张思乐部长在数字政府交流(DGX)欢迎晚宴上的开幕致词

Excellencies

Distinguished guests

Introduction

I first want to extend a very warm welcome to our colleagues from around the world for taking part in this edition of DGX. We know that for many of you it has involved many hours of travel, and please know that we appreciate you making the time for this.

DGX has been such a valuable platform for us to meet with colleagues who are involved in delivering on digital public services, and it has enabled us to learn from everyone, and also to share some of our own.

Singapore’s Smart Nation Journey

In October 2024, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong launched Smart Nation 2.0 and it was intended to deliver on three goals.

One, we'd like to see how technology can help us as a community . I will say more about that later. Two, it is important that we foster trust . If we do not have the ability to trust the technology, we don't think that its implementation can be sustainable over time. Three, we'd like to see how technology can help our nation to continue to grow , and of course, that will have to include how we grow economically.

Let me start by talking about community. As it turns out, it was not so long ago as well that we just marked Singapore’s 60th birthday. We are a very young nation, we only became independent in 1965, so we are 60 this year. To celebrate this, we distributed a big tranche of SG 60 vouchers. Every adult citizen above the age of 21 received up to $600 and those above 65 received $800.

Now you may wonder what has this got to do with Smart Nation?

In the past, we used to exercise distribution of such voucher exercises in printed form, mailed to our citizen’s mailboxes.

These came with its own challenges, such as poor redemption process for our citizens and merchants, high cost of printing, high environmental impact and sometimes even theft from mailboxes!

We decided that going digital for such exercises would allow us to solve many of these challenges, and bring down the cost of issuing these vouchers, allowing us more policy options such as the frequency and amount we issue each time.

The vouchers have even benefitted our small businesses located in our heartlands, who had been impacted by the surge in online shopping and digitalisation and found it difficult to operate.

By deciding where these vouchers can be used through digital means, we have found a way to deliver help to our neighbourhood businesses and make them appealing to their customers once again.

Over the weekend, I came across a heartwarming article by a gentleman who wrote to our media on how these vouchers have not only helped our citizens relieve the cost of living, but have been a tool in bridging generations. For example, since these vouchers are offered digitally, many younger Singaporeans often help their older relatives claim these vouchers; making these vouchers a reason for intergenerational bonding, something which is unexpected.

Now along with the SG 60 vouchers, we have introduced a Culture Pass, a new initiative designed to celebrate Singapore’s arts and heritage, making it easier for Singaporeans to discover, engage with, and enjoy a wide range of cultural experiences.

Singapore Citizens aged 18 and above will receive SG Culture Pass credits worth $100. These credits can be used to offset ticket purchases for eligible local arts and heritage activities and programmes offered by authorised ticketing partners.

Through this, we hope to help people who are working very hard to help preserve our culture.

We are constantly challenging ourselves to think about using technology in creative ways to help our citizens not be afraid of technology but to see its value.

Another example I wanted to share with you was that last year, one of the founding members of the Cabinet of Independent Singapore had a biography that was produced. This was our first Foreign Minister, Mr S. Rajaratnam.

When we were producing this book, I challenged the team to make use of GenAI to enable readers to “speak” with Mr Raja. The National Library Board took up the challenge, leveraging on GenAI to respond to readers with the words that Mr Raja wrote.

Another thing that brings me great joy is the fact that community hackathons have really given our grassroots movement new life. Previously it was older folks who tend to be more active in the grassroots, but now we have gotten younger folks contributing to the grassroots through applying their skills in community hackathons.

These are just some of the ways in which we try to strengthen community through technology.

I wanted to also share with you how we’re trying to foster trust though the use of technology.

Our national digital identity solution, Singpass, can be used to authenticate and authorise many services, from public to private. For example, when we issued the SG 60 vouchers or the SG Culture Pass credits to our citizens we used Singpass to authenticate their identity.

Another interesting use case I recently came across where Singpass is being used to authenticate a users’ identity and create trust in an app’s ecosystem was on a dating platform called Coffee Meets Bagel.

As we work towards further digitalising our services, we have to continue to evaluate security concerns and build safeguards around these. Threats from bad actors continue to evolve with sophisticated techniques being used to steal data or even cause harm, and this creates additional onus on us to think like a criminal so as to improve our design and secure our systems.

Another challenge we continue to face in Singapore in trying to uphold trust in the digital domain is the continued rise in scams our citizens face.

A study published in 2023 ranked Singapore highest for average amount of scams losses. Unfortunately, this is not something we want to top the list for, and our colleagues from GovTech and the Singapore Police Force have been working tirelessly in our fight against scams.

I’d be happy to say that in 2024, we dropped in these rankings, but we are not done yet. We want to disappear from such rankings and create a safe digital society that our citizens thrive in without worry.

Another challenge we face in trying to build trusted digital society is misinformation. It is one of the things that threaten our Smart Nation. Unless we have effective regulations and capabilities to deal with misinformation, citizens will find it increasingly challenging to trust technology.

Apart from having a law against fake news, we also introduced a new law last year to deal specifically with synthetic material, i.e. AI generated content used in the context of elections. If you are interested in that law, we are happy to share with you how it works.

Not too distant from now we will be tabling another new law. This new law is intended to give victims of online harms more ability to seek recourse. We want citizens to be able to take down harmful content. This is not to curb free speech, but to better protect privacy and safety of our citizens.

We will be setting up an Online Safety Commission help us operationalise this law, and we are happy to learn from your experiences as well as share our approach.

Now let me share a little about how we hope to use technology to help our economy.

Singapore has been able to sustain wage growth over many decades. But because we are already at a very high base, this is getting increasingly challenging, and we do believe that the only sustainable way of continuing this momentum is if we can continue to increase productivity.

In 2023, we launched our refreshed National AI Strategy. At its heart are three key drivers – industry, research, and government. Together, they are how we hope to translate the promise of AI into tangible outcomes.

By working with industry, we want to spur innovation and anchor Centres of Excellence here. Through research, we aim to deepen capabilities and push the frontiers of knowledge. And within government, we will adopt AI to improve productivity and deliver better services to citizens and businesses alike.

We believe it is important for government to become adept and confident in using AI. On one hand, it holds great potential to improve how we deliver public services. On the other, it is also about walking the talk. We cannot ask industry to embrace AI if we are not prepared to do the same ourselves.

Across all three drivers of our refreshed National AI Strategy, our goal is clear – to harness AI not just for efficiency, but to strengthen Singapore’s economy and create meaningful opportunities for our people.

Another very important challenge is, knowing the right things to do and the challenges AI brings before we could even introduce regulations on AI.

Closing

These are just some of the things we have been doing in Singapore. We hope to leverage DGX to learn from your experiences and encourage cross-pollination of ideas.

Before our formal discussions tomorrow, I hope you enjoy this evening’s dinner and the beautiful surroundings of the National Gallery. These informal moments often lead to the most inspiring ideas—and the start of new partnerships.

I look forward to the fruitful conversations, collaborations, and innovations that will emerge from DGX 2025. Thank you once again, and I wish you all a meaningful and forward-looking DGX.