Covid-19 HealthCerts to ease travel; Smart Nation push continues with new cloud migration target

Singapore

THE government has developed a new global standard, called HealthCerts, to ease cross-border verification of Covid-19 test records, Minister-in-Charge of the Smart Nation Initiative Vivian Balakrishnan announced in Parliament on Friday.

Speaking during the Committee of Supply debate, he said that the government will also look into extending this technology to vaccine certificates.

This comes as other nations are exploring the use of "Covid-19 vaccine passports" - or digital documents that can certify Covid-19 immunisation - to facilitate the resumption of global travel.

Developed by GovTech and the Ministry of Health, Singapore's new HealthCerts initiative comprises open-source digital standards and schema for issuing digital Covid-19 pre-departure test (PDT) result certificates, in line with international standards.

From March 10, all who undergo a Covid-19 PDT at an authorised clinic in Singapore will receive their results in a digital PDT certificate, in line with the HealthCerts standard.

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This could take the form of a digital document or web link to the document.

Travellers can then visit the Notarise website, at notarise.gov.sg, to upload the document and get their digital PDT certificate notarised. They will receive the notarised certificate via e-mail or the SingPass Mobile app.

At airports and immigration checkpoints, travellers can present the QR code of the notarised certificates for verification. By scanning the QR code, airline staff and authorities can check the authenticity of the PDT certificate via another platform by GovTech, called Verify.

The verification is powered by blockchain.

As of Feb 24, nine companies were authorised to work with clinics to issue certificates following the HealthCerts standard.

Dr Balakrishnan noted that Covid-19 has been a stress test of Singapore's push to become a Smart Nation, and that GovTech has had to respond rapidly with digital solutions.

"The digital systems that we have been building up have actually shown to be absolutely critical in our fight against Covid. Many of the solutions that we deployed during the crisis were developed by our in-house engineers within GovTech and other public agencies in weeks, sometimes overnight, over days," he said.

In his speech, he also announced a new target for the government's cloud migration efforts: By 2023, 70 per cent of eligible IT systems will have migrated to the cloud, under the Digital Government Blueprint. To date, this proportion stands at 37 per cent.

"One area which we will make more use of is the cloud, in order to scale new services and re-engineer existing services… This shift to the cloud incidentally will also make us greener and more sustainable," he said.

Skills upgrading within the public sector is another focus. In the second quarter of 2021, the government will launch a new academy, called The Digital Academy, which will offer courses aimed at deepening the digital skills of public officers, especially those working with infocomm technology and smart systems.

By end-March 2022, the academy aims to offer 95 training programmes and train more than 6,000 officers.

The government will also form a citizen panel later this year, to gather feedback from those who may have difficulties accessing government digital services, such as the disabled and seniors.

Dr Balakrishnan said: "(Covid-19) has accelerated both the need and the opportunities arising from the digital revolution. Our Smart Nation initiative has put us in a good position to seize the moment and to prove that we can and do solve real-world problems quickly, and to differentiate ourselves in the post-Covid world."

In a fact sheet about HealthCerts on Friday, the Smart Nation and Digital Government Office (SNDGO) noted that the World Health Organization's current recommendation is that countries should not impose Covid-19 vaccinations as a condition of entry on travellers.

On this, the SNDGO said that Singapore is in discussions with the International Civil Aviation Organisation and various countries on the mutual recognition of digital vaccination certifications.

"The discussions will take some time, as most countries have only just started vaccinations," the SNDGO said.

Separately, it noted that there are now 4.7 million users of the TraceTogether apps and tokens, representing 90 per cent of residents.

TraceTogether and SafeEntry have reduced the time taken to identify and quarantine close contacts from an average of four days to fewer than 1½ days.