infocomm industry. ITSC is a neutral and open platform for interested industry and government parties to come together to agree on technical standards.
The ITSC Council comprises a Council with representatives from associations, academia, research institutes and government agencies such as ISS, I2R, SCS, SiTF, ITMA, NUS, NTU, SPRING & IDA, which charts the directions and policies. In addition, the appointed Technical Committees and Working Groups comprising technical experts from the industry, academia and research institutes, develop and promote national infocomm standards, and participate in international infocomm standardisation activities. These standardisation activities are carried out by volunteers.
At present, there are ten Technical Committees addressing infocomm standards in areas of:
- Automatic Data Capture
- Biometrics
- Construction Industry IT Standards
- eFinancial Services
- Information Exchange
- Intelligent Transport Systems
- Learning Standards
- Multimedia Representation
- Security and Privacy Standards
- Cards and Personal Identification
These form the spectrum of infocomm standards that ITSC monitors and develops. Where possible, ITSC will mirror its Technical Committees after the Technical Committees of ISO and the Sub-Committees of ISO/IEC JTC1 on information technology, which Singapore is a 'participating' member.