NCS SG50

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CONTENTS 04 Foreword 06 Preface 08

Making IT Happen

09

Milestones

13

The NCS Story

28

SURF

33

e-Government

51

Public Safety

67

Education

79

Transport

99

Healthcare

117

Financial Services Industry

131

Vision of the Smart & Safe City

Solutions for Urbanised Future

DISCLAIMER

Whilst every effort has been made to ensure that the information contained in this publication is correct, neither the copyright owner nor the publishers can accept any responsibility for any errors or omissions or for any consequences arising therefrom.

COPYRIGHTŠNCS Pte Ltd, 2015

Published by NCS Pte Ltd All right reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright holder and the publisher. All enquiries seeking such permission should be addressed to the Marketing & Communications Department, NCS Pte Ltd, 5 Ang Mo Kio Street 62, NCS Hub, Singapore 569141, Tel: +65 6556 8000.

An ISBN catalogue record for this publication is available from the Singapore National Library Board 978-981-09-5372-0

Dedicated to all NCS colleagues, partners and customers who Make IT Happen.

FOREWORD Let me begin by congratulating Singapore on its 50 th birthday. The story of Singapore is remarkable with its dramatic transformation that has taken place over the past five decades. From a country facing an uncertain future in 1965, we have gone through rapid industrialisation and modernisation to become a thriving metropolis with a vibrant knowledge economy. Today, we are consistently ranked in international surveys as one of the best places in the world to do business and one of the most liveable cities.

IT has played a significant role in these developments.

Since 1981, when Singapore embarked on the full-scale computerisation of its civil service, we have transformed our capabilities and become a leader in the use of technology.

We are amongst the top countries in the world in IT adoption, according to indices such as the World Economic

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Forum’s Global Information Technology Report and Waseda University’s International e-Government Ranking.

NCS has been a strong and reliable partner to the government in these developments, in the early years as a subsidiary of the National Computer Board, and since 1997 as a member of the Singtel family. We are deeply committed and will continue to provide our fullest support as Singapore stands at the cusp of another exciting transformation – its re-invention as the world’s first Smart Nation.

Today, macro demand and supply drivers are providing a strong impetus for Smart City initiatives across the world.

Rapid urbanisation has led to an increased demand for services such as healthcare, transportation and education.

Strong economies have led to growing expectations of their

populations in terms of lifestyle. At the same time, cities have to grapple with increased security and safety threats.

Singtel’s response to the Smart Nation initiative is SURF (Solutions for Urbanised Future), which leverages next generation technologies to create innovative solutions that will impact the lives of residents and transform public services.

Singapore is well positioned for this next wave of change. Over the past 50 years, we have built up a strong IT foundation for the country.

Our infrastructure is second to none, with the Next Generation Nationwide Broadband Network bringing high speed connectivity to almost all homes and offices islandwide. Our people are comfortable with the use of technology and IT literacy rates are high. The future will be an exciting one as we move from this strong foundation to explore and conquer new frontiers as a Smart Nation.

MR BILL CHANG Chief Executive Officer, Group Enterprise and Country Chief Officer Singapore, Singtel

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PREFACE As Singapore celebrates its 50 th anniversary, this book looks back at one significant aspect of the country’s development – its IT transformation - through the lens of NCS’ history.

Technology Evolution takes us back to the very beginning of Singapore’s computerisation journey, when IT pioneers like Mr Philip Yeo, Dr Tan Chin Nam and Mr Lim Swee Say helped seed and steer a massive effort to computerise Singapore’s civil service.

The book chronicles the NCS story from those early years when we were created as a manpower recruitment vehicle for the then-National Computer Board, to our subsequent corporatisation and acquisition by Singtel. It captures

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the role we played in defining Singapore’s e-government landscape. The systems we built and delivered have helped drive greater efficiency and productivity, enable the delivery of one-stop services and transform customer engagement across the public sector.

The achievements of the past have put us in a strong position to strategise for the future. In November 2014, Singapore unveiled plans to transform itself into a Smart Nation, and NCS is ready to push the envelope once again.

Through SURF (Solutions for Urbanised Future), our vision for a Smart and Safe City, NCS will be an active partner in delivering Smart Nation solutions that empower individuals and enable cities and communities for the digital era.

Conceptualised as early as 2011, SURF represents the next phase in NCS’ tech evolution. It is about leveraging NCS’ strengths – our strong domain knowledge in areas such as e-government, our technical expertise and the communications capabilities of our parent company Singtel – to create solutions for the future.

The technology landscape may change, and the challenges that we face today are very different from those of the 1980s. But the NCS spirit, our commitment to the customer and the lessons from our past will continue to stand us in good stead as we harness new technologies – and the power of the imagination - to realise new possibilities for Singapore.

MR CHIA WEE BOON Chief Executive Officer, NCS

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Making IT Happen NCS is the leading systems integrator in Singapore, delivering end-to-end ICT and communications engineering solutions to help governments and enterprises overcome their challenges and create business value through the innovative use of technology.

It has taken 34 years to get us to where we are today.

From our formation as a subsidiary of the then-National Computer Board, through corporatisation and acquisition and subsequent mergers, we have evolved to become the largest systems integrator in the country.

Today, we are a S$1.5 billion corporation with presence in over 40 cities across 22 countries. Our 13,000 ICT professionals are drawn from different cultures and are well-equipped with rich domain knowledge and in-depth technical expertise. Over the years, our people have delivered more than 2,000 large-scale, mission-critical and multi-platform projects to governments and private sector organisations in Singapore and around the world.

In 2014, research firm Gartner ranked us the No. 1 IT service provider in Singapore, and also top in the government, healthcare, education and banking sectors.

We have won countless awards and accolades which are testaments to our achievements and contributions to various sectors of the economy.

This book chronicles the NCS story and captures the key milestones in our history.

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MILESTONES

Page 9

March 2010

December 2000 Implementation of Comfort Mobile Taxi Booking System

New building @ NCS Hub

June 2000

December 2009

Data Collection for Singapore’s Population Census 2000

Merged with Singtel Aeradio to form NCS Communications Engineering

May 2003 Implementation of a National SARS Information System (NSIS)

Launch of Y2K Home Guide

The opening of India office

November 2003

October 1998

Officially renamed as NCS Pte Ltd

October 1999

The opening of Suzhou office

The opening of Malaysia office

OF RY N T S IO NI MI UCAT D E

Provided Google Apps to teachers and staff in Singapore schools

October 2002

October 1999 December 1998

Developed mytransport.sg, a mobile service that gives Singaporeans access to one-touch transport information

January 2001

June 2012 Launch of Solutions for Urbanised Future (SURF)

NS

August 2012

IS

Completed the transition phase for schools in the Schools Standard ICT Operating Environment (SSOE) project

April 2009 NCS logo refreshed

October 1999 The opening of Australia office

December 2004

February 1999

The opening of Philippines office

The opening of Hong Kong office

May 2005

November 2003

The opening of Bahrain office

Single point of access to government information and services through eCitizen Portal

Jubilee Birth Certificate

Fully acquired Singapore Computer Systems (SCS)

June 2005 The opening of Korea office

May 2004

January 2014

December 2008

Development of ONE.MOTORING Portal

June 2013 Helped government agencies transit from the Service-Wide Hosting Environment (SHINE) platform to the new G-cloud platform

December 2005 The opening of Chengdu office

September 1997 Acquired by Singapore Telecom Group

April 1999 Implementation of Rail Travel Information System

January 2005 The opening of Sri Lanka office

April 1996 Multimedia stations made available through National Library Board’s Multimedia Services Public Access Network (PANS)

November 2006

April 1996 Corporatisation

April 1981 Incorporated as the IT arm of National Computer Board

Launch of NS portal that enrich the lifestyle of Singapore’s National Servicemen

N I R I April 2006

June 1991

NCB

A nation-wide conversion of NRIC using Automatic Fingerprint Identification

Implementation of Inland Revenue Interactive Network (IRIN) to facilitate e-filing of taxes

NCS Milestones Capturing the growth of NCS amidst the evolving technology landscape.

Introduction Back in 1976, there was only one computer in the whole of Singapore’s public sector – an IBM 4341 doing batch processing at the Ministry of Finance (MOF). Three years later, the Ministry of Defence became only the second public agency to computerise, automating its logistics functions with computers procured under the guise of “small business machines” and “intermediate business machines”.

Then in 1981, dramatic changes took place to shake up the pace of computerisation in Singapore. The National Computer Board (NCB) was formed to computerise the public sector, develop the country’s IT manpower pool and build up the IT industry.

NCS’ roots can be traced back to that era, when it was set up as a subsidiary of NCB to recruit people for this massive undertaking using a company mechanism.

The manpower challenge

THE NCS STORY

Tasked to implement the Civil Service Computerisation Programme (CSCP), NCB drew up an ambitious plan to computerise 10 ministries at one go. The fledgling agency, led by its first chairman Mr Philip Yeo, made the decision to do it alone instead of parceling out IT contracts to the private sector to get the job done.

The announcement was met by its fair share of detractors. Many questioned whether NCB had the experience to design and build the complex systems required by the public agencies. “You need people who have been kicked and bruised, who will not repeat the same errors,” said one skeptic. “An individual project leader will find it extremely difficult to lead a team,” said another. “We will not give them our good leaders. They are in short supply.”

To all these, Mr Yeo famously replied, “Whose head is on the chopping board if the programme fails - yours or mine?”

But he also acknowledged that the manpower challenge was very real. In fact, it was one of the greatest difficulties that NCB faced during its start-up phase.

MR PHILIP YEO Chairman, SPRING Singapore and Chairman, Economic Development Innovations Singapore Pte Ltd (EDIS) Previous: Chairman, National Computer Board (1981-1987) 201

At the time, there were only about 850 IT professionals in the whole of Singapore. Dr Tan Chin Nam, who was asked by Mr Yeo to lead the formulation of the CSCP, recalled, “We had to move from that very low base, form this organisation and ramp it up in order to deliver 10 IT plans.”

To attract promising IT professionals and retain them, NCB needed to do two things. The first was to give its people the professional challenges that they were looking for. The second was to find a way to pay them a salary that was competitive with market rates.

NCB addressed the first by creating opportunities for its computer professionals to grow. It introduced innovation development, technology development and application development to make sure that their professional growth needs were satisfied, said Mr Lim Swee Say, who was director of NCB’s Joint Software Engineering Programme at the time.

The second requirement was harder to meet. As a statutory board, it was difficult for NCB to offer the terms of service or provide the remuneration that would be competitive enough to attract and retain IT professionals.

Not wanting to delay things, Mr Yeo, who was then also chairman of Singapore Computer Systems (SCS), used the latter as a hiring vehicle for NCB. Through this mechanism, 75 people, among them computer staff from MOF and the Ministry of Defence, were brought together to constitute the core manpower resource for the newly-formed agency.

DR TAN CHIN NAM Chairman, Temasek Management Services Previous: Chairman, National Computer Board (1987-1994) 16

NCS is formed SCS, however, was not to be a long-term solution. To avoid potential conflict of interest with CSCP projects, a decision was made to create a separate mechanism exclusively for the recruitment of IT professionals for NCB, and so National Computer Systems (NCS) was formed.

As a commercial entity, NCS provided NCB with the flexibility to recruit the IT professionals that it needed, including mid and senior-level executives. It also made it possible for NCB to recruit experienced people from overseas and offer them an appropriate compensation and allowance.

“NCB was ahead of our time in terms of mobilising international talent before the concept of foreign talent was even created,” said Dr Tan. Among the initial wave of foreign talent to arrive was Dr Lee Kwok Cheong, who would later lead NCS through the process of corporatisation and privatisation as its chief executive officer (CEO) in 1996.

Dr Lee was recruited from Hong Kong in 1983 to help jumpstart CSCP. Five other Hong Kongers were also recruited back then, he recalled, but three left after a few months because they found Singapore “too slow, too quiet”. He stayed because “this was the only place I know that wanted to do IT in a big way”.

With IT skills in short supply in those days, the early NCS recruits came from a wide range of other non-IT backgrounds - from English literature majors to business graduates and engineers. Most, if not all, were sent to the National University of Singapore’s Institute of Systems Science to be trained in systems analysis and design. The newly-minted IT professionals were then deployed to the various Ministries to drive the computerisation efforts under CSCP. To bond this diverse group of people, Dr Tan introduced the 3P philosophy – People, Partnership and Professionalism, which became the unifying force for the new organisation. Annual staff conferences were also held to bring together the NCB people deployed throughout the civil service, to energise and empower them.

By the time Philip Yeo handed over the baton to Tan Chin Nam as chairman of NCB, the agency had chalked up an impressive scorecard. A total of 193 systems had been introduced under CSCP, which provided a return

on investment of 171 per cent. Revenues for the local IT industry also crossed the S$1 billion mark for the first time.

“The Singapore computerisation programme did not fail,” said Mr Yeo. “We managed to computerise far ahead of everybody.”

An intelligent island NCS continued to serve its role as the recruitment mechanism for NCB over the course of two subsequent national IT masterplans.

The National IT Plan (NITP), which was introduced in 1987, was adopted as Chapter 17 of the Economic Committee Report, cementing IT’s role as part of the national economic agenda for Singapore.

In this next phase of the journey, the focus shifted from computerising the civil service to combining computerisation with communications and extending the benefits of IT to the private sector.

Many “nets” were spawned during this era, the most notable of which was TradeNet, a system which brought together some 20 government agencies to simplify trade processing for the ecosystem of importers, exporters, freight forwarders, cargo agents and shipping agencies, reducing the turnaround time for trade permit approvals from two days to just 15 minutes.

Others included PortNet which enabled shipping lines, hauliers, freight forwarders, shippers and government agencies to communicate with the port and with each other; LawNet which was conceived for the legal community; MediNet, a nationwide medical computer network linking 20 hospitals, the Health Ministry and Central Provident Fund Board; and BizNet, an informationsharing initiative that allowed quick remote access to information on companies and businesses.

In 1992, a new blueprint was launched to extend the efforts of the NITP and to meet Singapore’s aspiration to become a world-class user of IT. The IT2000 masterplan sought to transform Singapore into an Intelligent Island where rapidly advancing information technology would be exploited to deliver economic competitiveness and a higher standard of living. The National Information Infrastructure or Information Super Highway, early forerunner of today’s Next Generation Nationwide Broadband Network, was conceptualised as a key foundation piece for the IT2000 vision.

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Corporatisation Looking back, NCS played two significant roles in the early days of Singapore’s national computerisation efforts, said Mr Lim Swee Say, who went on to become chairman of NCB from 1994 to 1998. As a scheme of service, it enabled the public sector to build up a corps of IT professionals that was able to spearhead the CSCP, manpower development, technology development and industry development.

Through the 1980s and into the early 1990s, this enabled NCB to keep growing as the scope of CSCP expanded.

Over time, NCS also became more and more like an IT solutions provider. Whilst it had people in chief information officer and project management roles in the various government agencies, it was also doing a lot of the systems and applications development work. This eventually led to the second stage of its development, where it would become a key player in Singapore’s IT industry in its own right.

In 1995, NCB started talking about the corporatisation of NCS. “It was noted that there was a lot of IT human capital locked up in NCB, and that we should release it to help give the industry boost,” said Dr Lee, who was NCB’s assistant chief executive looking after CSCP at the time. The move would also open up CSCP projects to other vendors, some of whom felt that NCB had a monopoly on government IT projects.

Dr Lee was offered the role of CEO, NCS. It was only years later, in a conversation with Mr Lim Swee Say, that he learnt about the reservations that surrounded his appointment.

“He (Mr Lim) told me that he was a bit worried - and it was a valid concern - that managing government projects and running a commercial company were totally different sets of challenges. He was not sure whether I could cut it,” he shared candidly. “But the fact that I stayed on and on meant that he didn’t have to exercise his plan B.” Dr Lee, on his part, was confident. “At the time, I was about 41. At that age we all thought very highly of ourselves. We pretty much felt like young Turks. We had to fight for what we believed in, and we were passionate in believing about the transformative power of IT.” He never worried about whether or not things would work out, he said. “A lot of us didn’t know what we didn’t know and in retrospect, sometimes not knowing the challenges may be better.”

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Post-corporatisation, an exercise was carried out to divide the staff between NCB and NCS. Some preferred to go the private sector route with NCS. Others felt more secure working in the public sector. There was also a bit of wrangling amongst the senior management. “Everyone wanted to snatch the good people, but the majority had to go to NCS because NCS was going to become a business organisation and needed to have more feet on the ground,” recalled Dr Chong Yoke Sin, who had joined NCS as general manager of business development three months before corporatisation. “It was a bit like horse trading.”

Eventually, about 700 staff went with NCS and a couple of hundred remained with NCB.

Starting up After the dust settled over the manpower issues, NCS focused its energies on the challenges that lay ahead. Front and centre of these, said Dr Lee, was the fact that “we knew a lot about IT, and we knew a lot about the public sector, but we didn’t know how to make money”.

It did not even know how to do pricing, which was important because if they got it wrong, “either you cannot win (the contract), or you win but you lose money”. Most of the time it was about guesstimating how much to charge, and in that sense NCS was no different from a lot of new IT companies, said Dr Lee. “You just have to learn to manage the risks.”

The new company devised a man-day rate. Initially, it was to be S$750 but the Ministries said it was too expensive and after a series of negotiations, the rate was brought down to S$600 per man day, recalled Dr Chong. From there, NCS calculated the number of man-days required for the projects and maintenance services. With about 30 Ministries and statutory boards to support, the new company projected that its revenue for the year would be about S$100 million.

During those first few months, the team also worked hard to put service level agreements in place. “We had to define what we were supposed to do, draft contracts and get them going.”

Dr Chong, who had spent the formative years of her IT career with IBM, said the MNC experience helped shape her thinking on customer support and that, in turn, influenced her approach to business development in NCS.

“My belief was that you don’t have to sell per se, but you sell implicitly through good support. When we ran NCS, customer support was everything.”

Building NCS’ core values The customer-centric mindset was not totally new to NCS. It was embedded in the 3P philosophy introduced by Dr Tan Chin Nam in the early years of NCB. “It was also embedded in the fact that NCB never really operated as a stereotypical public agency,” said Dr Lee. As its subsidiary, NCS was also charging the various Ministries for its IT services, he explained. “We had to face customers who were paying us money, so it was different from being an internal service provider.”

Still, corporatisation changed the nuances in the relationship. As Dr Chong noted, “Colleagues became customers, and the customers immediately became ‘customers’ and started to treat NCS as a vendor, while some of the people at NCS still looked upon their clients as ex-colleagues.”

To manage these and other aspects of the transition, the information systems managers and project managers attended courses on customer service appreciation and business development. NCS developed a Business Value Management Framework, which it subsequently patented, to help its people to define the areas of value management when working with clients and also to establish key performance indicators. “We had to do a lot of change management to get people on board with us,” said Dr Chong.

MR LIM SWEE SAY Minister for Manpower Previous: Chairman, National Computer Board (1994-1998)

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On the positive side, most of the people at NCS were relatively young at the time. As Dr Lee noted, “It is easier to get a 20-something person to change.”

And, he shared conspiratorially, he would offer this piece of advice to his young troops: “Fake it till you make it.”

But, he emphasised, “you have to make it.”

Delivery was paramount. “If you do not have strong delivery, sooner or later you will get into trouble,” he said.

“Our customers knew we never oversold ourselves. They knew when we said we’ll get it done, we will get it done.”

NCS’ core values were built up from those early years.

“Making IT happen; Never say die; Run it like we own it – those values were developed from ground up, by our own people. And they really enabled us to bond as a team,” said Dr Chong.

DR LEE KWOK CHEONG Chief Executive Officer, Singapore Institute of Management Previous: Chief Executive Officer, NCS (1996-2005)

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One of the early tests for the team came when NCS had to put up its first proposal, very soon after corporatisation. It was a tender by the then-Ministry of Labour for LabourNet, a portal that would enable people to apply for work permits and carry out other manpower-related transactions online.

“At the time, we were all divided into teams to maintain systems at different Ministries and statutory boards, and we didn’t actually have a team that looked into business development. So we asked our people to double up. We got project managers from other teams and former ISMs (information systems managers) handling other Ministry accounts to come together to do this tender proposal,” recalled Dr Chong.

The night before the tender deadline, some of the project managers brought their children to the office so that they could keep an eye on them. The children, aged between five and ten, were more than happy to help with the photocopying, arranging the proposals in seven copies and punching holes to put them into ring binders while the adults did quality control.

“Those were the days when we built the camaraderie among staff. We were very cohesive and that was one of the things I really treasured. We worked very closely together.

There was very little hierarchy. It was our very first tender, worth about S$8-9 million, and we won it together.”

In its first year, NCS brought in revenues of S$138 million, above its initial projection of S$100 million. This grew to S$197 million in its second year.

Joining the Singtel family In 1997, NCS was acquired by Singtel for S$65 million, bringing the company private.

After Singtel took over, Dr Lee was initially not sure how things would work out. “NCS is in services. Everything is

about people. Singtel – at least when I was in NCS – was still at heart a telco and in a telco, everything is about capital. There, you have few people relative to the billions of dollars in infrastructure investment, compared with IT services where you don’t need a lot of capital and it is all about people.”

During his tenure, however, he was given autonomy in running NCS, and this was something that he treasured greatly, he said.

He continued to place emphasis on his people and on service delivery. “The bottom line is that you must know what your strengths are and build on that,” he said. “It is not just about IT expertise but the ability to deploy in the context of sector. You need to understand business as well as IT.” NCS had a lot of domain expertise in the public sector, because its people had been embedded in the Ministries when they were part of NCB. This put the company in good stead as it pursued its goal to become one of the best known brands for e-government internationally. “We wanted to be the SIA of the IT industry,” said Dr Chong, who took over as CEO of NCS in 2005. “The brand name is something to be treasured because we don’t have many Singapore-made brands out there.”

In the late 1990s, Singapore was already well known for e-government. It had a very large number of Internet users, and was therefore able to provide e-services such as LabourNet, e-filing for income tax, an NS Portal for national servicemen, and an eCitizen portal to provide one-stop access to government e-services.

Many of these systems were developed by NCS, and this was something that the company leveraged on to sell e-government services and solutions overseas.

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The international push The first overseas e-government project that NCS bid for was a Customs system for the Hong Kong Customs and Trade Bureau. At the time, NCS did not even have an office in the Special Administrative Region. When the tender called for a demo, the NCS team took a “miniature” of a working system that it had developed in Singapore and shipped it over, server and all.

Over the course of two days, NCS was asked to demonstrate its system thrice, each time to increasingly senior Customs officials. For the third demo, the chief of the Hong Kong Custom and Trade Bureau himself came and his people grilled the Singapore team. “We already knew the domain very well since we were managing the IT operations at Singapore Customs, so when we talked to Customs, our people could talk like Customs officers,” said Dr Chong.

A few weeks later, NCS was asked to return to Hong Kong, and many subsequent discussions were held. But it was only when asked about their plans to set up a Hong Kong office that it dawned on them they had got the job.

NCS went on to win several major contracts in Hong Kong in healthcare, education and immigration.

It also developed a strategy for marketing its e-government services. It participated in industry development initiatives organised by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore which was formed in 1999 with the merger of NCB and the Telecommunications Authority of Singapore, and also anchored itself in the Singapore Infocomm Technology Federation’s e-Government Chapter, so that it could go out in unison with other Singapore companies to pursue opportunities overseas. It worked with organisations such as the World Bank to establish the NCS brand and gain a better understanding of funding sources for IT projects.

The groundwork paid off, as the company clinched deals in countries like Fiji and Sri Lanka.

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NCS’ international footprint grew. It opened a development centre in Suzhou Industrial Park in China and set up offices in Australia, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Kazakhstan. “Those were heady days,” recalled Dr Chong. “We used to celebrate every year, because every year we would be in a new country.”

Back in Singapore, NCS also managed to break into the banking sector, working on projects for a few large banks that appreciated its technical competencies.

By 2006, the company was ranked by the Gartner research group as the largest systems integrator in Singapore.

A year later, when Dr Chong stepped down as CEO, its revenues stood at S$808 million. “We had grown eight times in 12 years. We achieved our mission to be the largest systems integrator in Singapore and to have our brand known in the region.”

Overcoming a major setback The next person to helm NCS would come from a very different background. A Singtel veteran of 27 years, Mr Lim Eng was the company’s group director of human resource when he was asked to steer NCS. Unlike his predecessors who came from the IT industry, Mr Lim was a telecoms man. He had to be schooled in “the ABCs of IT” and learn “the IT parlance” which was quite alien to him when he first started, he confessed.

Mr Lim joined NCS at the tail end of a massive S$1.3 billion government tender for the Standard Operating Environment (SOE) project which was aimed at harmonising desktop, messaging and network environments across all government agencies. By then, the bulk of the work had been done, and the tender cycle was almost complete.

What was left was the announcement of the results.

For a company like NCS which was a dominant service provider for the public sector, the SOE project was “a big deal”, and everyone expected the company to be the forerunner in clinching the contract.

But, as it turned out, NCS was not selected for the SOE. “To say that the loss had no impact would be to undermine the work that went into the tender,” said Mr Lim. Many people had spent numerous hours, working days on end, to put together the proposal.

“But we learnt,” he said. “In the normal course of events in the corporate world, there will be moments of triumph and occasional losses. Setbacks like this must be expected. But what makes a good company a great company is that it is not pulverised by one loss, major as it might have been at the time.”

As CEO, Mr Lim Eng had to rally his crew. “It was important to stay resilient, strategise and press forward to create success for ourselves,” he said.

“We learnt not to take things for granted. We must endear ourselves to the customers in order to understand what they really needed. If we want to ‘Make IT happen’, we have to put our ears to the ground and stay true to our DNA.” He focused NCS on its core values. “What does NCS stand for? ‘We will deliver.’ Through ups and downs, through thick and thin, through good and bad, we will dig our heels in and we will deliver. People know it. It is what we are known for.”

DR CHONG YOKE SIN Chief Executive Officer, Integrated Health Information Systems Previous: Chief Executive Officer, NCS

(2005-2007)

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Consolidation Providence had it that the following year, NCS acquired SCS, which was one of the companies in the winning consortium for the SOE project. “In one sense we ended up delivering the SOE,� said Mr Lim Eng. The move also closed a chapter in the story that began some 27 years earlier, when SCS was used as the initial recruiting mechanism for NCB before NCS was set up to assume the role.

The purchase of SCS changed the landscape for NCS. With revenues of about S$800 million at the time, NCS was about twice the size of SCS, and the acquisition enabled it to break the S$1 billion topline threshold.

This gave NCS added scale and extended its market reach.

Like NCS, SCS had a regional footprint. It had its own pool of developers in China, and also had a presence in countries such as Brunei, among others. In Singapore, SCS also had made deeper inroads into sectors such as defence.

MR LIM ENG Previous: Chief Executive Officer, NCS (2007-2010)

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Before it could capitalise on these opportunities, however, the challenge was to meld the two organisations into a cohesive whole. “It is easy to buy a company; it is much harder to make them work as one, especially two companies which have been competing in the same arena.”

“I dare say that we made every effort to bring our SCS colleagues into the NCS fold,” said Mr Lim Eng. Teams were merged and in areas where both were serving the same customers, resources were integrated and the best people were assigned to do the work.

By the time the tender for the Standard ICT Operating Environment (SOE) for Schools came out in 2010, NCS was ready.

Putting its best foot forward Valued at S$850 million over a period of eight years, the tender was called by the Ministry of Education to consolidate the provision and management of desktops, messaging and network environment, as well as ICT support for schools. More importantly, it also sought to provide schools with an ICT infrastructure that would enhance teaching and learning in line with the current Masterplan for ICT in Education.

Driving NCS’ bid was Mr Chia Wee Boon, a 26-year HP veteran who joined NCS as its chief operating officer in June 2009.

Barely three months after he came on board, the SOE for Schools tender came out. A team had to be assembled straightaway to put the entire solution together.

“I had very little time to understand what the customer wanted in terms of their needs, in terms of how they were being served,” Mr Chia recalled. “Fortunately, we had people who had been operating in the customer sites - in the schools – for several years so we were able to tap on their knowledge.”

NCS pulled together a team comprising both technical and sales expertise and made sure that it put its best foot

forward. It got everybody on board, created a winning mindset within the organisation, and then focused its attention on creating a value proposition that married an understanding of the customer with the best technical solution. It also had to factor in the financials to make sure that the project would be profitable. “There is always a trade-off between risk and cost,” said Mr Chia. “If we made one mistake, we could be in trouble for the next eight years. We couldn’t take that kind of risk.”

Great team spirit The tender preparation process was intensive, recalled Mr Lim Eng. “Our people worked over weekends and stayed into the wee hours of the night to put it all together.”

“As CEO, I had the easiest role – to give the introduction and the closing remarks. But I was there with my fellow colleagues when they were sweating it out, when they were going through the rehearsals, to acknowledge their hard work, to be part of the team. Finally, when we won, it was thanks to the great team spirit that we had.”

Mr Lim Eng, who left the corporate world to pursue other interests in 2010, described NCS as “one of the high points, if not the high point, of my career”. “In NCS the culture is rather unique. We are blessed with a very good group of people that really strive to ‘Make IT happen’, even in the most dire situations and under extreme stress, so that we can make a difference to our customers.”

Mr Chia, who took over the reins as CEO from Mr Lim Eng, also appreciated the NCS spirit. “I found out very quickly that NCS has got very good, dedicated people. They are very willing to learn, very willing to go that extra mile and do work that will make NCS look good, for the company and for the customer, and so from that standpoint, I did not have to motivate them.”

But he was also acutely aware of the changes that were sweeping across the global IT market at the time, and the impact that these could have on the company. “We had to move quickly, otherwise we could become irrelevant very easily,” he said.

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The new competitive landscape The global financial crisis of 2008-2009 had created a wave of global IT competitors moving into Asia, and especially into Singapore. NCS would have to raise its game. “We had to sharpen our focus on competitiveness and be crystal clear on our value,” said Mr Chia.

“I’m very paranoid about the possibility of people getting complacent. We must never take our position in the Singapore market for granted. Never,” he said.

He also sharpened NCS’ focus on the customer – “first understand their problem, understand the context of their problem and then go all out to find a solution”.

As he often reminded his people, “The customer pays your salary. If they don’t believe you, if they have no confidence in you and don’t think you can add value, they will vote with their money.”

And so between 2009 and 2012, NCS started to shape its strategies after considering customer demand, competition, and technology movements in the marketplace.

It was also around that time that people started talking about cloud services, social media and mobility solutions. NCS was quick to see the potential for creating new solutions that would deliver benefits not just at the agency or enterprise level, but on a much larger scale.

“When we explored what was happening around the world, what customers were looking for, we started asking ourselves what we could do to exploit our knowhow in industry verticals, in telecoms, in analytics and in sensors, to create new solutions,” said Mr Chia. “That put us smack in the middle of this concept of a smart city.”

The SURF vision is born The ideas that crystallised around SURF (Solutions for Urbanised Future) represent NCS’ vision for a Smart and Safe City.

“We started SURF with the primary purpose of solving customer problems,” said Mr Chia. “If we want to create solutions, create intellectual property (IP) and create technologies, they have to solve one of three problems, if not all of them.”

The first of these is citizen-centricity and citizen engagement.

“Our belief is that citizens want to have a say in how precincts are managed. They like to be engaged and to feel that they 26

have been heard,” explained Mr Chia. “At the same time, you want to create a platform that allows the government to draw on citizens’ inputs and come up with solutions to solve their municipal issues.”

The second problem, from the government standpoint, is the need for situational awareness - looking at how technology can be used to capture and analyse data to enhance sense-making and planning in public safety scenarios for example. The third is operational efficiency.

As Mr Chia pointed out, “We are short of manpower as a nation, so we cannot continue to keep using manpower to solve our problems.”

And that was how NCS started to conceptualise SURF in 2011, as a collection of technologies and solutions to solve customers’ problems and to fulfil their desire to become a smart city. In 2012, with the ink barely dry on its SURF blueprint, NCS was invited by the Singapore Economic Development Board to present its vision on a global stage, at the inaugural World Cities Summit in Singapore.

A necessary evolution As an organisation sitting within a telco - its parent company Singtel - Mr Chia knew that NCS was in a unique position to deliver the smart city vision.

“Singtel and NCS face competition that is either pure telco play, or pure software or SI (systems integrator) play, or largely in hardware and infrastructure management services. But here is one company in Singapore that is uniquely positioned to play across the board because of our position in a telco. We have to play it to our advantage.”

Smart city applications sit at the confluence of devices, an always-on infrastructure and e-services, he pointed out. “If customers want e-services, if they want an IT infrastructure that we can operate and manage, we can do it. If they want communications services, my parent company Singtel has it. Singtel also has mobile devices and we could expand this to include all kinds of sensors. And if we combine these with communications technologies based on 3G, 4G/LTE, 5G… we can make services truly pervasive.”

In rolling out SURF, NCS has identified seven emerging technologies that it feels are key to realising the smart city vision – sensors, security, mobility, machine-to-machine technologies, cloud services, social networking and

analytics. It has also identified four verticals – Education, Healthcare, Public Safety and Transportation – as the pillars of its Smart and Safe City vision.

SURF is an important, even necessary, next step in the evolution of NCS, said Mr Chia. “If we continue to focus only on applications development, on the provision of data centres and infrastructure management services, it will be ‘same old, same old’. For us to compete, both for our benefit and for the benefit of our customers, we must continue to create new value. We must find a new purpose for our existence.”

This is NCS Ultimately, the Smart and Safe City vision is not just about technology; it is also about how technology is applied intelligently and creatively to solve problems for citizens and residents.

Looking back, said Mr Chia, the key differentiator that enabled Singapore to forge ahead with e-government in the early years was not so much its technical capabilities but really “the vision to apply”. That vision, articulated by IT pioneers like Mr Philip Yeo, Dr Tan Chin Nam and Mr Lim Swee Say in the 1980s, continues to guide the way.

Today, there are still people in NCS who were from that era.

That immense depth of experience and expertise is a huge plus, and not something that many other companies can shout about.

to problems. NCS is in the business of helping customers solve their problems. And we want to do it reliably and securely.”

With the mission in focus, the next important thing will be to equip its people with the knowledge they need to carry out their roles well. As a company, NCS will be investing more in its people than ever before, said Mr Chia. It will ensure that time is set aside for people development, provide on-the-job training, and have a human resource policy that allows the company to rotate people without impacting the customer. “Across the board, we will look at what the company intends to do, and make sure it is congruent with what our people want to do and what our people are good at doing.”

“The thing that is going to really define us is the capability of our people,” he said. “The knowledge they possess, their ability to innovate, how creative they are in solving customer problems – this is what differentiates us and brands us as an organisation. This is NCS.”

“We are in a people-centric business, and our people are our most important asset,” said Mr Chia. “Every time we go into a deal, it is about creating and keeping jobs.”

To win the hearts and minds of its people, it is important for NCS to articulate a mission that resonates with them and will spur them to go the extra mile. And this mission is to help customers solve their problems.

Reiterating this point to underscore its importance, Mr Chia said, “Ultimately customers are looking for solutions

MR CHIA WEE BOON Chief Executive Officer, NCS 27

SURF | SOLUTIONS FOR URBANISED FUTURE

Smart, safe, and citizen-centric – these are the key tenets that underpin SURF (Solutions for Urbanised Future), NCS’ vision for a future where next-generation technologies are harnessed to empower individuals and create vibrant and sustainable communities and cities.

Through SURF, NCS will create and deliver innovative solutions that impact the lives of residents and transform public services. An important aspect of our vision is to use technology to help solve problems and address challenges that arise from globalisation and rapid urbanisation.

THE SMART & SAFE CITY CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE The next wave of smart city innovations will be driven by NCS’ Smart & Safe City Centre of Excellence (SSC COE). Under the SSC COE programme, NCS will take a three-pronged approach to • Establish a living lab for public agencies and commercial enterprises to create and test-bed smart city innovations in the areas of Education, Healthcare, Transport and Public Safety • Grow a vibrant eco-system of like-minded partners for smart city development, comprising of global technology players, local start-ups, and research institutes • Train talents in delivering and implementing smart solutions

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A living lab for co-creation of smart city innovations - Launched on 9 Feb 2015, SURF@NCS was set up as a living lab to provide an environment conducive for organisations to hold ideation workshops and test various technologies, applications and proof-of-concepts. It also serves as a lab for NCS to develop Intellectual Property (IP) and smart city innovations. The first IP being introduced is ISC – an Intelligent Command & Control Platform – designed to solve challenges in situations involving multiple agencies. The proprietary platform was a test-bed in Little India in 2014, under the Safety and Security Industry Programme Office (SSIPO), established by Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and Economic Development Board (EDB). The outcome was a demonstration on how the ISC platform helped to improve situational awareness and operational efficiency.

A vibrant partner eco-system - The second pillar of the SSC COE is to build up a strong ecosystem of partners, covering technology areas such as fog computing, Internet-of-Things (IOT) and critical infrastructure management. NCS is also working with tertiary institutions to build smart campuses and future teaching tools.nol A pipeline of talents - Talent development is the third key initiative to drive smart city innovations.

This is done through collaboration with local universities, polytechnics and technical institutes to groom young talents with capabilities in data analytics and communications engineering. With a combination of curriculum development, internship programmes and on-the-job training with NCS, students can apply what they have learnt in a real work context and build their careers in these areas.n

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TRANSFORMING PUBLIC SERVICES & IMPACTING LIVES NCS’ vision of a Smart & Safe City goes beyond enabling businesses and organisations with technology. It is also about improving the quality of life of citizens and making things better for everyone in the way they work, live, play and collaborate.

Education, for example, is one area that touches the lives of all Singaporeans. In the smart education scenario, SURF harnesses technologies around three domains - school, campus and classroom - to encourage self-directed and collaborative learning. From 1-to-1 student computing to employing student analytics, technology brings dynamism to a student’s learning journey by encouraging two-way communication and real-time interaction. Educators are also able to gain insights and help nurture our future generations into global e-learners.

Transportation is another challenge that calls for solutions. We have identified three key factors that will define the future of urban transportation - the travel experience, total transportation management as well as sustainability. For example, technologies like predictive analytics will enable accurate forecasts and help commuters and motorists make more informed transport decisions. The combination of sensor technologies and analytics capabilities will enable us to optimise traffic flow, provide proactive maintenance of our road and rail networks, and be more efficient in our use of energy. It will also set the stage for the introduction of autonomous vehicles and on-demand public transport services.

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A third sector that SURF focuses on is healthcare. With hospitals struggling to cope with overcrowding and chronic bed shortage, the ability to deliver effective step-down care becomes very important. It may not always be necessary for a patient to be admitted to the hospital. He can visit an outpatient clinic for treatment and have his health and vital signs monitored when he is at home using telemetry and telemedicine. This is what NCS is already working towards with some of our smart health initiatives, and these efforts will only grow in significance as Singapore faces the challenge of managing a greying population.

Under its SURF vision, NCS is also placing heavy emphasis on public safety. Our aim is to leverage technology to create a safe and secure environment by helping public safety agencies to improve their situational awareness. For example, the proprietary Intelligent SURF Centre (ISC) platform was developed as a scalable and inter-operable Command and Control platform to help agencies distill dynamic information and automate work processes for better operational responsiveness and predictive planning.

BRINGING TOGETHER THE TECHNOLOGY ENABLERS The creation of a Smart & Safe City will involve a whole chain of technologies. Key enablers include data & analytics, sensing technology, mobility, security, machine-to-machine, social networking and the cloud.

To achieve the vision of a Smart & Safe City, we will bring together these emerging technologies to empower individuals and enable communities and cities.

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e-GOVERNMENT FROM EFFICIENCY TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT

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e-GOVERNMENT The history of NCS is closely intertwined with Singapore’s IT story, from the start of computerisation in the early 1980s to the new era of e-Government in the digital age.

As part of the then-National Computer Board, we played a pivotal role in the early stages of Singapore’s national computerisation efforts. Our IT professionals built systems to automate the work of public officers so that the agencies could operate more efficiently. From there, we looked at how the entire processes could be brought together and improved through IT, pushing productivity up a few more notches. For example, we developed the Integrated Data Collection System for Census of Population, which enabled the Department of Statistics to release census information in two months instead of the nine that it previously took.

The citizen-centric approach In line with successive government IT masterplans, NCS helped the Immigration & Checkpoints Authority (ICA) develop one-stop services such as OSCARS (OneStop Change of Address Reporting Service), APPLES (Application for Passport Online Electronic System), e-Visit Pass and the e-Appointment system. Underpinning them is CIRIS, ICA’s Central Identification and Registration Information System.

The citizen-centric approach to Government has become even more important in the past decade as people become more technology-savvy and service expectations rise. To address these new challenges, NCS has been working with various public agencies to raise the bar in citizen engagement and service delivery. Examples include the enhancement of my cpf service to provide the Central Provident Fund Board with a 360-degree view of its members, and the implementation of an e-Filing system for the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore.

To protect the personal data of citizens, we have more recently worked with the Personal Data Protection Commission to roll out the Do Not Call Registry System.

Of equal importance in the e-Government journey is the delivery of services to businesses, in line with the Government’s efforts to create a more efficient, 34

transparent and business-friendly environment in Singapore. For example, we developed systems such as BizFile to deliver one-stop convenience to businesses operating in Singapore.

Era of the Smart Nation Today, we stand at the cusp of a new era – the era of the Smart Nation, where technology will revolutionise citizen engagement, pave the way for new paradigms of co-creation, and catalyse whole-of-government transformation.

Under the latest e-Government 2015 (eGov2015) masterplan, one of the strategic areas that NCS is involved in is the transformation of public sector infrastructure to facilitate whole-of-government collaboration and deliver greater efficiency and better economies of scale. As early as 2005, we worked with the government to establish SHINE (Service-wide Hosting Environment), which provided shared computing resources to government agencies on a subscription model. Under the new eGov2015, NCS and our parent company Singtel have rolled out G-Cloud, the next-generation infrastructure which will replace SHINE.

Government of the future The government of the future will collaborate with both private and public sectors to create new business models and citizen services.

It will adopt a whole-of-Government approach that harmonises infrastructure and operating environments, so that public services can be delivered efficiently with one unified voice, addressing the challenges of citizen centricity, community engagement and pro-business environment.

NCS is well positioned to address these requirements, bringing together its deep understanding of the public sector and its mission, strong capabilities in IT and communications engineering, and the telco capabilities of its parent company to support the Singapore public sector in the era of the Smart Nation.

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All on board the Census express The Census of Population 2000 was a breakthrough for the Department of Statistics (DOS), the national statistical authority responsible for official statistics on the Singapore economy and its population. The study was completed in less than a quarter of the time it took for the previous Census in 1990, with onetenth the manpower.

Behind the remarkable improvements in efficiency was the Integrated Data Collection System for Census of Population, a system developed by NCS to ensure smooth and tightly integrated data collection, processing and tabulation operations.

An e-infrastructure was deployed to connect strategic locations island-wide and provide support for the different applications and systems that were to be used in the Census. Among these was a facility for the collection of data over the Internet, which incorporated strong log-in authentication and 128-bit encryption to ensure the secure transmission of data.

A call centre was also set up to handle the collection of Census data and queries from the public over the telephone. A predictive dialer managed the outgoing calls to the selected respondents and automatically connected them to the interviewers, while an interactive voice response system handled incoming calls.

Incomplete data collected via the Internet and telephone were printed out for door-todoor interviews. A document management system was used to help with the capture of data collected from face-to-face interviews. Completed data from the three different channels was then synchronised for computer-assisted coding and veriďŹ cation.

With the use of the Integrated Data Collection System, DOS was able to release information within two months of Census day, instead of nine months for the previous Census. Only 600 staff had to be mobilised, compared with 6,000 that would otherwise have been needed. And when all the numbers were counted, DOS enjoyed total cost savings of S$48 million.

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One gateway for all national servicemen The National Service (NS) Portal (www.ns.sg) is a unified portal that serves all national servicemen in Singapore, including those from the Ministry of Defence (MINDEF) and Singapore Armed Forces (SAF), Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), Singapore Police Force (SPF) and Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF).

With a high 10 million page views and 650,000 e-transactions on average every month, this portal caters to the needs of over 600,000 registered users across the NS ecosystem – including pre-enlistees, full-time national servicemen (NSFs), operationally-ready national servicemen (NSmen), regulars, their families, employers, and the general public.

Managed and maintained by NCS since 2006, the NS Portal is a partnership with MINDEF and MHA, comprising a web presence and mobile platforms (mobile website and mobile applications) that enable efficient and effective delivery of services and multimedia content to our national servicemen.

For instance, the Fitness section contains NS-related training tips and information, the NS News provides military, defence and NS-related updates, and the NSTV is a dedicated video channel for up-close-and-personal views of in-camp/military training and missions. Throughout the years, the NS Portal has won numerous awards in local and international arena.

NCS provides end-to-end services for the NS Portal, from the setting up of infrastructure, to managing, operating and marketing it. We also manage the 24x7 NS Call Centre and data centre for the NS Portal, and provide round-the-clock cyber security support from our Security Operations Centre.

Over the years, we have made continuous improvements to the NS Portal together with MINDEF and MHA. In 2014, as part of efforts under the Committee to Strengthen National Service (CSNS) to enhance the NS Portal and deliver more citizen-centric services, the NS Portal was revamped.

With a new design and the introduction of social sharing functions for greater interactivity, users are now able to search, view, access and complete their eService transactions more easily. NCS remains committed to deliver a highlypositive overall experience for our users.

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One stop for reporting change of address One of the key thrusts under Singapore’s National IT Plan (1986-1991) was to provide “one-stop” services that would bring about greater convenience and simplify the way people interacted with public agencies.

One of the best early examples of these services was OSCARS, or the One-Stop Change of Address Reporting Service. Introduced in 1994, OSCARS enabled Singaporeans to update their new addresses into the then-National Registration Office’s database through online links from police posts and police stations, and to transmit this information to other government agencies.

Today, OSCARS continues to provide citizens and permanent residents with the convenience of one-stop change of address reporting. It now comes under the purview of the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA), the government agency which performs immigration and registration functions such as issuing travel documents and identity cards to Singapore citizens and various immigration passes and permits to foreigners.

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Passport to service excellence Over the years, ICA has rolled out many e-services that have enabled the agency to set new standards in service delivery. The Application for Passport Online Electronic System (APPLES), the e-Visit Pass and the e-Appointment system are just some examples.

APPLES is a web-based Internet application for Singapore citizens to apply, submit and enquire on their Singapore Passport application, minimising the number of trips they have to make to the ICA building and allowing them to avoid the hassle of queueing up.

Similarly, the e-Visit Pass (e-VP) service allows visitors to apply for a visitor’s pass over the Internet. All processing and payment is done online and once the transaction has been successfully completed, the applicant will be notified of the application status either by email or using the “Status Enquiry” on the web site.

For those who have to visit ICA, the e-Appointment System allows them to plan their time ahead of the trip. With a few simple clicks of the mouse, the customer is able to make an appointment with ICA for a wide range of immigration services and facilities, and be attended to more quickly when he arrives. From ICA’s perspective, the system also enables the agency to better manage its resources according to demand.

Underpinning these e-services is CIRIS, ICA’s Central Identification and Registration Information System which holds millions of records of all Singapore citizens, permanent residents and foreigners. Deployed in 2007, CIRIS supports the administration of each individual from the registration of birth to the issuing of identification and travel documents, immigration passes and permits, to death registration.

Information from CIRIS is updated in the People Hub, a data repository first developed by NCS over a decade ago. Originally focused on information about Singapore Citizens, People Hub has since been enhanced to include data on Singapore Permanent Residents and Singapore long-term pass holders. The data repository provides crucial information to various Ministries and statutory boards for statistical analysis, strategic planning and policy implementation.

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Empowering citizens to make informed decisions The CPF Board was set up in 1955 to provide financial security for Singaporeans in their retirement. As part of a drive to enhance customer service, it has been introducing comprehensive information packages and services through the online portal (my cpf), empowering its members to make informed decisions about their CPF funds.

NCS has been involved in the development and deployment of many of these services. We worked with CPF Board to introduce a new inbox feature called my cpf Inbox Service, which provides members with convenient access to CPF letters anytime, anywhere, through a secured online platform. Members are alerted via email whenever new letters are received. From the inbox, they can also manage their correspondence, printing hard copies or retaining copies of outgoing letters.

We also rolled out an e-service that allows employers to submit CPF contributions electronically without having to install any software. Introduced in 2010, the online application Auto-eXcel Plus automatically reflects changes in CPF rates for accurate computation of CPF contributions and stores information securely online, eliminating employers’ concerns over data loss.

To streamline information flow across the public sector, we helped enhance the statement retrieval process for CPF’s partner agencies. We built a web linkup that enables the agencies to retrieve statement data if authorised to do so by the CPF member, and use it to automatically populate their own online forms. This has resulted in improved work efficiency and productivity as manual efforts were no longer required to download the statements.

From PAPER filing to e-filing to no-filing In 1998, the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) became the first revenue authority in the world to introduce an electronic filing (e-filing) system for individual taxpayers – meaning individuals could e-file their tax returns without going through any tax intermediary.

IRAS also introduced the Auto-Inclusion Scheme for Employment Income (AIS) for employers, simplifying tax filing for hundreds of thousands of taxpayers in Singapore. Under the scheme, participating employers send their employees’ income information to IRAS electronically and the information is then pre-filled in employees’ electronic tax returns. Gone are the days when employers had to issue IR8A forms to their employees, and in turn employees had to enter the information manually in their returns. Now, thanks to this scheme, all an employee has to do is log in to myTax.iras.gov.sg to check all pre-filed information and claims, click “submit” and their returns are filed, all within a few clicks!

Today, tax filing is a non-event for three in five taxpayers – this Tax Season (2015), some 1.31 million taxpayers need not even file their returns. The No-Filing Service (NFS) was introduced in 2007 to benefit taxpayers who have auto-included income and straightforward tax relief items. This service is made possible by streamlining the individual income tax system over the years, and with more employers participating in the AIS. NCS is honoured to be part of this journey in helping IRAS to make tax services more accessible and user-friendly to the citizens.

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One e-service for all your business needs Say goodbye to long queues and copious paperwork. Wherever you are, as long as you have an Internet connection, you can register a company within minutes. And while you are at it, you can register for GST, reserve your web domain name, and activate your customs account, all on BizFile.

First launched in 2002, BizFile broke new ground in creating a more pro-business environment in Singapore, delivering unprecedented access and convenience with its one-stop, 24x7 services.

The system was spearheaded by the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA) of Singapore who wanted to introduce a web-based electronics registration and filing system that would enable it to better serve its business partners and end-customers.

To address its requirements, NCS designed BizFile, a secure, flexible and scalable system with the ability to handle transactions ranging from the simple to the extremely complex.

As a paperless solution, BizFile paves the way for fast, easy and convenient retrieval of accurate information. At the same time, it provides savings on storage costs as physical warehouses are no longer required. The archival of electronic records also ensures business continuity.

Today, BizFile brings together close to 300 e-services, serving as a onestop facilitator for businesses. It integrates e-services from multiple agencies such as the Singapore Customs, Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore, Spring Singapore and Singapore Government Network Information Centre.

It manages the end-to-end life-cycle of a company, business, limited liability partnership, limited partnership, public accountant and public accountant firm from name reservation to incorporation, to filing and finally to cessation or striking off.

As a result of streamlined and automated processes, what previously took days has now been reduced to just minutes.

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From SHINE to G-Cloud SHINE (Service-wide Hosting Environment) was a complete e-services environment that enabled public agencies to deploy their applications quickly and cost-effectively, without having to invest in their own infrastructure.

Implemented, maintained and operated by NCS since 2005, it provided a common services and hosting environment which encompassed the Public Service Infrastructure (PSi) in use at the time, and the Hub for Internet and Intranet Services which was the shared hosting platform for non-PSi e-services.

With a comprehensive suite of services which included secured web, application and database hosting, common gateway services for authentication and e-payment, content management, reporting, billing and other shared services, SHINE enabled agencies to reap the benefits of lower operating costs through economies of scale. It also provided the assurance of system availability with a resilient central infrastructure, and its utility model allowed agencies to pay only for the resources that they used.

In 2011, as part of a strategic thrust under the eGov2015 masterplan to catalyse whole-of-government transformation, the Singapore government announced that it was investing in a next-generation infrastructure to replace SHINE. This would take the form of a new private cloud infrastructure for the Singapore government, known as the G-Cloud.

To ensure a seamless transition to the new environment, we worked with multiple agencies to assess and manage the implementation risks as they moved their systems and e-services from SHINE to the new platform.

Today, G-Cloud provides a resilient and secure ICT environment where government agencies may purchase computing resources on demand and pay based on actual usage, allowing them to flexibly scale up or downsize operations based on changing needs. This will set the stage for a more responsive government as it further reduces the time and costs involved in rolling out new services or piloting innovations.

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Empowering consumers to say “no” Consumers and businesses in Singapore can finally say “no” – “no” to unwanted calls from telemarketers, “no” to unwanted SMSes, and “no” to unwanted faxes.

Under the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA), the Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC) set up a Do Not Call (DNC) Registry to give consumers greater flexibility to decide if and how they want to receive marketing messages.

With the launch of the DNC Registry System in January 2014, telephone subscribers can register their Singapore numbers if they do not wish to receive unsolicited marketing messages. The system provides consumers with an easy and effective way to opt out of unwanted voice calls, text messages or faxes using any of three channels – a phone call, text message, or over the web. Once a number is listed with the Registry, marketers can contact the consumer on that number only if they have received “clear and unambiguous consent” from him or her.

Under the requirements of the PDPA, organisations or individuals have to check with the DNC Registry to make sure that they do not contact Singapore telephone numbers that are listed there when they carry out their marketing campaigns.

They will have to set up an account with the Registry and submit their lists of telephone numbers for these checks.

Built and delivered by NCS, the DNC Registry System has more than 420,000 mobile numbers and over 980 organisations listed in its repository within a week of its launch in January 2014.

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PUBLIC SAFETY Creating a safe and secure living environment for all

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PUBLIC SAFETY Threats to public safety come in different forms and can be very dynamic and complex. To respond effectively to such threats and better protect our people and assets, homeland security agencies need to be able to react quickly and respond effectively to critical situations. This involves streamlining and automating operations for greater efficiency and agility and engaging citizens in the public safety effort.

A more proactive role for citizens Citizen and community policing can be a “force-multiplier” for the police, supplementing the police presence in every corner of the city. With a greater sense of ownership for public safety, citizens can serve as “sensors” for the police and work hand-in-glove with law enforcement agencies to improve the security and safety of their neighbourhood.

NCS’ citizens and community policing solutions empower citizens to be sensing, proactive eye witnesses and to play a more active role in law enforcement efforts.

Examples include the e-Police Centre and the Stolen and Lost Property Index (SPEX).

More enforcement efforts Within various agencies, e-systems have also been implemented to help them operate more efficiently while ensuring the highest standards of security and public safety. They include the Immigration Auto Clearance System by the Immigration & Checkpoints Authority, PATROL by the Central Narcotics Bureau, eCustoms by Singapore Customs and the installation of digital video surveillance systems for monitoring public security and safety. Mobile terminals have also been deployed for use in various enforcement and public safety situations.

To support other aspects of public safety, NCS has deployed Digital Traffic Red Light Cameras that help enforce traffic discipline and improve road safety, and developed a Flood Alert Management System that provides SMS alerts to members of the public should there be imminent danger of flooding in certain areas. NCS has also implemented an eRegister system to help the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) get in touch with citizens overseas in emergency situations.

Leveraging smart city solutions Going forward, NCS will be leveraging smart city solutions to further improve public safety. Analytics and predictive modelling will be applied to multiple live data feeds from CCTVs and other sensing or machine-to-machine technology to heighten situational awareness and improve public safety response. New systems will be developed to synergise the efforts of various law enforcement agencies and facilitate investigation and coordinate response. A central crisis management system will enable agencies to share security-related information and provide a platform for closer collaboration as we work together to protect the people, the assets and the future of the nation.

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The e-Police Centre (ePC) is a one-stop portal which provides members of the public with convenient access to police services and supports community involvement in law enforcement efforts. ePC was first launched in 2002 as an additional touch point for members of the public to interact with the Singapore Police Force. Developed by NCS, it provides members of the public with a convenient way to lodge non-urgent police reports online.

For example, ePC can be used to report general crime, lost property or traffic accidents without having to make a trip to the police station. Repossession companies can also make use of the system to file a Vehicle Repossession Report. A copy of the report is then emailed to the person who lodged it.

Providing e-channels to support law enforcement

The portal also enables the community to play a bigger role in keeping our city safe. For example, a feature called Crime Stopper allows users to provide the police with tip-offs or information on gang or drug-related crimes, suspicious persons and activities. Another, the Secondhand Goods Transaction Records System, allows secondhand dealers to screen goods before purchase.

There are also different types of information services available through ePC. An example is the Stolen and Lost Property Index (SPEX) which allows members of the public to screen selected items to make sure that they have not been reported stolen or lost. These items include mobile devices with IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) numbers, laptops and notebook computers, portable media players, cameras and watches.

Another example is the Electronic Driver Data Information and Enquiry System for checking on a motorist’s driving licence status and driving record.

As an online portal, ePC provides members of the public with greater convenience and ease of access to police services. For the Singapore Police Force, it helps free up valuable manpower resources at police centres, allowing officers to deal with time-critical cases more efficiently.

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Guarding the gateways The Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) is the agency responsible for securing Singapore’s borders against the entry of undesirable persons and cargo through the country’s land, air and sea checkpoints.

As the guardians of Singapore’s gateways, it has to ensure that Singapore’s borders are highly secure while clearing travellers as efficiently and as quickly as possible. To meet these objectives, ICA became one of the first immigration authorities in the world to implement a biometric system for secure self-clearance at checkpoints.

Known as the Immigration Automated Clearance System (IACs), the first version of the automated gates came into operation in 1997 and was based on smartcard technology.

NCS was also involved in rolling out an enhanced version of IACS (eIACS) in 2006, which allowed Singapore citizens to clear immigration via the automated gates without the need for an Access Card if they are using a valid machinereadable Singapore passport. This was possible because their fingerprints would have been captured in the National Registration database when they registered for their Singapore identity cards. The eIACS was subsequently extended to permanent residents, work pass holders and other long-term pass holders with ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation)-compliant passports. On 5 April 2011, ICA ceased to issue Access Cards, making immigration clearance a smooth and seamless process for the vast majority of travellers passing through our checkpoints.

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Streamlining permit applications Say farewell to faxes. With the Permit Administration and ConTROL System (PATROL), traders now send declaration forms and supporting documents to the Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) over the Internet, saving them paperwork, and paper.

CNB was established in 1971 as the primary drug enforcement agency entrusted with the responsibilities of coordinating all matters pertaining to the fight against drugs and to make Singapore drug-free. It also regulates precursor chemicals necessary in the manufacture of controlled drugs. Declarations are required for every import, export and shipment of these chemicals.

Previously, traders sent the declaration forms and supporting documents through fax. The process was time-consuming and resource intensive. A more efficient and effective system was needed to streamline processes and improve the speed of application approval/rejection.

NCS worked with CNB to develop a web-based online permit application system for the agency. The system, PATROL, enables registered traders and forwarders to perform permit transactions online and have immediate access to the information they require anytime, anywhere. They can also track all permits and the approval status at a glance.

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Trade is the lifeblood of Singapore Trade is the lifeblood of Singapore. In 2012, Singapore Customs revenue was S$7.379 billion and the total value of trade was 3 times the national GDP at S$985 billion.

The eCustoms System enhances the effectiveness and efficiency of Customs administration. Through active engagement with businesses, robust regulations and effective enforcement, the system facilitates Customs in safeguarding Singapore as a global trade hub that is trusted by our foreign trading partners and businesses operating in Singapore.

NCS’ eCustoms system supports the national trade infrastructure and cargo clearance at various checkpoints and interfaces with multiple agencies for some of its critical functions such as permit submission, processing and approval. With over 20 years of experience in this area, we have built a strong portfolio of customs systems which include permit processing systems, cargo manifest systems, and systems to facilitate warehouse inventory control of dutiable items, assessment and collection of duty and GST and security clearance of goods, among many others. These are backed by end-to-end consultancy and implementation services to help customs authorities harness ICT effectively to simplify customs processes and facilitate goods movement across borders.

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Working efficiently on-the-go Timely access to information is critical during an emergency. Police officers, ambulance personnel and fire fighters need to have up-to-date information so that they can respond effectively to an incident. To support them in their operations, Mobile Data Terminals (MDTs) have been deployed in police vehicles, ambulances and fire engines to allow first responders to receive information on the move. By transmitting data directly to the MDT, the system allows officers to view incident details without having to contact the headquarters or division for information, saving precious time in incident response.

Mobile terminals are also being used to increase efficiency in car park enforcement. The Electronic Handheld Terminal (EHT) system, which we developed for the Housing and Development Board (HDB), allows enforcement officers from HDB’s Service Providers to print out parking offence notices using bluetooth and a mobile thermal printer. At the same time, information on the parking offence is sent via the mobile network to the agency’s enterprise servers.

This has transformed the car park enforcement process into a seamless, real-time workflow. Enforcement officers are able to obtain updated data anytime and anywhere on the EHT. They also no longer need to make trips back to the office to download/upload data, thus improving their operational efficiency.

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Staying in touch with Singaporeans overseas Be contactable wherever you are in the world. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ (MFA) eRegister system is a voluntary and free service which helps ensure that Singapore citizens who travel or reside overseas can be contacted in the event of an emergency such as a natural disaster or civil unrest. The system allows users to record information about their travel itinerary abroad. The information that is provided will allow MFA to contact the user in order to make sure that he is safe and render assistance if required.

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Creating safer cities As part of a wider push to create safer cities, NCS has rolled out digital video surveillance systems to enhance situational awareness and enable public agencies to track and respond more effectively to security and safety threats.

The deployment in Little India, where a riot occurred in December 2013, has helped enhance public safety in the area. It follows our participation, together with consortium partner Airbus Defence & Space, in the Safe City Test Bed Project which was launched in 2013.

An initiative by the Safety and Security Industry Programme Office which is jointly established by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and the Singapore Economic Development Board (SEDB), the Safe City Test Bed Project was aimed at assessing how analytics software can be used to study government data from sensors such as CCTV cameras to enhance sense-making and planning in public safety scenarios.

As part of our solution, a vehicle-mounted CCTV system was deployed to provide rapid and flexible access to specific areas and persons who may be associated with a crime, in order to gather intelligence for tactical or strategic operations. The videos recorded from the vehicle were transmitted in real time to back-end systems for analysis using a high-speed LTE (Long Term Evolution) connection.

The solution also involved aggregating multiple systems and information sources onto a single intelligent and interactive operational platform, putting agencies in a stronger position to minimise the impact of threats.

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Saving lives with Digital Traffic Red Light Cameras Beating the red light can have fatal consequences, and the Singapore traffic police is trying to put a stop to the needless loss of lives with the implementation of a new Digital Traffic Red Light System that will help enforce traffic discipline and enhance road safety.

The 11-megapixel digital red light cameras work with intelligent sensors to detect traffic violations and capture images of the vehicles involved. The images are then transmitted directly to a central database for automatic number plate identification.

240 digital cameras will be rolled out by mid-2015. Unlike their film-based predecessors, they offer better resolution and clarity, allowing images to be transmitted directly for vehicle identification, and there is no need to worry that they will run out of film.

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A proactive approach to tackling flash floods To ensure public safety in the event of flooding, especially flash floods, Public Utilities Board (PUB), Singapore’s national water agency has introduced an SMS service that alerts members of the public in real time if there is a heavy downpour and/or water levels in designated canals start to rise.

The service is part of a Flood Alert Management System developed by NCS for PUB to facilitate the management, reporting and sending of SMS broadcasts on flooded areas so that the public can be informed about the latest flood situation.

As part of a comprehensive approach to drainage management and control, PUB has installed 171 sensors in key canals and drains to track the water levels. The Flood Alert Management System interfaces with these water level sensors and stores the data for further action such as the broadcasting of SMS alerts.

PUB officers will have access to an online portal to configure the broadcast rules and alert messages. The system also caters for ad hoc broadcasts and helps the officers to monitor the water level sensors and ensure that they are in good working condition.

Members of the public can subscribe to the SMS service via an online portal.

Subscribers will receive progressive SMS alerts if the water level in a selected canal rises above certain pre-determined levels in relation to the depth of the canal. They can also opt to receive a rainfall alert from the National Environment Agency’s Meteorological Service Singapore. The SMS will indicate where heavy rain will be expected, and provide information on expected tidal changes should the rainfall coincide with high tide.

Notifications will also be sent out when the rainfall subsides or water levels recede, thus closing the loop on the alert service.

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EDUCATION Laying the foundations for vibrant and inclusive learning

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EDUCATION In 1997, Singapore unveiled its Masterplan for IT in Education, which sought to harness the rich, interactive capabilities of IT-based resources to shift the learning process from absorbing information to nurturing thinking skills. Programmes were rolled out to enable self-paced learning by allowing students access to lesson packages for review at their own time via the Internet. It also made the ambitious move to provide local area networks in all government and government-aided primary and secondary schools in Singapore, and to link them with the Ministry of Education’s (MOE) headquarters.

Today, we will be taking this vision even further. NCS is putting in place a smart education system where schools will make innovative use of ICT to create a vibrant and inclusive learning environment which allows teachers, students and their parents to actively participate and collaborate with each other, improve the quality of education and bring out the full potential of each student.

The focus will be on self-directed, collaborative learning made possible through 1-to-1 computing environment and other emerging technologies that facilitate ICT-based pedagogies in the digital age.

Laying the ICT foundation Over the years, NCS has partnered government and educational institutions to lay the ICT foundation for this smart education system, providing solutions that enable connectivity and enrich the learning environment for teachers and students. One of the major initiatives in this area is the rollout of the Schools Standard ICT Operating Environment to provide a common ICT environment for all government and government-aided schools, comprising 40,000 teachers, administrative staff and 500,000 students.

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We are also in the midst of building Smart Campus together with tertiary institutions. These Smart Campuses will be enabled by platforms that can ingest and analyse data through the use of advance analytics from various applications to provide greater insights, enhance productivity and improve learning experiences and outcomes.

The ICT foundation that we have implemented enables schools and learning institutions to promote collaborative learning through the use of emerging technologies. NCS‘ eNGage platform, for example, is designed as a tool for social learning, allowing teachers and students to collaborate and communicate more effectively.

Early cloud adopter We are proud to partner MOE, one of the earliest public sector adopters of cloud in Singapore. In 2009, we successfully rolled out the Google Apps (Education version) suite of online communications and collaboration tools to more than 30,000 teachers and staff in over 350 schools in Singapore.

MOE became the first Ministry in Singapore to adopt an open standard cloud computing platform and the first in Asia to provide Web 2.0 communication and collaboration tools to all teachers in the public school system. Beyond putting the right tools in the hands of students and educators, another important area that we are focusing on is enabling analytics in education so as to derive insights that can be useful in improving learning outcomes.

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Laying the foundation for schools of the future Envisage this – as primary school pupils are having their lessons at an eco-pond, mobile carts allow them to use their computing devices so they can access information online. They will do their research before collaborating and presenting to their classmates in the classroom.

This is just one small example of a much bigger learning transformation that is taking place in Singapore schools today, and it is being enabled in no small part by the Schools Standard ICT Operating Environment (SSOE), an S$850 million initiative introduced by the Ministry of Education in 2010 as part of its masterplan for ICT in the education sector.

SSOE was a massive undertaking that involved all 351 schools in Singapore and impacted over 500,000 students. In all, more than 120,000 devices were rolled out to some 40,000 principals, teachers and administrative staff.

SSOE consolidated the provisioning and management of desktops and notebooks, networks and ICT support for all MOE schools in Singapore. It involved building an enhanced wired and wireless network environment in each school to improve network performance and accessibility to school applications. It required identity management as well as centralised network and security monitoring.

Under the SSOE programme, NCS continues to provide desktop support to teachers using remote assistance technology that allows our service desk engineers to take over the teacher’s notebook and guide him as to what he should do.

Mobile carts are made available in schools for students to use computing devices anywhere, thus encouraging ICT-based learning. Managed print services have also been rolled out as an option, allowing schools to subscribe to cost-effective print services on a pay-per-use basis without the need to buy and own the printers. The use of a single ID to log in across applications has also provided greater convenience to users and enhanced the user experience.

SSOE is not just about infrastructure; it plays a crucial role in shaping the future of ICT-enabled teaching and learning in Singapore. By placing ICT resources within the reach of every educator and student, it empowers them to gather, process and apply knowledge much more effectively and innovatively. It opens up innovative new possibilities for educators to redefine their pedagogical approach. And it equips future generations of students to harness the full potential of ICT and excel in the digital era.

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Engaging students through social learning At a secondary school in the western part of Singapore, students are eNGaged to learn in new ways that they never were before. Using their iPads, they are able to download learning materials produced by their teachers using an app. Teachers and students can also insert annotations, photos and videos and share them in real time to enrich learning. eNGage is a tablet e-book publishing platform that enables students to learn collaboratively. By consolidating all digital resources for learners and educators via a digital library, they can access information readily using a mobile device anytime, anywhere in the world.

The students can download content and annotate it using freehand writing, videos, audio, images, text and hyperlinks. They can then share these via the eNGage platform with other students, employees or readers.

With the ease of communicating with each other, users will be encouraged to raise questions and share valuable insights with one another. Over time, this will help build an engaged learning and collaborative environment. eNGage also serves the wider publishing community, allowing educators, organisations and publishers to deliver content seamlessly to readers with easy-to-use features, while ensuring that their intellectual property remains protected. Publishers can also leverage the platform as an additional revenue channel and offer an electronic version, enriched with captivating multimedia content, on top of their print edition.

There are many potential applications for eNGage in the commercial world as well. The platform acts as a knowledge trove for staff who will have access to the resources provided by their organisation. With its unique social collaborative features, the users will be able to share their thoughts, ideas and notes effortlessly with like-minded people. And that’s how they will be truly eNGaged.

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Creating smart campuses Connect, Collect, Comprehend and Co-create.

With these 4Cs, Temasek Polytechnic is set to transform itself into a Smart Campus, aligned with Singapore’s Smart Nation vision.

Under a collaboration announced in November 2014, NCS is working with Temasek Polytechnic and other industry partners on a pilot project which will leverage the polytechnic’s comprehensive and robust IT infrastructure and emerging technologies to create innovative services and solutions for students and staff.

With close to 20,000 full-time and part-time students and staff at its campus, Temasek Polytechnic presents a microcosm of digital natives who consume and produce digital services and data naturally. The Smart Campus pilot will help enrich this ecosystem by facilitating the secure collection and analysis of rich data and deriving insights that can help improve decision-making and enhance the experience of studying and working at the Polytechnic. The Temasek Polytechnic Smart Campus will be a standards-based pilot site, aligned with the Smart Nation Platform (SNP) that is being built by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore. This allows integration of solutions and projects to connect, collect, comprehend and co-create data and services within and beyond the campus. The early adoption and test bedding of the SNP standards will also allow the Temasek Polytechnic Smart Campus to tap on SNP developments and produce students who are aware of the architecture, technology and standards in this space.

NCS is focused on enhancing the education paradigm through the use of advanced technology that facilitates student-centric learning in the new digital environment. With this collaboration, our aim is to transform Temasek Polytechnic into an intelligent and effective hub which serves as a test bed for innovative solutions and equips students with the essential skills for the workplace of the future.

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Connecting our educators Singapore’s educators are Web 2.0-ready. They have been since 2009, when the Ministry of Education made the unprecedented move of adopting an open-standard cloud computing platform and providing Web 2.0 communication and collaboration tools to all teachers in the public school system, making it the first Ministry in Asia to do so.

The solution, iCONnect, is an Internet email and collaboration system incorporating Google Apps for Education. It includes Google Docs, Google Sites, calendaring, flagging of emails and email to-do lists, which are aimed at increasing the efficiency of teachers and helping them in their day-to-day tasks. iCONnect is also bundled with collaboration tools such as instant messaging, blogs and wikis which enable teachers to collaborate within and across schools.

In all, iCONnect was rolled out to some 30,000 teachers in over 350 schools, paving the way for future implementation of Web 2.0-based applications, which will enhance interactions within and outside the classrooms.

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Mapping IT solutions to education milestones Every year, in the five days following the announcement of “O” level results, some 50,000 students will go online to the Joint Admission Exercise (JAE) system to select their preferred junior colleges, polytechnics or central institutions.

Within days of applications closing, the system would have computed the various options filled in by the students, factored in special admission criteria, different admission schemes and other parameters, and matched each application against available places to arrive at the posting results, which are then communicated to students via SMS or online.

The JAE system is one of several developed by NCS to support the student cycle from primary one registration to the administration of the post-secondary education accounts.

The Primary One Internet System is used to register pupils a year before they are slated to begin school. As they move on to the next phase of their education, the Secondary One Internet System supports the annual secondary one posting exercise where students who pass their Primary School Leaving Examinations (PSLE) are posted to a secondary school based on their results and choice of schools. Another system, the DSA-Sec Internet System, handles admissions under the Direct School Admissions (DSA) scheme which allows schools to select students for admission based on other achievements and talents, even before the PSLE results are released. On completion of secondary school, the JAE system handles postings for the next phase of the student’s education journey.

At each juncture, where there is a national examination, the Singapore Examinations and Assessment Board uses the web-based iExams system to manage the operations. We have also developed a system to help administer the Post-Secondary Education Scheme.

Under this initiative, a Post-Secondary Education Account is maintained for each eligible child to help parents save for their children’s post-secondary education.

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TRANSPORT Enhancing the travel experience with smoother, safer journeys

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TRANSPORT One of the key challenges facing the transport sector today is finding ways to maximise capacity and making more efficient use of infrastructure to facilitate the movement of people and goods. And it has to do this without compromising safety, reliability and quality.

For land transport, the future goes beyond building roads or creating a well-connected transport network. It is about total transport management to ensure sustainability and the creation of positive travel experiences for public and private transport users.

Empowering motorists and commuters In line with this, NCS has been delivering solutions that empower motorists and commuters to make better transport decisions. Examples include MyTransport.

SG, an all-in-one, location-aware travel toolkit to help motorists and commuters plan their journey, and the ONE. MOTORING Portal which offers real-time information on motoring and road transport.

As part of on-going efforts to explore innovative solutions to meet various transport needs, we also designed the Taxi-Taxi@SG mobile app that shows the availability and location of taxis across the island and better matches these taxis to commuters.

We also developed and/or maintain systems that make it easier and more convenient for members of the public to interact or transact with government agencies on transport-related matters. Examples include the online Certificate of Entitlement Open Bidding System and the Vehicle Registration & Licensing System. On the

roads, smart street lighting helps save energy and reduce operational costs with automatic fault detection. We also helped to conceptualise the Vehicle Entry Permit System which paves the way for greater efficiency at our land checkpoints by doing away with the need for paper permits or toll coupons.

Going forward, land transport solutions for the Smart Nation will be about changing the way we commute and connect and using new technologies to solve urban mobility challenges. Areas that we are looking into include the development of next-generation toll/electronic road pricing systems, traffic analytics, vehicle telematics, video analytics and machine-to-machine technologies, amongst others.

Boosting airport operations In the airport and aviation sector, we have developed solutions to help operators respond effectively to the growing pressure to improve efficiency, attract more regional traffic and meet passengers’ demands for better security and reliability.

Our involvement in the development of civil aviation in Singapore stretches from the Kallang Airport era of the 1950s to the present day Changi Airport.

We have delivered Air Traffic Control Systems, Communications Systems as well as Passenger Terminal Building Systems which include the Airport Operational Database, Flight Information Display System, iKiosks, Public Address System and Automated Trolley Management System. More importantly, we have successfully integrated these complex systems to enable centralised monitoring and management of airport operations. This provides airport management teams with consolidated, real-time access to information for rapid decision-making and response, enabling airports to operate more efficiently and position themselves for growth.

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Paving the way for greater efficiency at land checkpoints Fast, convenient and easy to use, the automated Vehicle Entry Permit (VEP)/Toll system implemented at the Woodlands and Tuas checkpoints in April 2000 has helped pave the way for greater efficiency at Singapore’s land checkpoints.

The system allows drivers to pay for their VEP or toll charges using a payment card instead of having to pre-purchase paper permits or toll coupons. Drivers of Singapore-registered vehicles can make use of their CashCard, EZ-Link card, Concession card or FlashPay to pay their toll charges, while foreign-registered vehicles make use of the Autopass card, a stored-value smart card, to pay their VEP fees and/or toll.

The VEP system caters to different payment rules and schemes. For example, VEP fees are calculated on a daily basis, and no fees are payable on Saturdays, Sundays and Singapore public holidays.

Different permit fees and toll charges apply to different categories, for example, foreign-registered cars and motorcycles, foreign-registered buses, taxis and goods vehicles, and Singapore-registered vehicles. Foreign-registered cars that do not have an in-vehicle unit (IU), a device for use with Singapore’s Electronic Road Pricing system (ERP), will also have to pay an additional no-IU fee.

At the front end, the VEP system interfaces with booth equipment such as card readers, card feeders, message displays, beacon lights, receipt printers, toll buttons and infrared sensors.

At the back end, it interfaces with various card management and finance systems for the settlement of payment transactions and refunds, and with the ERP system for capturing ERP flat rates and auto-blacklists. We have also built enhancements to the VEP system to accept both contact and contactless cards and to cater to the specific requirements of the VEP scheme as and when they arise.

As the system integrator, NCS conceptualised the VEP system together with Land Transport Authority (LTA) and assumed responsibility for system maintenance in 2004.

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Transport information on-the-go MyTransport.SG Mobile is an all-in-one travel toolkit for motorists and commuters. The mobile app with location-sensing capabilities was introduced by the Land Transport Authority in 2010 to cater to the growing population of technology-savvy private and public transport users who demand userfriendly and timely information while on-the-go.

Traditionally, transport information was limited to navigational systems that provided route details to help motorists and commuters get from point A to point B. What was lacking was the availability of real-time transport information to complement the route details and help the public to refine their travel plans.

MyTransport.SG Mobile addresses this by utilising a two-way engagement approach to deliver an interactive and content-rich experience.

The app simplifies the process of checking on traffic news, road conditions, the location of electronic road pricing (ERP) gantries, ERP rates, parking availability, public and premium bus services, MRT and LRT stations, taxi call numbers and even the latest bidding results for the Certificates of Entitlement.

One of the new features of MyTransport.SG Mobile is the public transport Journey Planner, a handy, intuitive guide which helps commuters map out the shortest and most convenient route to their destination using buses or trains. Key functions include the counting down of bus stops and train stations to the destination; a pro-active alert when nearing the destination; and one-touch access to the user’s favourite bus stops and train stations. A 360-degree interactive street view display and common taxi booking numbers are also included.

The new features ensure that even commuters who are unfamiliar with the public transport system can travel with ease, without worrying about missing their stops or travelling in the wrong direction.

MyTransport.SG Mobile complements LTA’s two other transport portals - ONE.MOTORING and MyTransport.SG.

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A one-stop portal

For commuters MyTransport.SG (www.mytransport.sg) is a one-stop portal which provides information and e-services for all land transport users, be it commuters, motorists or cyclists, making it easier and more convenient for all to plan their journeys.

The portal features essential tools for users such as interactive maps to get around Singapore, the latest public transport campaigns and initiatives, and public transport information such as bus arrival timings for all bus stops.

MyTransport.SG groups transport information to better serve various traveller profiles such as the public transport user, student, commuter with mobility needs, cyclist and motorist. This allows relevant information to be accessed more quickly, for example, bus services and MRT stations for public transport users; concession fares for students; wheelchair-accessible buses for commuters with mobility needs; cycling paths and bicycle parking facilities at MRT stations for cyclists; and traffic conditions for motorists.

To develop the portal, public transport information from multiple online sources such as the Land Transport Authority, SMRT, SBS Transit and TransitLink websites as well as offline sources such as information on bus stops and MRT/LRT stations were combined onto a single map-based platform. This involved bringing together voluminous data in different formats, for example, the entire map of Singapore, more than 4,000 bus stop locations, information on over 300 bus services and over 20,000 PDF files of bus routes.

We integrated the multiple data and backend systems and merged the different data formats in order to deliver the information to users through a user-friendly interface. Features such as “Search by Road Name, Landmarks and Postal Code” and “Browse by Bus Service Numbers, Bus Interchanges and MRT/LRT Stations” were also built in to enable fast and easy access to public transportation information within the map.

for motorists The ONE.MOTORING portal (www.onemotoring.com.sg) is an interactive, one-stop online site that offers real-time traffic information and brings together e-services pertaining to motoring and road transport in Singapore. For example, it provides information that is relevant across the life cycle of a vehicle and allows motorists to perform online transactions relating to vehicle ownership and usage.

First launched in 2000 by the Land Transport Authority, ONE.MOTORING is now an established brand among motorists and the motoring industry and receives more than 15 million page views a month.

NCS provides a suite of end-to-end services for the portal from conceptualisation and hosting to applications development, marketing, business collaboration and engagement with the online community. To ensure that users have fast and reliable access to the website 24x7, we develop the infrastructure and applications to handle increases in portal traffic without a corresponding increase in costs.

We also developed and managed the content of the portal to encourage repeat visits and increase the adoption rate for the e-services. Regular marketing campaigns and contests are implemented to drive usage and a member acquisition programme was introduced to engage with users proactively. These initiatives have paid off with strong growth in web traffic and unique visitors over the years.

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Tracking the life cycle of vehicles From purchasing a car to scrapping it, the Vehicle Registration & Licensing System (VRLS) has got the lifecycle of your vehicle covered.

Introduced by the Land Transport Authority (LTA) in 2006, VRLS connects motor agents, government agencies and industry players such as insurance and hire purchase/financial institutions to provide a one-stop information and services hub for the motoring ecosystem.

It enables motorists and businesses to perform vehicle-related business transactions from the convenience of their homes and offices, using a secure e-commerce platform that incorporates electronic authentication and automated financial and compliance regulatory checks.

With VRLS, a road tax renewal can be completed with a few clicks of the mouse instead of having to travel to LTA to queue up for counter service. Car owners will also have all their vehicle-related transactions displayed in a single view which they can access easily and conveniently over the Internet.

The self-help capabilities of VRLS have benefited LTA as well, allowing it to re-deploy its counter staff to higher-value customer service roles.

Built for scalability, VRLS allows new online technologies to be plugged easily into the system, facilitating enhancements and upgrades. Over the past few years, major enhancements to VRLS included the integration of the Vehicle Inspection and Type Approval System, the implementation of a traffic offences portal, the introduction of electronic day licences and proactive notification of payments due.

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COE bids made simple Bid for a COE via Internet or Phone Banking, through the ATM, and revise your bid from your home or while you are on the go.

The COE or Certificate of Entitlement represents a right to own and use a vehicle in Singapore for a period of 10 years. The number of available COEs is governed by a quota system that is aimed at managing the number of vehicles on Singapore roads.

The COE Open Bidding System provides members of the public and businesses with a convenient means to submit their bids for a COE, and revise their reserve price. It also ensures greater transparency in the bidding process by providing real-time information disseminated via the ONE.MOTORING Portal, where bidders could check the current COE price and use it as a reference to submit or revise their bids during each bidding exercise.

Tight integration of the system with selected banks makes it seamless for bid deposits to be collected during bidding and automatically refunded to unsuccessful bidders at the end of the bidding exercise.

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Saving energy with smart street lighting In line with the vision of a sustainable city, NCS has developed a lighting management system that improves energy efficiency and enables operators and building managers to optimise manpower deployment. The system, i-Light, provides real-time fault detection and sends timely alerts so that relevant parties are able to receive up-to-date notifications about faults and resolve them quickly.

With i-Light, equipment from hundreds of sites can be tracked and any device fault or incident is automatically logged. An SMS notification is sent to the customer and information on the faulty lights is displayed on a webbased interface. This allows swift and targeted action to be taken, preventing security or safety issues that may arise if faulty lights are not replaced or serviced in time. i-Light also provides visibility into the energy utilised by street lights and other devices. Lights can be scheduled to turn on, off or dim automatically to reduce energy consumption during quiet hours, allowing action to be taken to reduce energy consumption.

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Meeting the growing demand for airspace One of the challenges faced by air traffic control operations round the world is to meet the growing demand for airspace. NCS helps one of the busiest airports in the world to achieve this through a world-class Air Traffic Control (ATC) System.

With our proven methodology, project management and maintenance capabilities, we have integrated leading-edge technologies such as Multilateration and Aeronautical Message Handling System (AMHS) with Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore’s ATC System to support its air traffic control operations. We also provide 24x7 maintenance services and ensure that the system complies with ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation) standards.

Our AMHS capabilities are part of a wider portfolio of communications expertise within NCS. We have the relevant technical capabilities and extensive experience to deliver comprehensive communications systems - whether an airport needs to plug in to the Aeronautical Fixed Telecommunications Network for the exchange of aeronautical and meteorological messages; requires High Frequency (HF), Very High Frequency (VHF) or Ultra High Frequency (UHF) radio systems for integrated ground-toair communications between pilots and controllers and ground-to-ground communications among controllers and air traffic control centre; needs paging, UHF radio and trunked radio services; or is looking for twoway “press-to-talk” communications.

We also have a strong pool of expertise in satellite communications, which is an emerging technology for aeronautical communications. As part of our spectrum of satellite services, we provide consultancy, supply and installation of VSAT (very small aperture terminal) and “Fly-away” equipment, and even deliver turnkey implementations of earth stations.

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Delivering a positive customer experience with integrated Passenger Terminal Building Systems In today’s high-intensity airport environment, the challenge is to meet the growing demands of air travellers from all over the world and deliver a positive experience while addressing issues such as security, operational efficiency and cost.

To help airports achieve this, NCS brings together our expertise in integrating and maintaining complex airport systems and our experience in meeting stringent Service Level Agreement requirements to ensure that Passenger Terminal Building Systems operate effectively and efficiently as a whole.

Airport systems generate huge volumes of data on a daily basis. By integrating them to streamline the sharing of information, systems such as the Airport Operational Database System (AODB), Flight Information Display System (FIDS) and Public Address (PA) system work together to help passengers navigate airport services with ease. The integration also allows the airport management team to be more proactive in identifying and responding to potential bottlenecks or incidents which could mar the passenger experience. On an ongoing basis, our systems maintenance teams also ensure that the systems continue to deliver the security, reliability and efficiency that the airport requires, allowing airport operators to focus on other strategic aspects of their business.

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Building the information hub of the airport The Airport Operational Database (AODB) plays an important role in boosting the operational efficiency of the airport. It is the information hub of the modern airport and the central repository of all the data generated in its daily operations. AODB is integrated with multiple airport infrastructure and operations systems, allowing data to be centrally stored and shared with relevant stakeholders so that airport operations can be optimised to enhance the customer experience. By centralising data warehousing, AODB also allows data to be consolidated and analysed so that airport operators can identify areas for improvement.

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Finding the way with FIDS In today’s busy airport environment, flight and operational information must be processed and presented quickly and cost-effectively to an ever-growing number of viewers. These include the travelling public, airport tenants and airport operational staff. At the same time, directional signage at terminals, check-in desks, gates and carousels need to be dynamic to cater to changing operational environments as more airports adopt a common use and shared tenant services arrangement.

The Flight Information Display System (FIDS) is thus a vital component of the airport’s overall “way finding” programme which enables airport management to distribute and display critical information to those who need it, when they need it, with little or no manual intervention.

FIDS uses LCDs, plasma displays, colour TVs and split-flap boards to display continuously-updated flight and related information. It supports widely-used international languages and offers the flexibility of displaying information on a variety of devices according to customers’ preferences through simple configuration. The system also provides visual paging for the hearing impaired and can be used to display other information such as weather updates, advertisements and marketing promotions.

The FIDS system is a key component of the airport’s integrated operational systems and is connected to the Airport Operational Database and Resource Management System, enabling the airport to optimise passenger flow and improve operational efficiency.

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A STATE-OF-THE-ART PUBLIC ADDRESS SYSTEM Changi Airport’s Public Address (PA) system is a state-of-the-art acoustic and audio system used for announcing flight arrivals and departures, paging for passengers in terminal buildings, emergency calls and broadcasts, and playing of background music in public areas.

From routine announcements to emergency notifications, the PA system provides high level of reliability and is essential for dealing with security and safety challenges.

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Trolley management goes high-tech With Internet Protocol cameras, built-in counting logic and customised trolley docking stations, trolley management has gone high-tech at Changi Airport. The docking stations are connected wirelessly to backend servers to capture trolley counts. This live system monitoring tool which interfaces with the airport’s flight schedule system improves oversight and monitoring of trolley operations.

A minimum threshold is set based on flight arrival timings and alerts are sent to relevant parties to activate replenishment of trolleys if the threshold is not met.

70 trolley docking stations have been deployed in transit piers to improve trolley operations and better match supply to demand.

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Navigating Changi Airport with iKiosks One of the many solutions that NCS has developed for Changi Airport Group (CAG) is the self-service information kiosk (iKiosk).

It helps users to search for flight information and locate related point of interests such as check-in rows, boarding gates, retail stores, amenities and other airport facilities.

More than 100 flight search iKiosks have been deployed across the three terminals as of today, providing real-time flight and airport-related information round the clock. The user interface design of the iKiosk is intuitive, simple to use and easy to navigate. For example, when users search for flight information, the system will also provide the related walking path to boarding gates. Retail outlets along the recommended routes will also be featured to enhance user experience.

Another 40 Shop@Changi iKiosks are also deployed to enable users to search for other useful content such as shopping, dining, events and tenants’ promotions as value-added services.

The entire solution comprises of a few other sub-systems such as the content management system, kiosk management system and the interfaces connecting to other peripheral equipment. For example, special interfaces have been developed to read 2D bar code, enabling users to search for flights easily by simply scanning their boarding passes on the readers.

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HEALTHCARE Empowering patients and transforming care delivery

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HEALTHCARE Faced with challenges such as an overburdened healthcare system, a rapidly-aging population and rising healthcare costs, the focus of healthcare is now on keeping people healthy and managing their chronic conditions within the community, while improving the quality and efficiency of health services delivered by care providers to their patients.

NCS’ vision is to enable this transformation by using ICT to deliver smart healthcare.

Enabling Early Detection, Empowering Patient In line with this, one of our key strategies is to use technology to enable early detection of diseases, enhance patient engagement and empower them to take care of their own health. For example, the Enhanced Integrated Screening System helps a government health agency monitor the health of the population and facilitate programmes for disease prevention, while Personal Health Management solutions provide patients with access to contextualised health information and empower them to self-manage their health as well as to connect with their clinicians.

Technology is also being used to improve medication management and raise the bar in patient safety. The Electronic Inpatient Medication Record System developed by NCS for National University Hospital, Tan Tock Seng Hospital and Institute of Mental Health is a key component of the Closed Loop Medication Management System in these hospitals for the achievement of the 4 “rights” desired in Medication Administration at the hospital wards, i.e. Right Medication, Right Dose, Right Patient, Right Serving Time.

We have also developed an ePrescription system to provide clinicians and nurses with a unified and simplified way of ordering medication, and an Outpatient Pharmacy Automated System which integrates robotics and multi-disciplinary technologies into the medication workflow.

Improving Healthcare Operations

Delivering Insights

Another area of focus is the use of technology to improve healthcare operations. For example, we delivered an Outpatient Administrative System that enables the SingHealth group to synergise outpatient operations across all its healthcare institutions. We also implemented a 1 Queue 1 Bill system at National Heart Centre Singapore and other healthcare institutions to help cut down on queues and simplify the payment process.

We are leveraging analytics to empower healthcare organisations in unlocking invaluable insights from the massive data in their systems.

To ensure that healthcare remains affordable to all citizens, we implemented and linked up various healthcare finance systems to provide easy access to information and facilitate policy planning. In forensics management, a system called FIONA helps streamline and automate administrative processes and workflows associated with forensic medical services.

DRIVING CARE EXCELLENCE We work with healthcare providers to develop integrated solutions for delivering better quality of care.

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For example, the National Dental Centre’s Electronic Dental Record System provides a unified view of a patient’s medical record, enabling better diagnosis and treatment, while at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, the Computerised Integrated View of the Customer delivers a “360-degree view” of each patient for a more personalised healthcare experience.

To support decision-making on healthcare-related policies, we worked with the Ministry of Health to build a Data Hub that unifies healthcarerelated information from different sources and transforms it into useful and meaningful analysis and reports. This has enabled MOH to draw deeper insights into patient healthcare needs and system relationships in Singapore’s healthcare. For hospitals, we implemented enterprise business intelligence systems integrating finance, business workload and clinical information for reporting and analysis.

Through these and many other IT initiatives, NCS aims to make a significant contribution in improving the quality of care and making healthcare services more accessible and affordable to all Singaporeans.

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A holistic view of healthcare To provide a holistic perspective of Singapore’s healthcare system and enable more proactive decision-making on healthcare policies, NCS worked with the Ministry of Health (MOH) to build a Data Hub that unifies healthcare-related information from a wide range of sources and transforms it into useful and meaningful analysis and reports.

For example, in recent years, growing demand for healthcare services has resulted in a strain on public healthcare resources with longer wait time at Accident and Emergency (A&E) departments and high bed occupancy rates at hospitals. To better manage the situation on the ground, MOH needed greater visibility and more timely insights into key healthcare workloads and resource utilisation at the national level. With the Data Hub, these requirements were met by extracting the relevant information and building interactive dashboards and reports for peace-time planning and crisis management.

Intelligent building blocks in the Data Hub enable MOH officers to create ad-hoc queries using an interactive drag-and-drop interface, allowing for faster analysis and decision-making. This has also led to significant productivity gains and cost savings, eliminating the need for manual data consolidation and allowing reports to be generated without the need for programming expertise.

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Improving the quality of care with Electronic Medical Records A patient-centric Electronic Medical Record (EMR) brings together fragmented patient information from multiple sources for doctors and medical practitioners to support patient care including diagnosis and treatment. Â An example is the Electronic Dental Record (EDR) system which NCS developed for the National Dental Centre of Singapore (NDCS), enabling it to digitise dental records and unify patient history, X-rays, laboratory test results, and drug allergy alerts into a single digital workspace.

NDCS is part of the SingHealth public healthcare cluster network and is the main referral centre for patients needing specialist oral healthcare in Singapore. It sees over 150,000 patients a year.

The centre’s EDR system is the first enterprise-class solution in Singapore to seamlessly integrate all major aspects of patient management in a large-scale dental institution with multiple specialties. It caters to all record-keeping needs in the dentistry specialist environment, allowing clinicians to electronically chart all general and specialty dental records and document their diagnoses, findings and treatments.

Patient records can be accessed electronically, saving time in retrieving paper records and delivering them to the dentist. The system also interfaces with the larger SingHealth EMR system and enables critical medical information such as the patient’s medical history, lab test results and drug allergy alerts to be shared with the dentists to improve the quality of care.

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Cutting queues at the National Heart Centre From four different queue numbers and three separate payments to 1 Queue 1 Bill (1Q1B) – this was one of the major steps taken towards more patient-centric care delivery at the new National Heart Centre which was opened in 2013.

The National Heart Centre Singapore is a 185-bed national and regional referral centre for cardiovascular diseases. It provides comprehensive preventive, diagnostic, therapeutic and rehabilitative cardiac services for heart patients.

Each year, the Centre handles over 100,000 outpatient consultations in addition to interventional and surgical procedures and inpatient admissions. A typical outpatient visit includes seeing the cardiologist, taking a blood test and a cardiac diagnostic test, and collecting medication.

With the previous standalone queue and payment systems, patients had to obtain separate queue numbers and pay separately whenever they visited the clinic and ancillary service areas.

With the new system, patients only have to register once at the clinic upon their arrival. The system allows the same queue number to be transferred to the various service locations. This saves them time in queuing and re-queuing. There is also a single point of payment which combines the fees for clinic consultation, cardiac investigations and medication for the day into a single bill.

The successful implementation of 1Q1B at the National Heart Centre has led to its adoption by other healthcare institutions. For example, the system has also been implemented in some departments at the Singapore General Hospital and at the new Integrated Building in Simei which is jointly managed by Changi General Hospital and St Andrew’s Community Hospital to provide geriatric, psychology and rehabilitation services.

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16 healthcare institutions, one seamless experience – this was one of the key improvements in patient service made possible by the Outpatient Administration System (OAS) deployed across the SingHealth cluster.

Facilitating patient administration across the care continuum

OAS is developed to standardise, synergise and facilitate seamless patient information flow and outpatient operations across the SingHealth institutions with a view to provide more patient-centric services and to improve operational efficiency.

The system supports daily patient management at all SingHealth outpatient clinics and interfaces with ancillary systems such as the Electronic Medical Records (EMR) and financial systems. Patients benefit from functions such as e-registration, cross-institutional appointment scheduling and e-payment, while the cluster as a whole has better visibility into each patient’s healthcare need through a Cluster Patient Master Index (CPMI) which integrates all records of a patient into a single view for efficient management and patient follow-up.

Replacing disparate outpatient systems that were previously in use, OAS is the first secure enterprise-class system to integrate and standardise the outpatient system architecture and platform across all the SingHealth institutions. It is also the first cluster system to integrate the nine polyclinics’ systems into one to facilitate patient administration across the continuum of care, from specialist care in hospitals to primary care.

The implementation of OAS allows the institutions to adopt a common standardised platform for information capture and exchange for outpatient. This paves the way for improved data analysis and ensures greater accuracy and transparency across all the SingHealth institutions. At the same time, user-configuration capabilities ensure that the system is flexible enough to support institution-specific requirements or modules.

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Three zeros for the outpatient pharmacy Three zeros is not a bad outcome for Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) - not when it translates into “zero needless wait” for greater efficiency, “zero needless re-work” for greater productivity, and “zero preventable errors” for greater patient safety.

The hospital is targeting to achieve this with its Outpatient Pharmacy Automated System (OPAS) which integrates automated dispensing machines and scanning devices into the medication workflow to manage tasks such as the picking, packing, labelling, assembling, verifying and dispensing of medication.

Unique to the TTSH system is the use of the robotic armatures which are traditionally deployed in car manufacturing industries. Prescription orders which are verified and confirmed will trigger the armatures and automated dispensing machines to pick and pack the medication, which then travels on the conveyor system to the counter where it will be ready for collection the moment the patient reaches the pharmacy. With the system automating 80 per cent of the medication dispensing workflow, “zero needless wait” is becoming a reality for the majority of patients. The pharmacy is also able to redeploy staff to more high value tasks such as verifying the medication and addressing patients’ concerns on the spot, reducing rework rates.

At the same time, the use of highly-accurate picking and packing technologies, the incorporation of RFID for tracking purposes and the deployment of pharmacy staff at the beginning and the end of the process helps reduce preventable errors.

OPAS is integrated with iPharm, a patient-centric pharmacy system which provides pharmacists with core prescription processing capabilities. iPharm enables medical practitioners to have quick and easy access to comprehensive and accurate drug databases as well as patients’ medication records and medication histories to ensure that accurate prescriptions are given.

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Closing the loop in medication administration Delivering the right medication, in the right dose, to the right patient, at the right time – these are the essential 4 “rights� (4Rs) in administering medication. And NCS has been working with hospitals in Singapore to achieve this through a Closed Loop Medication Management System (CLMMS) which incorporates the Electronic Inpatient Medication Record System (eIMR) developed by NCS. CLMMS is a revolutionary process that leverages automation and intelligent systems to improve the entire medication administration process from the way doctors prescribe medication to how each dose of medicine is consumed by patients.

This enables hospitals to significantly improve patient safety and the efficiency of healthcare staff even as patient volumes grow. eIMR is a key component of CLMMS, enabling doctors to order medication electronically and pharmacists to review the prescriptions and provide interventions, if required, before the medication is served by nurses to patients in the wards. We have also built interfaces between eIMR and the automated dispensing machines and hand-held scanning devices in the hospital to enable a closed-loop approach to ordering, dispensing and administering medication in the course of patient care.

Implemented across National University Hospital, Tan Tock Seng Hospital and Institute of Mental Health, the system helps enhance patient safety through the 4Rs. It enables early detection of risky medication regimes which could cause overdosing, allergic reactions in patient or result in cross-drug interactions, and allows for timely intervention by pharmacists to prevent medication errors.

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FIONA achieves a breakthrough in forensics operations Tracking bodies is a grim undertaking, but it is something that FIONA has been able to carry out efficiently while achieving a paperless breakthrough in forensics operations.

FIONA or Forensic Integrated Operations Network Applications is an IT initiative by the Health Sciences Authority (HSA) to streamline the administrative processes and workflow associated with forensic medical services. HSA’s goal was to reduce the manpower required for data entry, improve data flow within the Forensic Medicine Division and better coordinate with external agencies such as the police for case registration. It was also looking for a way to improve the tracking and management of bodies and related document flows.

To address these requirements, NCS integrated a suite of technologies to create a wireless, paperless environment for the Forensic Medicine Division.

An Integrated Track and Trace framework was implemented using RFID technology to track the movement of bodies and specimens. Clinical mobile notebooks were also introduced for body charting and note-taking in the autopsy suite while the pathologist was performing the autopsy. This allows the data to be synchronised with HSA’s servers, removing the need for manual data entry. Documents such as post-mortem reports can also be generated directly through FIONA. FIONA proved to be a breakthrough for HSA. The adoption of RFID technology greatly increased efficiency in the management of body parts within the forensic setting. The cost and effort associated with manual data entry was significantly reduced with the use of technologies for data capture and updates. Furthermore, with more streamlined workflows, inter-agency interaction such as the exchange of data between the police and HSA can now take place electronically, allowing cases to be processed much more rapidly.

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Presenting each patient’s story in seconds “The hospital knows me”. This is the message that Khoo Teck Puat Hospital is sending with the help of CIVOC (Computerised Integrated View of the Customer), a system that integrates data from various operational and clinical systems to present a “360-degree view” of each patient within seconds.

With each patient’s story accessible on a single dashboard, the aim is to create a hassle-free, personalised experience across all stages of patient engagement. Before each visit, the hospital is able to recognise the patient’s needs and advise him accordingly. During the visit, the hospital recognises the patient and understands his medical and personal needs, without him having to repeat his story. This translates into a hassle-free patient flow with minimal wait time. Post-visit, the hospital keeps in touch with the patient for follow-ups and also to provide appropriate updates and suggested services based on the patients’ needs.

CIVOC provides the foundation for effective population health management. It interfaces with various operational and clinical systems such that patient records are aggregated to form a patient-centric repository.

With this, patients can be profiled using analytics. The hospital can then determine the needs for different patient groups and tailor specific services for each of them. For example, an outreach home visit programme could be developed for elderly patients recuperating at home. Data from such a programme could be fed back to the patient repository and further analysed for insights that will enable the hospital to address patient needs better.

Taking a more proactive approach to health management Early detection of diseases can help prevent severe and expensive complications down the road. Under the Health Promotion Board’s nationwide population-based screening programme, Singaporeans and permanent residents aged 40 years and above are encouraged to go for regular screening for conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, and colorectal cancer.

Women are also encouraged to go for cervical cancer and breast cancer screening.

The programme enables early detection of the various conditions through holistic and evidence-based screening.

Supporting these efforts is the Enhanced Integrated Screening System, a centralised repository which compiles the screening results of the eligible population so that health officials can reach out to those who have not yet been screened. The consolidated screening results also provide a framework for the government to develop better and more relevant disease prevention programmes which are then delivered to the community for more proactive management of population health.

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Hassle-free medication ordering With a user-centric design and the use of predefined templates to simplify complex medication ordering, the National Healthcare Group’s ePrescription system has helped contribute to the advancement of the quality of care across the cluster.

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Designed, built and delivered by NCS, the system provides clinicians and nurses with a unified and simplified way of ordering medication. It enhances patient safety by delivering a consolidated view of the patient’s past medication across all institutions and providing medicationrelated decision support, including integration to drug databases and other cluster-wide clinical systems for drug-to-drug interaction, adverse drug reaction and drug allergy checks. Productivity enhancement features include the predefined order templates and smart filtering of drug names and auto-complete features based on recommended dosage and frequency, which facilitate medication order entry and save time.

BRINGING TOGETHER HEALTHCARE FINANCE SYSTEMS FOR EFFECTIVE POLICY-MAKING Singapore’s Ministry of Health (MOH) is constantly striving to provide the public with access to good and affordable healthcare through effective policies and healthcare finance schemes. In line with this objective, NCS worked with MOH to develop a suite of IT applications which supports the various financing programmes designed to make healthcare affordable. For example, the MediClaims links hospitals and clinics with government agencies and private insurers in Singapore for the processing of claims under the Medisave and Medishield schemes.

Data captured by the healthcare finance systems for subvention, claims and various health assistance schemes is fed into MOH’s Data Hub for analysis. The insights that are generated provide policy makers and stakeholders with a better understanding of medical bill sizes and other finance indicators across the Singapore healthcare landscape. This in turn supports better policy decisions to ensure the affordability of healthcare.

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Empowering patients to take personal responsibility for health One of the key thrusts of Singapore’s healthcare strategy is to promote personal responsibility for managing one’s own health. To empower patients to do this, the Personal Health Management (PHM) system provides them with access to timely, actionable information on their personal health through an online portal or on their mobile devices.

At the heart of the PHM is the patient’s personal health record. Based on this data, the system is able to provide educational information contextualised to the patient’s demographic profile and medical conditions as well as information on the management of chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and lipid disorders. In addition, it enables patients to track their physical activities and nutrition for disease prevention and wellness promotion.

The PHM also allows healthcare provider to maintain regular contact with the patient after the latter is discharged, to help him manage his own health at home. It enables the care provider to develop care plans for the patient, and actively monitor his condition, treatment adherence and progress, and schedule follow-up appointments where necessary.

Going forward, technologies such as tele-health and tele-consultation will be incorporated into the PHM to automate the monitoring of vital signs and also enhance communications between patient and care provider through video conferencing.

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FINANCIAL SERVICES INDUSTRY Delivering a competitive advantage in the digital era

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FINANCIAL SERVICES INDUSTRY Financial services companies operate in a highly volatile environment where market conditions can change rapidly and the stakes are often high. Within this dynamic context, banks, insurance providers and securities companies need to find ways to adapt and thrive, delight their customers, increase their market share, grow revenues and increase profitability while managing security issues and reining in costs.

Over the years, NCS has been working closely with leading financial institutions to address these business challenges.

We helped financial institutions to make inroads into the Internet age with solutions such as Internet Banking, e-Statements and SMS Gateways. More recently,

we worked with several financial services organisations on major digital transformation initiatives. We delivered a ground-breaking online transaction store that provided a leading regional bank with a single global view of customer and transactional data. We built award-winning mobile applications that have helped financial services organisations boost their engagement with an increasingly digital-savvy audience.

We also worked with a leading local bank to enable its payment engines for FAST (Fast And Secure Transfers) transactions and offer Business Continuity Management solutions that combine our strengths in disaster recovery with business continuity consultancy and planning.

Solutions for the insurance sector Insurance is another fast-moving sector characterised by frequent product launches and constant changes in rates.

To help companies operate in this dynamic environment, we developed Sales Quotation and Wealth Management systems to help them keep pace with product changes and better understand the needs of their clients.

We have also helped companies make better use of technology to address governance and regulatory compliance issues.

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Pushing e-frontiers Internet banking may be par for the course today but back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when it was still relatively unexplored territory, NCS worked closely with our customers to push the e-frontiers in this space. We implemented an Internet banking system for a leading bank in Singapore, paving the way for its customers to transact anytime anywhere, so long as they were connected to the Internet. Our involvement encompassed requirements study, application design, development and the implementation of the system including the interfaces to the bank’s back-end systems.

We also worked with a leading United States bank to introduce an Internetbased distribution system for e-statements such as account statements, cash balance reports and updates on foreign exchange and money market transactions movement. Based on Java technology, the streamlined and secure end-to-end system was rolled out across some 22 countries in the Asia Pacific region, allowing the bank’s customers to check their statements anytime, anywhere in the world.

Another major development during that era was the start of the mobile revolution. With this, SMS or Short Message Service emerged as an important channel for commercial entities to deliver customised services literally into the hands of their clients. To harness the full potential of SMS, NCS introduced a managed SMS gateway service that enabled a leading global bank to connect with the three major telcos in Singapore as well as international mobile operators.

This enabled the bank to reach out seamlessly to their clients regardless of their telecom service provider, or whether they were in Singapore or overseas. Through the SMS gateway, the bank was able to deliver notifications, promotions and other services to their clients’ mobile devices and also to complement their online services with mobile-based authentication and access controls.

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Delivering one view for more effective decision-making A single global view of customer and transactional data across product lines, across subsidiaries, and across multiple countries - this is the trump card that a leading regional bank has as it looks to expand its transaction business, which is an increasingly important contributor to its revenues.

The ability to capture and present data from multiple sources in near real time enables the bank to make informed decisions quickly and be more proactive in responding to customer needs and competitive forces in the market.

Powering this capability is the NCS Online Transaction Store (OTS), which is part of our BankConnect suite of transaction banking applications. BankConnect OTS aggregates reports and statistics from multiple source systems to improve reporting and decisionmaking, facilitate regulatory reporting and provide customers with the convenience of accessing their account statements online, in real time, regardless of the country they are in or the subsidiary they are banking with.

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Transforming enterprise outreach with awardwinning apps

Mobility is one of the key forces behind the digital transformation that is sweeping the financial services landscape. To position banks to take advantage of these developments, NCS developed award-winning mobile apps that have helped them to extend their reach and boost their engagement with an increasingly digital-savvy audience.

For example, we worked with a leading local bank to develop an app that reaches out to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and helps them grow their network in Asia. The app provides SMEs with access to business expertise by allowing them to chat with business leaders, network with venture capitalists and benefit from the experience of their peers.

We also worked with a leading credit card issuer to launch a mobile app for its cardholders in the Asia Pacific, Central Europe, Middle East and Africa. The app helps enhance the company’s engagement with its cardholders and drive card usage by providing them with updates on the latest offerings and promotions across the region, tailored to their individual interests. It also offers useful travel tips and tools such as an ATM locator, quick access to emergency assistance, concierge numbers, Wi-Fi information, and also allows cardholders to share their travel experiences.

At the 2015 Mob-Ex Award which celebrates mobile excellence across Southeast Asia, the two apps received recognition for Best Use of Social Platform (Gold) and Most Informative Use of Mobile (Silver) respectively.

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FAST enabler To meet the growing demand for faster funds transfer, a service called FAST (Fast And Secure Transfers) was introduced in March 2014, allowing customers to transfer SGD funds almost immediately between accounts of participating banks in Singapore.

In the lead-up to the launch, NCS worked with a leading local bank to enable its payment engines for the new electronic funds transfer service. Available 24x7, FAST allows the bank’s customers to transfer money almost instantaneously to accounts held with other banks, instead of the three days that it usually took previously. The recipient will be able to find out the status of the transfer by accessing his bank account online or through a notification service offered by the participating bank.

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Delivering business continuity Business Continuity Management (BCM) is very important to businesses today, especially in a globalised economy where the fast pace of change and the intensity of competition leave very little margin for downtime. This is especially true for financial services institutions which have to comply with regulatory and audit requirements while adhering to high standards of service delivery.

To address BCM challenges, we identify potential sources of business disruption and ensure effective response to safeguard the interests of major stakeholders and protect the company’s reputation.

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Embracing change in the insurance sector The insurance industry is a fast-moving one with the frequent launch of new products, constant changes in rates, and the need to cater to multiple distribution channels and multiple partner interface requirements.

In 2002, a forward-looking insurer worked with NCS to develop a Sales Quotation System that would enable it to operate more effectively in this dynamic environment.

Built to cater to change, the system enabled the insurer to create, add or remove products easily. It was also able to analyse the impact of new product launches or changes in rates using an automated regression-testing engine, allowing the company to respond quickly and effectively to the shifting demands of the market.

The system also allowed the company’s financial advisers to select from the various products and provide in-depth analysis of each offering to their clients on the spot.

In another project, we developed a wealth management system for a global insurance organisation to help its advisers better understand their clients’ needs in order to deliver sound financial advice and recommend the right insurance policies.

With features such as client management, fact finding, financial analysis, health checking, benefit illustration, and policy creation, the advisers were able to gather relevant information from their clients, analyse the data, and serve them more effectively and efficiently.

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Delivering FAIR compliance One of the oldest and most established life insurance groups in Singapore is embracing technology in its continued drive to be the leading financial services provider in Asia. When the Monetary Authority of Singapore introduced the Financial Advisory Industry Review (FAIR) to raise standards of practice in the financial advisory (FA) industry, the group decided to deploy an automation solution to better align itself with the framework.

FAIR calls for the implementation of a Balanced Scorecard (BSC) Framework to assess the performance of financial advisers. To comply with this, NCS worked closely with the group to provide a system for managing the nonquantitative aspects of its representatives’ performance.

Previously, in order to do this, the insurer had to extract data from various IT systems such as the Financial Life Plan Review, Post Sales Survey and Client Service Recovery, and compile the information manually.

In automating these operations, the system has enabled more effective review and monitoring of each representative’s performance. This has enhanced efficiency and productivity in managing the quality of the group’s distribution network and ensured compliance with the FAIR BSC framework.

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“When you build to order, nothing happens. The Singapore government, from a very early generation, builds ahead of demand. Smart Nation means smart people.

How do you find smart people, find people who are hungry, willing to learn, and support them? Nobody knows what the future of technology is, so the key is people; it is talent. If you are smart, you know what to do. So we need to have a supply of smart people to create further demand and then we can compete.”

Philip Yeo Chairman, National Computer Board (1981-1987)

“Everything can be traced back to the power of imagination, the power of the vision. If the vision is compelling, if it is shared, there is buy-in and the people are united, then the force is tremendous. You will have to have this strong sense of purpose, that you are building something big and impactful for society. It is beyond the individual.”

Tan Chin Nam Chairman, National Computer Board (1987-1994)

“As a nation of IT users, we transformed ourselves from being a laggard in the global community to one of the pioneers and early adopters. We went through all that transformation within 10 years and by the 1990s, we were rated among top few in the world in the use of IT. In those days we were really cohesive. We had a sense of mission. Hopefully with Smart Nation, we can bring back that pioneering spirit.”

Lim Swee Say Chairman, National Computer Board (1994-1998)

“Technology will continue to surprise us. People will come up with more creative ways to use underlying technologies. New apps will certainly change the way we live. I think some big changes will come from materials, batteries/new energy sources, and more connectivity, which would enable us to harness ICT in new ways. The impediments to this will be social and political; no gooders will misuse technology resulting in tighter than needed controls; governments and societies will have to decide how far to allow data mining and personal data usage; what is private, what is public. If we try to be too safe, too secure, we will end up saying ‘no’ more often than we should. Punish no-gooders (proportionately), but don’t erect high walls and hide behind them. We will become laggards instead of leaders.”

David Lim Chairman, National Computer Board (1998-1999) 128

“For long time in IT, the ‘I’ was the small part and the ‘T’ was the big part - it was more about using technology to run business. Now the ‘I’ is more important than the ‘T’; it is the ‘Information’. The Smart Nation, compared to the Intelligent Island, is about a lot of physical devices such as sensors and robotics. Information will not just come from computer systems but will come from the physical environment. There will be a lot more information – business information, operational information, health information… There will be a focus on data analytics which hopefully will become insights. Information will become strategic to Singapore as a country and to organisations.”

Lee Kwok Cheong Chief Executive Officer, NCS (1996-2005)

“The next wave of Smart Nation is really about sensors and the ability for things to prompt the right action or to take action without human intervention as much as possible. To get there, we need everything to be smart, to have an IP address.

We need to know where things are; we need sensors to trigger events or tasks; we need to be very well connected.”

Chong Yoke Sin Chief Executive Officer, NCS (2005-2007)

“We have all the basic ingredients; our e-government infrastructure and services are probably second to none. There is no reason why we cannot move towards becoming a smart city. Human capital is what we have, and we must make use of infocomm to morph and shape us into a competitive nation for the future.”

Lim Eng Chief Executive Officer, NCS (2007-2010)

“When we explored what was happening around the world, what customers were looking for, we started asking ourselves what we could do to exploit our knowhow in industry verticals, in telecoms, in analytics and in sensors, to create new solutions. That put us smack in the middle of this concept of a smart city.”

Chia Wee Boon Chief Executive Officer, NCS (2010 - Present) 129

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VISION OF THE SMART & SAFE CITY