The Singapore government made a slew of tech-related announcements at Asia Tech x Singapore (ATxSG) 2024, Asia’s flagship tech platform. The 4th ATxSG saw the launch of the nation’s Digital Enterprise Blueprint (DEB) by Tan Kiat How, Senior Minister of State for Communications and Information. This initiative aims to accelerate digital transformation and empower Singaporean enterprises by leveraging emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI).
The DEB charts the next chapter in Singapore’s enterprise digitalisation. To establish the country as a nation of empowered enterprises and to elevate businesses and workers in the age of AI, the Blueprint will facilitate an environment for experimentation, encourage small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to harness technology to optimise the way they work, and strengthen digital resilience and cybersecurity across the ecosystem.
Fifty thousand SMEs are expected to benefit over the next five years from the new DEB through four key focus areas:
- Empower enterprises to be smarter by adopting AI-enabled solutions
- Enable enterprises to scale faster through cloud-based and integrated solutions
- Equip enterprises to be safer through improved cyber resilience
- Support enterprises to upskill workers to make full use of digital capabilities
Seven partners have already come onboard to pledge their commitment to the DEB, including Singapore Business Federation (SBF), Singapore Computer Society (SCS), SGTech, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, Microsoft and Salesforce.
As part of DEB efforts to empower SMEs to be smarter by adopting AI, the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) has worked with sector leads to co-develop Industry Digital Plans (IDPs), a roadmap for enterprises which highlights solutions that meet specific needs of the sector. IMDA will refresh the IDPs to incorporate AI-enabled solutions.
IMDA expects 15,000 SMEs to benefit from AI-enabled solutions under the SMEs Go Digital programme over the next two years. As part of IMDA’s GenAI x Digital Leaders initiative, IMDA has further partnered technology giants to benefit more than 400 digitally-mature enterprises.
SGTech apprenticeship initiative
In collaboration with IMDA and the TechSkills Accelerator (TeSA) for ITE and Polytechnics (TIP) Alliance, SGTech launched the Tech Apprenticeship Programme (TAP), which provides access to industry apprenticeships that offer on-the-job training and development opportunities. Over the next two and a half years, SGTech hopes to facilitate the placement of at least 300 apprentices who are fresh or mid-career professionals from polytechnic or ITE backgrounds and drive the adoption of similar practices that promote more inclusive hiring and career agility.
Gen AI in the legal sector
IMDA and the Singapore Academy of Law (SAL) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) aimed at uplifting the productivity of the legal sector through the use of gen AI. As part of this partnership, GPT-Legal, a new large language model (LLM) which is contextualised for Singapore’s legal sector, will be co-developed. The model will be integrated into SAL’s research platform LawNet, which is accessible by 75% of Singapore’s lawyers, for ease of access.
The model will automatically generate more than 15,000 summaries of unreported judgments on LawNet from September 2024. The partnership is expected to catalyse the next wave of gen AI innovations in Singapore’s legal sector while ensuring guardrails are in place so that AI can be used as a trusted tool. SAL will also be penning an MoU with the National University of Singapore and AI Singapore to develop its AI capabilities and create a certification to recognise AI specialists in the legal profession.
Startup support
Additionally, Tribe and Digital Industry Singapore (DISG) announced a collaboration with NVIDIA to launch the Ignition AI Accelerator for local and global AI startups. DISG is a joint office by Economic Development Board, Enterprise Singapore (EnterpriseSG) and IMDA to spearhead the growth and development of Singapore’s tech sector.
The accelerator is strategic and a first in Southeast Asia for Tribe and NVIDIA, supported by the Singapore government. This curated four-month programme will nurture 15 high-potential startups, equipping them with support for their business and technical needs. There will be a special focus on providing best-in-class deep AI development guidance to accelerate the production of market-ready AI products and access to market.
As part of this programme, NVIDIA and Tribe will collaborate with EnterpriseSG to offer qualified AI startups funding support through the Startup SG Tech scheme. This collaboration will also tap on Tribe and NVIDIA’s expertise to expediently assess selected high-quality AI startups who will be able to leverage Startup SG Tech funding for technology development and business growth**.
Additionally, NVIDIA and Tribe will assist them through the IMDA accreditation process, with the aim to help them to establish credentials and position themselves as qualified contenders for government projects and large enterprise contracts, ultimately accelerating their global market access.
Shaping AI strategies internationally
Singapore also aims to promote a more inclusive approach towards shaping global AI and digital governance in the international arena. The country hosted the final meeting of the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General’s Artificial Intelligence Advisory Body (AIAB) from 28-29 May. This was the only full in-person AIAB meeting held outside of UN headquarters.
As part of the meeting agenda, Singapore facilitated an engagement session between the AIAB and the Digital Forum of Small States (Digital FOSS), whose members were in Singapore for a week-long Digital FOSS Fellowship Programme.
A Digital FOSS AI Roundtable bringing together high-level representatives of the Digital FOSS Fellowship Programme discussed the Digital FOSS AI Governance Playbook for small states, which Singapore and Rwanda are leading the development of. Digital FOSS members also shared their experiences, challenges, and best practices in AI governance during the roundtable.
The dialogue also touched on AIAB’s recommendations that will feed into the discussions on the Global Digital Compact, which is targeted to be finalised in 2H24 at the United Nations’ Summit of the Future.
International partnerships
Singapore has also been actively contributing and driving conversations in the international space on AI safety through the Model AI Governance Framework (Generative AI). The Model AI Governance Framework (Gen AI) is the first comprehensive framework pulling together different strands of global conversation surrounding AI governance.
The finalised framework will be mapped to international AI principles such as the G7 Hiroshima Principles for
interoperability after receiving over 70 responses globally largely
endorsing the framework’s multi-stakeholder and robust approach to AI
governance.
Boost for National Quantum Strategy
At ATxSummit, the apex event of ATxSG 2024, Guest-of-Honour Heng Swee Keat, Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister and Chairman of the National Research Foundation (NRF), outlined an investment of close to S$300 M into Singapore’s National Quantum Strategy (NQS) to advance Singapore’s quantum industry. This investment will strengthen the nation’s position as a leading hub in the development and deployment of quantum technologies over the next five years.
The NQS is funded by the NRF, and driven by the National Quantum Office (NQO), hosted by the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR). The NQS will focus on four funding initiatives anchored by four strategic thrusts – scientific excellence, engineering capabilities, talent, innovation and enterprise partnerships.
Scientific excellence
The NQS will invest to elevate the Centre for Quantum Technologies (CQT) into a national R&D centre with nodes in partner institutions, including A*STAR and local universities, bringing together research talent across the country to drive national quantum research priorities.
Engineering capabilities
To strengthen Singapore’s capabilities in quantum technologies and accelerate translation of quantum solutions, the Quantum Engineering Programme 3.0 (QEP 3.0) will be enhanced with the addition of a new National Quantum Sensor Programme (NQSP). The NQSP will bring research performers and industry partners together to collaborate on industry-centric research projects in the focal areas of position, navigation and timing; biomedical sensing and imaging; and remote sensing.
A new National Quantum Processor Initiative (NQPI) will also be established to build local capabilities in the design and build up of Singapore’s own quantum processor(s).
Talent
A National Quantum Scholarships Scheme (NQSS) will be funded under the National Quantum Strategy to develop a pipeline of up to 100 PhD- and 100 Master-level quantum talent over the next five years to meet Singapore’s research and industry needs and build a quantum-ready workforce.
Innovation and enterprise partnerships
Investments will be made to develop a vibrant quantum ecosystem through strong industry partnerships and the nurturing of local enterprises which can work with NQO. The National Quantum Computing Hub (NQCH), a programme under NQO, will strengthen its innovation and enterprise and ecosystem- building efforts, by driving synergistic tripartite partnerships with industry, end-users and the research ecosystem in quantum computing, to support the translation of quantum R&D into real world solutions.
Following the successful testbed trials of the National Quantum Safe Network (NQSN), IMDA also launched the National Quantum-Safe Network Plus (NQSN+) where operators will provide commercial quantum-safe solutions for businesses by end of this year.
The Green Data Centre Roadmap
DPM Heng also launched the Green Data Centre (DC) Roadmap
to guide digital sustainability and chart green growth pathways for
DCs, supporting AI and compute developments.
At the Digital Sustainability Forum, a part of ATxSummit, Dr Janil Puthucheary, Senior Minister of State for Communications and Information shared how Singapore, as a regional data centre (DC) hub, is taking the lead in ensuring the long-term sustainable growth of DCs with the Green DC Roadmap.
As a compact city-state, Singapore is uniquely positioned to innovate and pioneer solutions that may address this global challenge of sustainable DC growth. The Roadmap aims to provide at least 300 megawatts (MW) of additional capacity in the near term, with much more through green energy deployments. Through the additional capacity, we aim to seed innovative ways to accelerate energy efficiency, as well as hybrid ways to unlock further capacity through green energy.
The Roadmap pioneers an end-to-end ecosystem approach, recognising the important role of DC operators as catalysts in forging key partnerships across the ecosystem to bring together solutioning partners to realise the broader goal of sustainable development. It also outlines IMDA’s plans to partner the industry to push boundaries and accelerate DC sustainability on two fronts:
Energy efficiency
Accelerate DC’s energy efficiency at hardware and software levels and allow industry and end-users to put in place best-in-class technologies to maximise efficiency, capacity and economic potential.
Green energy
Accelerate DCs’ use of green energy to expand capacity, and explore how we can deploy this at scale over time to maximise space for continued DCs’ growth.
Cloud-based analytics for healthcare
Synapxe, the national healthtech agency, launched HEALIX, the platform for Health Empowerment thru Advanced Learning & Intelligent eXchange. Announced by SMS Dr Puthucheary at Asia Tech x Singapore, HEALIX is the first comprehensive cloud-based analytics platform for the entire public healthcare sector.
HEALIX deploys leading edge cloud-native tools, supporting the rapid development of AI models
to improve patient care. It brings together the public healthcare sector’s data needs on a single
platform, and opens up collaborative possibilities and efficiencies to reap the benefits of data
driven insights and AI.
From June 2024, all public healthcare entities will start to be onboarded to HEALIX. Public
healthcare entities and government agencies will be able to increasingly leverage this platform,
designed as a standardised, secure and scalable environment to conduct analytics projects.
Through a common platform, users can enjoy faster access to a more comprehensive set of de-
identified data for analytics projects, and achieve significant savings in costs and manpower compared to maintaining individual data analytics systems. This will enable more rapid development of analytics models, for use in areas such as population health-related research to achieve the vision of a Healthier SG.
Ngiam Siew Ying, CEO of Synapxe, said: “HEALIX represents a groundbreaking step for Singapore’s public healthcare ecosystem, through the development of a comprehensive cloud-based analytics platform. Over time, it will provide more cutting-edge cloud-native tools, to meet the AI and machine learning needs for research and development in public healthcare use cases.
"This forward-thinking initiative demonstrates Synapxe’s commitment to enable public healthcare
users to leverage data and insights across the entire sector in a safe, transformative, collaborative
and cost-effective manner, ultimately delivering positive impact for health in Singapore.”
HEALIX will be housed on both the Government Commercial Cloud (GCC) and the Healthcare
Commercial Cloud to ensure a seamless integration of actionable insights. To support the
capabilities of HEALIX, Synapxe is first collaborating with AWS to develop the consolidated data
infrastructure that will streamline the operations of this common platform.
A memorandum of understanding (MoU) between Synapxe and AWS to collaborate on HEALIX
was announced at AWS Singapore Summit on 7 May 2024 as part of the AWS AI Spring programme.
Under the MoU, Synapxe will gain early access to AWS’ new tools and services such as
generative AI, insights into data analytics and machine learning best practices, technical workshops, and advice on optimising costs, to ensure seamless interoperability and interconnectivity of the HEALIX infrastructure.
Elsie Tan, Worldwide Public Sector, Country Manager, Singapore, AWS said, “AWS is proud to
be one of the key partners to collaborate with Synapxe on HEALIX, which will empower all public
healthcare providers in Singapore to unlock, connect, and transform data into actionable insights
to deliver better patient outcomes. We look forward to deepening our collaboration with Synapxe
to boost healthcare innovation leveraging the power of cloud and data analytics, and accelerate
public sector adoption of AI together as partners under the AWS AI Spring programme.”
For HEALIX to achieve its long-term objective as the future-ready, open and scalable analytics
platform, Synapxe will continue to work with more industry partners like service providers in data
intelligence, data visualisation and system integrators to onboard more and new capabilities into
the platform. Such partnerships will help to strengthen HEALIX’s continued ability to operate in
an environment with diverse data sources and sophisticated analytics and AI solutions, enabling
more capabilities and greater innovation to meet the growing needs of the public healthcare sector.
Other key highlights at ATxSG include a report from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, a knowledge partner of ATxSG. Greening AI: A Policy Agenda for the Artificial Intelligence and Energy Revolutions examines digital sustainability across the AI value chain, highlighting Singapore’s pioneering efforts to advance this agenda – from optimising energy efficient in data centres to greening AI software.
The report emphasises the important role of government in promoting green AI, and that with the right policies and coordination, these revolutions can reinforce each other, unlocking significant economic and environmental benefits.
*ITE stands for institute of technical education.
**Eligible startups in the programme may apply for EnterpriseSG’s Startup SG Tech grant, which supports the development and commercialisation of proprietary technology through innovative proof-of-concept (POC) and proof-of-value (POV) projects. Successful applicants will receive up to S$250,000 and S$500,000 respectively in additional support to sustain the growth of their startups.
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