Singapore Unlimited Case

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Singapore Unlimited Case
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Singapore in 1995

• An island nation (city-state) off the tip of the
  Malaysian peninsula
• The entire population lives in urban areas
• The jungle that originally covered the island has
  been cleared.
• One of the worlds most densely populated areas
• 3 Million in 622 square kilometers (about the
  size of the city of Chicago which has a similar
  population)
• Has long been the crossroads of major trade routes

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Singapore in 1995

• Occupations
• 61 in industry/commerce
• 38 in service
• 1 in agriculture
• Technology
• Extensive use of networking and telecom
  technologies
• Poised to become the first fully networked society

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Singapore in 1995

• Economic Health
• 1990 1994, real GDP growth 8.4, more than
  twice the growth in the US
• Inflation 3.1 (US around 2)
• Positive trade balance of 2.82 B
• Income per capita of 21,000
• Industry Sectors
• 28 growth in electronics manufacturing
• 14 growth in financial services

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Singapore in 1995

• 1990
• Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew
• Transformation from Jungle Island to one of the
  worlds most prosperous economies (1965 1990)
• Established significant infrastructure

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Singapore in 1995

• 1990 1995
• Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong
• Vulnerable due to single dimensional economic
  strategy
• IT2000 committee
• National Information Infrastructure (NII) plan

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What is a National Information Infrastructure?

• Building the NII was compared to the building of
  Singapores road networks or public utilities
  infrastructure
• However
• Technology underlying a road system does not
  change at the speed it does for IT infrastructure
• Experimentation and prototyping would have to
  occur at home as there was no blueprint or best
  practices to follow
• Multi-agency effort

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What is a National Information Infrastructure?

• Three Core Components
• Conduit
• Physical pipelines (voice and data lines, etc.)
• Content
• Information flows
• Payment instructions, multimedia courseware,
  entertainment programs, government database
  records, stock price info, etc. etc..
• Compute
• Processing of content
• User authentication, billing, processing of
  permit docs, etc.., etc..

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What is a National Information Infrastructure?

• Strategy Framework
• Orchestration
• Telecom networks
• Common network services
• Technical standards
• National IT applications projects
• Policy legal framework

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Foundations for NII

• Lee Kuan Yews early vision
• Initiatives to identify economic growth
  opportunities
• Constraints
• No natural resources
• Labor shortages
• Small, dense population
• Brain industries and knowledge economy
• Importance of IT to Singapore's future recognized
  in 1980

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Foundations for NII

• National Computer Board (NCB)
• Charged with building Singapore into an IT
  society
• Need for training
• Massive educational effort

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Foundations for NII

• 1986
• A decade of national IT investment and education
• Many successful projects
• Government agencies automated and connected
• 171 ROI
• 4,000 IT professionals were available in the
  labor force
• Three Technical institutes graduating another 400
  IT professionals/year
• Most IT efforts were generic and spread across
  many sectors, especially governmental

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Foundations for NII

• TradeNet
• Recession of 1985 caused concerns, external trade
  seen as an important area to focus on.
• Funds and government efforts steered towards
  improving the trade process and developing the
  infrastructure and applications required
• Much of the basic infrastructure built for
  TradeNet became the key components for business
  computing

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Foundations for NII

• Teleview
• Connecting Singapores residents to the business
  infrastructure
• 1995 3 out of 10 homes had PCs (about the same
  as the US at the time)
• 90 of organizations with 10 employees were
  automated
• 32,000 connected to Teleview
• Pay bills, check stock prices, exchange e-mail,
  file taxes, submit passport apps, make hotel
  reservations, shop, etc..
• All well before the Internet and WWW was fully
  formed.

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Implementing the NII

• A redesign of the national IT infrastructure
• IT planning in Singapore
• natural extension of the governments strategic
  planning process
• No single organization could design and build NII
  independently
• Need to identify stakeholders

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Implementing the NII

• Number of committees
• Economic Planning Committee
• IT 2000 Committee
• NII Committee
• Overlap and makeup of committees
• Establishing solidarity around goals
• Prototyping Approach

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Core NII Applicaitons

• CORENET
• Link together public and private organizations in
  the construction and real estate sector
• Exchange of regulatory requirment paperwork
• Pricing info sharing

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Core NII Applications

• EDUNET
• Access student data vital to educational planning
• Integrated student Data Bank
• Student profile, track progress
• Linked to existing systems
• Connecting schools to to international resources,
  the Internet
• Library 2000
• Library of the future
• CashCard
• Common stored-value card

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Lessons Learned

• Are the lessons learned applicable to other
  nations or to private industry?
• Singapores culture supports a much more
  collaborative and participative, yet top-down,
  style of management
• Small size of the country fosters a greater level
  of trust
• Lee Kuan Yew was a committed and involved leader
  who successfully charted a course for change

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Tactics for Implementing Change
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Lessons Learned

• Yew paid close attention to developing the
  infrastructure for change
• Financial policies were designed to ensure that
  the resources required would be available
• Benefits were tied to long-term strategic objects
  while short-term returns were actively sought and
  monitored
• Investment in infrastructure including people

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Questions

• What is a National Information Infrastructure?
  How does an IT infrastructure compare with other
  country-level infrastructure? (e.g., roads,
  schools, ports)
• Evaluate the process used to implement
  Singapores NII. Would you consider the
  implementation to be a success? If so, what
  factors contributed to its success? If not, what
  factors contributed to its failure?