The Minister and foreign dignatories tour imbX.

Significant progress has been made under Intelligent Nation 2015 (iN2015), Singapore’s national infocomm masterplan to use infocomm to make Singapore an intelligent nation and a global city.

At the Infocomm Media Business Exchange (imbX) 2010 held at Singapore Expo on June 15, three important iN2015 programmes driven by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) were highlighted as the nation continues to take advantage of buoyant regional growth to drive its infocomm technology (ICT) agenda forward.

According to the International Monetary Fund, the world economy is expected to grow by 4.2 percent this year, spearheaded by Asia and the Middle East, with Gartner forecasting 5.3 per cent increase in IT spending to hit US$3.4 trillion in 2010, with a further growth of 4.2 per cent in 2011. In addition, International Data Corporation is predicting that ICT spending in Asia-Pacific excluding Japan will grow 7.7 per cent to US$184 million in 2010.

iN2015 progress
According to Mr Lui Tuck Yew, Acting Minister for Information, Communication and the Arts, the promising outlook is spurring the development and growth of Singapore’s ICT capabilities including furthering the vision of iN2015.

“One key strategy under our iN2015 master plan launched in 2006 was to make ICT more accessible and pervasive to all Singaporeans,” he said, noting that to date eight in 10 households have broadband access and almost all households with school-going children having a computer.

Mr Lui also noted that rollout of the cornerstone Next Generation Nationwide Broadband Network, an ultra-high speed fibre network, is on track with 60 per cent of households connected by the end of 2010 and nationwide coverage by 2012. “We will continue to harness the power of ICT to transform key economic sectors,” he said.

However, more needs to be done, and one key initiative that will strengthen the infocomm infrastructure for next generation ICT users is the National Authentication Framework (NAF). IDA sees this as critical given the increasing popularity and pervasiveness of e-transactions including e-banking and e-commerce.

“It (NAF) will be set up to provide a nationwide strong authentication platform to enhance the security of online transactions for Government, businesses and consumers,” said RADM(NS) Ronnie Tay, Chief Executive Officer, IDA.

With IDA as a trusted government body setting up a wholly-owned subsidiary to own the security infrastructure and services which include a popular second-factor authentication method such as the issuing of one-time passwords, businesses can more comfortably leverage it as a cost-effective common platform while consumers can benefit from the use of a single authentication device to access multiple online services.

The project is underway with IDA recently issuing a Request for Proposal for an outsourced operator to build the NAF system, and to manage the day to day operations.

Another initiative that IDA is spearheading will transform the trade and logistics industry. According to Mr Loh Siang Kiang, Assistant Director, Finance, Tourism, Trade and Manufacturing Cluster, IDA, the landscape for trade and logistics comprises multiple players like shippers, freight forwarders, carriers, insurance companies, financial institutions and consignees. A consignment can involve up to 25 different parties, preparing 30 to 40 trade documents on multiple systems.

“TradeXchange® was launched as an IT platform to enable multi-party collaboration for the trade and logistics sector. TradeXchange®  is initiated by the government and the technology behind TradeXchange® is based on open data and interface standards. This provides open access to the entire trade and logistics community,” he said.

IDA is working on an initiative to integrate key trade and logistics business processes through TradeXchange®. Four consortia involving 22 companies were awarded a Call-For-Collaboration to integrate key processes in marine cargo insurance, freight management and trade financing through TradeXchange®. A total of S$6.3 million will be co-invested by industry and government to implement these three integrated processes.

“With the integration of key processes that bring about the timely exchanges of information, companies will enjoy greater operational efficiencies, better visibility, and faster turnaround,” said Mr Loh.

Another transformative initiative for economy is the Digital Concierge Programme which aims to catalyse the growth of the mobile services ecosystem in Singapore. The programme encourages businesses to make use of the mobile channel to reach out to their customers more pervasively and accelerate the development of transactional and innovative mobile services, particularly location-based and mobile commerce services. 

“By making available common building blocks like location positioning, payment and shared business directory, businesses can create transactional and personalised mobile services quickly to widen their reach to the consumers,” said Mr Teo Han Yong, Assistant Director, Finance, Tourism, Trade and Manufacturing Cluster, IDA.

Under the Call-for-Collaboration (CFC) for the Digital Concierge programme, IDA and six companies will jointly invest a total of S$10 million over the next two years to develop and deploy various mobile shared services and enablers that are accessible and re-usable by application developers and businesses.

The mobile shared services and enablers awarded under the CFC include:

• Mobile enabler for location positioning, integrated with mobile operators’ networks;
• Shared business directory that is comprehensive and regularly updated;
• Mobile content platform for hosting of interactive websites that are optimised for mobile phones;
• Mobile enabler for ticketing and fulfillment, integrated with cinemas and event venues for purchase and delivery of electronic tickets to mobile phones for direct auto-gate access to venues;
• Mobile enabler for taxi booking, integrated with taxi companies; and
• Mobile enabler for remote payment allowing secured remote payments to be easily and seamlessly integrated with mobile websites and applications.

For application developers, this would mean reduced complexity and development time to create new mobile services with richer functionalities. For businesses, this would translate into lower cost of leveraging mobile services to engage their customers.

By April 2012, at least 70 per cent of all retail and food & beverage businesses in Singapore will be listed in the shared business directory and a wide variety of transactional, location-based and mobile commerce services will be used regularly by at least one million users.

IDA expects to do even more to realise the iN2015 vision. “We recognise that the global infocomm landscape will continue to evolve and present new opportunities as we continue on our iN2015 masterplan journey,” said RADM(NS) Tay. “Responding to the fast evolving environment, several strategic areas like cloud computing, business analytics and green ICT, which have emerged more recently, will be incorporated into the iN2015 programmes.”