Tech industry group calls for support for digital trust, talent, sustainability in Budget 2023

TECHNOLOGY industry trade association SGTech is calling for support to develop digital trust-capabilities, adopt skills-based assessments to hire and train tech talent, as well as provide cash rebates to encourage sustainability in Budget 2023.

At a Monday (Jan 30) pre-Budget dialogue, SGTech shared nine recommendations it submitted to the Ministry of Finance centred on these three areas.

To increase digital trust, the trade association suggested offering grants and subsidies to incentivise greater adoption of cyber hygiene among small and medium-sized enterprsies (SMEs). Other suggestions included piloting schemes to promote a “digital trust workforce”, enabling trusted data flows and education of the general public.

It is important to develop an industry-wide professional data protection officer or cybersecurity officer scheme, rather than considering digital trust an “extra-curricular” role, SGTech said.

The government should also continue to encourage trust technologies that protect data privacy to spur cross-industry collaboration, fund projects that stimulate multilateral collaborations on digital trust and cross-border data flows, and form an advisory group to catalyse uptake of cross-border privacy rules among Asian enterprises, it added.

Senior Minister of State for Communication and Information Tan Kiat How attended the dialogue session.

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“If we move things online, it’s not just about digitally-enabled trade, but increasingly what is being traded. The services and the products are all fully digital... I think it’s about the paradigm shift,” he said.

Tan added that trust will be a key operational foundation.

For tech talent, in addition to focusing on skills instead of paper qualifications in hiring and developing talent, SGTech also proposed a “multi-stakeholder approach” to helping experienced local professionals, managers, executives and technicians and mid-career hires secure “higher-value tech roles”, noting that not all tech sector jobs require “deep and highly specialised technical skills”.

The association recommended forming industry work groups to examine common standards and recognition for informal learning, championing greater recognition for skills acquired through these channels. On sustainability, SGTech chair Wong Wai Meng noted the discussion around tech being a major contributor to environmental pollution. “It may be, if you’re not careful,” he said, but added that the association is working with the National Environment Agency (NEA) to look at more effective sustainability practices.

SGTech said that, particularly among SMEs, greenhouse gas and waste reduction practices are seen as additional costs and resource burdens, risking Singapore’s competitiveness and ability to meet sustainability targets.

One way to promote economically-viable, technology-led initiatives is to offer tiered cash rebates to SMEs that submit e-waste to NEA-appointed operators, those that prove take-backs or purchases of information technology assets that are more sustainably packaged, and those that use software to track and report on greenhouse gas emissions.

The government could also give a one-time cash rebate to each SME that submits proof of conducted internal corporate sustainability review and implemented recommendations, and explore importing new models of sustainability measurements from other countries, SGTech said.

Wong said that the tech industry understands emerging tech trends, and should help to promote layman understanding of these new technologies across other economic sectors.

“Then they can look ahead and imagine for the future: What kind of digital transformation should they look at? What technology may come, disrupting them – and what do they need to do to, potentially, disrupt even themselves?”