THE FIRST ‘SMART NATION’
SINGAPORE CHASES CUTTING-EDGE FUTURE WHERE EVERY TREE, LAMPPOST, DRAIN PIPE HAS SENSORS
Orchard Road, a stretch of land formerly home to nutmeg plantations, spice gardens and pepper farms in Singapore’s now-bustling commercial centre, at first glance looks like any other precinct in a global metropolis.
But soon, the city’s busiest areas could be swarmed by sensors — on every lamppost, on every tree, in every public pool and drain pipe. Every citizen’s transaction will be in ePayments. Driverless vehicles could zip around ports with shipping containers.
And a forward-thinking government is ready to make way for the cloud. Welcome to Singapore, a city-state well on the way to becoming the world’s first “smart nation.”
Singapore’s plans are ambitious, explains Kok Ping Soon, the new chief executive of the government’s technology office, GovTech, and the man responsible for a five-year plan launched this year to streamline Singapore’s infrastructure and reduce bureaucracy with cuttingedge technology.
“Our vision is vast,” he says. “We are starting to do many national projects in order to build the smart nation. We want to see what we can do to improve the lives of Singaporeans and see what we can do to create jobs.”
By modernizing its public sector services, GovTech hopes to give Singaporeans easy access to everything they need and is unafraid of testing new waters. One key area for the body is its Smart Nation sensor platform.
Up to 120,000 “dumb lampposts” are being made smart with facial recognition sensors promising 24/7 monitoring for citizen safety. Motion sensors in swimming pools are deployed to detect if someone is likely to drown. The national water agency can take pre-emptive measures to prevent drainpipe overfill in monsoon season through water-level detection.
The mass access of citizens’ data has raised questions about the potential breaches of privacy, but Ping Soon is keen to assure Singaporeans that his government is taking data privacy seriously.
“That is a sentiment that has been shared. I always see that we ensure the confidentiality of data privacy. Most of this information … we capture it and it’s only used on an anonymous basis,” says Ping Soon.
Experimental technologies have come on to the radar of Singapore too. Applications for blockchain, a decentralized ledger, are already being tried to test the authenticity of educational certificates, while autonomous vehicles are being tested in fixed locations and for public transport services like shuttle buses.
Meanwhile, the extension of artificial technology to airports is being considered. A future where the world’s travellers can step off a plane at the Jewel Changi Airport — scheduled to open next year — and not have to scan passports in a hassle-free, facial recognition system could be just a flight away.
Perhaps the most unorthodox plan is Singapore’s technological experiment to create a nation of “tree huggers.”
Singapore’s national parks board, NParks, manages approximately two million trees, and under GovTech’s direction, at least 500,000 have been mapped on a digital platform called trees. sg. Radar has been used to capture model images of the greenery in the city to better inform Singapore’s urban planners.
By accessing the database, Singaporeans can find out when a particular tree is flowering, which street it’s on and even which tree is trending.
Take October’s “tree of the month.” The tabebuia rosea, otherwise known as the pink tecoma, the trumpet tree or pink poui, has been highlighted because of its “large, trumpet-shaped flowers,” which form an “orchestra” when in bloom.
According to Ping Soon, the idea is more than just a gimmick. The map of trees is fundamentally about giving Singaporeans a chance to engage with nature — and each other.
“We want all the trees in Singapore at some point in time to be tech,” says Ping Soon. “Imagine if we had sensors in all (the trees). The idea is that it’s not just about planning and making the city livable, it’s a great tool for community engagement.”
Singapore’s leap ahead is a feat in itself for a country of its size and stature. Last month, at the city-state’s Orchard Hotel Singapore, a new initiative called the Networked Trade Platform was launched, promising to streamline the complex databases that tangle trade processes. The transfer of documents between shipping agents, customs declarations and the booking of cargo and freight services are just some of the trade logistics consolidated on to the new platform.
“It allows the frictionless movement of goods and services through our ports much easier. By digitizing the entire process, the whole customs clearance of goods and services are done much faster,” says Ping Soon.
It’s a logical move for a nation that has one of the world’s busiest ports. Solutions that might ensure trade clearances are done before a ship touches shore, or that speed up the loading and unloading process of goods, are worth the attention.
“All companies are supposed to have a plan B right? Even the government needs to have a plan B,” he says.
Trials to make identity more transparent are underway too.
GovTech’s national digital identity program aims to standardize identity in such a way that individuals in Singapore can travel and make cross-border payments seamlessly.
A service called MyInfo, operated through an online account management system called SingPass, speeds up certain processes by prefilling forms with an individual’s information.
SingPass itself uses biometric data to authenticate users and secure the system. A total of 110 government services currently use MyInfo and it is being rolled out to Singapore’s private sector.
“For example, a card issued in Singapore can be used in other countries and a card issued in China can be used in Singapore to make transactions much more easily,” says Kwok Quek Sin of GovTech’s national identity scheme.
Ping Soon admits that five years will pass quickly and that change is unlikely to happen fast enough as the project requires a complete rethink of how the government approaches technology.
There needs to be an ongoing education process too, which Ping Soon says is needed to advance digital literacy.
Ping Soon entertains the suggestion that he feels a few years behind when visiting the U.K., versus Singapore, and says he made the trip to convince Singaporeans in London to return.
“One thing that is characteristic about the Singapore government is that we are paranoid. We are always concerned that we will be irrelevant,” he says.
In Singapore’s tech future, irrelevancy may be the last of its concerns.