ウィスパリング同時通訳研究会コミュのPM Lee Hsien Loong at the Singapore Tech Forum 2020

Hello everyone. Very happy to be here with you today. Will share briefly about what has been happening in Singapore, then have a dialogue and take your questions through Karen.

Dominating tech and everything else this year has been COVID-19. It has been a big fight for us in the last eleven months. The situation in Singapore is now stable, but it has taken us a tremendous effort to get here. First, we had to have a two-month circuit breaker in April where we practically locked down the economy. Also, we had a major outbreak in our migrant worker dormitories, where several hundred thousands of migrant workers live, and we had to deal with that in the same way to keep the migrant workers safe, and to keep the rest of the population safe. Our priority was to minimise the casualties, fatalities, and ensure that our healthcare system could cope. After enormous efforts, we have now reached that position. We are in a better state because we have better defences – testing, contact tracing, safe distancing measures so that we can progressively and carefully resume economic and social activities, including some overseas travel. Looking forward, like everybody else, to confirmation of a safe and effective vaccine, which will be a will be a big part of the solution but not the whole of it. Meanwhile, we have to stay vigilant and not get tired of all the safeguards and precautions that we have to take.

Technology has been a crucial part of this journey. Certainly, biomedical science played a big part, analysing the genome of the virus, understanding the virus, understanding disease patterns and trends, developing tests and treatments for COVID-19, a lot of it involves IT and bioinformation. But infotech, by itself has been crucial. We needed it to track the status of our patients and our cases, their well-being, locations, large numbers of cases, including hundreds of thousands of migrant workers. We have had to collect and analyse data for COVID-19. For example, who is getting sick, what are the hotspots or patterns, what inferences to draw, what trends are developing, what actions are working and not, and what we should do next. Even to ensure compliance with stay-at-home notices – not such a high tech requirement, you would have thought. But technology comes in very useful to know what they are and to keep track of who is up to date and who is not. Contact tracing, for example, we also used tech in many different ways. The last time we had to do this when we had SARS in 2003, seventeen years ago, it was a manual and labour intensive business.

For COVID-19, we dealt with much bigger numbers to trace, and had to identify and quarantine contacts as soon as possible because it is such an infectious disease. We have developed all kinds of solutions for this. We developed TraceTogether – a bluetooth-based tool to identify close contacts, and we have also open-sourced the code so that others can look at it and develop their own applications, which some countries have done. We have developed SafeEntry, which is for you, when you visit a shop, to register your presence there, so that you know you have been there, the shop knows you have been there, and if somebody is positive, we can check who else was there at the same time.

We have developed databases like VISION, which has brought together all the different sources of information. We have different databases from telecom companies, information from interviews, information from contacts of contacts, and put it all together to speed up contact tracing and to be able to issues quarantine notices promptly. Because every hour you are slow, means many more people are might be infected by COVID-19. Our response was not flawless, we have discovered blind spots as we worked it out. Our IT systems in the government have built over the years, not all are fully up to date, and did not work seamlessly together. For example, not all of them could be updated continuously. Many were updated in batches, three to four times a day, using Secure FTP or even Excel spreadsheets to transfer information from one system to another, because not all our systems were using up-to-date techniques like APIs or client server models, much less to be on the cloud.

When cases were multiplying, all these delays and inefficiencies made the difference. We had to build our new products (VISION, TraceTogether apps and Tokens) and we had to develop them in a hurry. There are more than Minimum Viable Products, but they are far from polished versions, and still a work-in-progress. But they showed we had some in-house capability and making a significant contribution. Most importantly, through building them, we and our people learnt the tech side as well as the ops side, – the importance of “Ops-tech”. That means their operations must be enmeshed with technology requirements right from the start. Tech people must be involved early, and work closely with operations people to understand the operating conditions and undersand the requirements to be able to meet the requirements and make surethat the technical side is fully taken into account of, and we go to the limits of what is possible, and we are realisitc to know how far we can go.

It is an iterative process, you must adapt them and streamline them as we develop new capabilities, bring them up-to-date, situation changes, but we have to work on a very tight move. Tech is therefore central to our COVID-19 response. In fact, this goes beyond COVID-19. It is a command function in a lot of our government, because in a lot of our government functions, you need full use of tech – whether it is in healthcare, in pension systems, administrating public housing, dealing with taxes – without tech, you are sunked. It is a command function and senior leaders must understand that technology is central to their role in governing in Singapore, doing public administration. All of our public service leaders to appreciate technology, more need to understand technology, and we must have enough of them who can provide technical leadership on complex engineering projects, while taking into account the social and policy aspects of the requirements, so that the tech part is fully made use of, but at the same time, understand the non-tech purpose to which this is for. This is a challenge for every public service. But compared to other countries, Singapore is fortunate to have an environment that supports science and tech.

First of all, we have tech-literate population. If you just look at the use of smart phone, the smart phone penetration for example, we have more more smart phones accounts in Singapore than our people. It is almost two to one. We are familiar with tech, and if you have a good product, an app or an interface, it is not hard to get people to use it.

Second, we have good infrastructure which we have built over the years. For example, we have a nationwide fibre broadband network, ahead of demand with government support. It is not by chance, but it is was a conscious political decision that we will do this, and build ahead of demand, and roll it out as a national network, which all service providers can use, and sell services on this. Therefore, we have very high internet connection speeds, it is pervasive, and when we had to lockdown the migrant worker dormitories, it was a lifesaver. This enabled us to give everybody SIM cards, broadband access, and they could stay sane, keep in touch with home, with the news, watch movies and know what is happening. We build ahead of time. We did not have a killer app but we decided this was a matter of faith – that one day we will need it, and sure enough we did it.

Third, we have been building up IT engineering capabilities within the government, particularly through GovTech. It is a long-term effort, we have been doing this for five years or so, we have rudimentary capabilities at the central government level. Our agencies and departments have their own, they did not have an outfit which will look after the whole of the government. We outsourced, and we eventually decided that we cannot outsource everything, and we have to build our own, and that is what the government has been doing.

Finally, we have the whole tech eco-system and digital industry in Singapore. Many major tech companies are now based here, doing engineering work, not just sales and marketing. Companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon Grab, Stripe, SEA and Lazada. We are in areas like cybersecurity, software engineering, data science and AI, creating a vibrant industry cluster, and good jobs for Singaporeans.

The pieces are all gradually coming into place, but the key thing that will make it all work, is talent. We need more tech talent to grow the industry and to tackle the urgent problems that we have and that tech can help us to solve. Our pipeline in our polytechnics and universities is growing. Students are getting the message. Entry to computer science, IT and computer engineering courses has become much more competitive today. You practically need straight As to get into the course, and the graduates are in demand. The pipeline will grow over the years. Meanwhile, companies are also bringing in talent from overseas, not just young people but also mid-to senior-levels, especially when we need people in Singapore. People experienced in building, developing, managing large projects and systems who can mentor young talent, build world-class teams and shape the culture in engineering outfits, companies and organisations. Therefore, enlarge our talent pool and our capabilities, raise our standards, and strengthen our tech ecosystem, and I hope, get into a virtuous cycle.

Of course, when you have large numbers of foreign professionals in the industry, there will be social issues which will arise. Singaporeans in the same field particularly, will feel a sense of competition and even discomfort. Social frictions can develop, especially if there are large concentrations of the foreign engineers from a single source, and when economy is down, people feel worried about their jobs and these anxieties rise up to the surface. This is not unique to Singapore. It happens in Europe, America, and yet this is an industry which depends on talent and diversity on talent, not just from one place – no matter how talented that society may be, but people with a diversity of backgrounds, experiences and cultures coming together in order to be able to cross fertilise and come up with new ideas. It is a problem that there are such issues in Singapore, we acknowledge them candidly and we do our best to address them.

It requires both sides to work at it and it requires the non-Singaporeans to make the effort to fit in, both at work and socially. Singaporeans on their part, have to be able to understand that this how new jobs and more jobs can be created in Singapore, and have to feel assured that they are fairly treated and not discriminated against. That they will have a fair chance at the jobs, opportunities, and promotions. They must see that the tech companies are bringing in expertise and experience, and building up our industry and capabilities so that our own people can learn from them, upgrade themselves, and eventually build up our own talent pool.

This is how our policies work, this is how our work pass system work in Singapore. We issue Employment Passes (EPs) to qualified professionals from abroad, more liberally than work passes at lower levels of the workforce, and more liberally than most other jurisdictions, for example, the H1B visas in the US where there is a quota. We do not operate that way. We maintain standards but we watch the demand. We make sure that if there is a strong demand in the community and the economy needs them, and we need these people and their experience and expertise, we are able to bring them in.

Now on top of the EPs, we have just launched the Tech.Pass scheme. This scheme is aimed at highly accomplished tech talent, the movers and shakers of the tech world. People who usually play different roles at once – founder, investor, employee, consultant, academic. People who can contribute to multiple parts of the ecosystem with their capital, networks and knowledge, and if you are one of them who has this Tech.Pass, you come to Singapore, you choose your niche, you fit in and develop your role as you go along. Unlike an EP that is tied to a particular job or employer, and if you have to change jobs or decide to do something else when you apply again. The Tech.Pass is personal to the holder, and will give you flexibility to move between roles and employers, and we are going to have 500 slots, valid for 2 years in the first instance, and it can be extended. Applications open January 2021. I hope to make people sit up and take notice, and attract such talent to Singapore.

Southeast Asia is a different place from Silicon Valley. In face, everywhere in the world is a different place from Silicon Valley. But Southeast Asia has a lot of potential, not just in Singapore with the ecosystem around us in other countries where there are markets, demands and effervescence and companies starting up and meeting the needs of our population which is growing purchasing power and demands. Many Southeast Asians are returning home because they sense the opportunity to make a difference with their skills and experiences. There is excitement, and also some passion to it. But even if you are not Southeast Asian, I hope you will consider Singapore as your next destination. There are many like you who are already here, building great teams and doing fabulous things. If you are seeking a new challenge, come take a look at us and join us in Singapore. Thank you.