Transition to cloud will improve govt service delivery
SLOWLY but surely, the contours of Singapore's Smart Nation have emerged in recent years and given shape to what is undoubtedly a grand vision to turn the republic into a showcase for the smart use of technology to better the lives of citizens.
In this context, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's speech this week at Stack 2018, GovTech's first developer conference, provides a roadmap of how the government wants to digitally transform itself.
Two key points stand out from his speech. One is the intention to put government services and data in the cloud, albeit with the necessary safeguards, and the other is the need to attract the world's best IT talent to the public sector to create even better services and technology.
The declaration that the government will have to revamp existing IT infrastructure "in order to fully exploit the potential of new technology" and learn to take advantage of the cloud is bold and visionary. It shows that policymakers here have outgrown the typical government mindset, across the world, that thinks the cloud is an inherently unsecure place to store sensitive data. Empirical evidence shows that, in general, data is as secure in the cloud as it is on premise. At the same time, operation and maintenance is much easier in the cloud. Moreover services can be scaled up and down as necessary.
Migrating to the cloud will be no easy task. A decision will have to be taken on which systems can be put in commercial cloud services like those provided by Google, Amazon, Microsoft and others. In other cases the government will have to design and build its own cloud infrastructure to host more sensitive material. There will also be critical infrastructure that will have to be totally isolated from the internet. But once the move to the cloud is done, it will bring down costs dramatically due to economies of scale and also provide for better quality of services.
The entire effort will require a lot of talented IT manpower for all government departments - as outlined too by the Prime Minister in his speech. There is a need to develop, attract and retain the best engineering and IT talent available in the marketplace.
The hunt for top IT talent is global and relentless and Singapore will have to compete with the best in terms of incentives and attractiveness of the work. Mr Lee mentioned competitive remuneration as a key incentive. While money is important, it is relatively easy to match pay scales of top technology giants. The more difficult nut to crack is providing a similar type of work culture and environment. Most anecdotal evidence suggests that a major attraction of companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook is their way of doing projects. Over the years, many of these companies have consistently been voted as among the best places to work for.
The public sector will have to behave less like government and more like private enterprises, and some sections within the government will have to imbibe the culture of startups in order to attract talent and provide better services to citizens. Typical government hierarchical structures will not work. Some progress has been made in places like the Hive which offers an environment that is conducive to innovation and cooperation. Indeed, to secure its share of top IT skills, the government will have to offer the organisation, culture and leadership that provide talented employees growth opportunities and the ability to progress in their careers.
