Agencies that presented their infocomm investment plans at the annual Industry Briefing included the Ministry of Defence (Mindef), Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA), Ministry of Education (MOE), Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and Ministry of Manpower (MOM).

Mr Tan: There will be greater focus on knowledge management and collaborative systems to facilitate the sharing of information.

Mr Tan Bee Teck, Assistant Director of CIT Resource Management Department, Mindef CIO Office, noted that over the last few years, the Ministry’s focus had been on building enterprise IT capabilities to support medical operations, training and building and infrastructure. Going forward, there will be greater focus on knowledge management (KM) and collaborative systems to facilitate the sharing of information between Mindef, the Singapore Armed Forces and across other agencies.

For example, Mindef is looking to deploy a KM system on the Internet to serve the NS community. It is also looking to digitise existing content such as army records into text searchable soft copies to support the KM system. Existing learning content will also be repurposed into small learning objects for sharing and reuse.

At the seminar, Mr Daniel Neo, Head of IT Infrastructure and Services at DSTA revealed that the statutory board is planning to invest in its next-generation content and documentation management system. The project will review viable technical options and involve acquisition of hardware and software and engagement of professional services.

For MOE, the anchor project for FY09 will be the Standard ICT Operating Environment for Schools (SOE Schools). "There is still scope to further standardise to achieve greater economies of scale and operational efficiencies," said Mr Sivakumaran Sathappan, Senior Technical Services Manager, Information Technology Branch, Ministry of Education.

Mr Sivakumaran: The challenge will be to consolidate the ICT infrastructure while catering to the diverse needs of the schools.

The challenge, however, will be to consolidate the ICT infrastructure while catering to the diverse needs of the schools, for example, the need for high performance computing devices for some lessons and mobile devices for other lessons, he added. The tender for the SOE for schools, estimated to be worth S$620 million, is expected to be called this quarter.

Other projects from MOE include enhancements to edumall2.0, the Internet-based platform for hosting teaching and learning resources and serving as the gateway to externally hosted resources; the creation of iSHARE Zonal Portals, a repository for teacher-related materials; a Digital Language Lab to enhance teaching of English language in schools; the upgrade to the Wide Area Network (WAN) infrastructure facilitating the delivery of these applications; and enhancements to key administrative applications to cater to evolving business requirements.

In other presentations, MHA said it planned to call for tenders for a BorderWatch System for the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority and a Fire Safety Online Processing System II for the Singapore Civil Defence Force.

MOM plans to call a tender for IT Infrastructure and Application Systems Outsourcing later in 2009, to provide comprehensive maintenance and support services for MOM's IT infrastructure and application systems.