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October 28, 2021
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Credit: Photo by Stuart Breckenridge on Unsplash
The public sector needs to catch up. Citizens now expect a level of service that can match the digital native businesses they often interact with on daily basis. Consider e-hailing, e-commerce, and e-wallet players — they provide a comprehensive service completely through digital means. Coupled with the advancements in e-KYC for digital onboarding, it comes with no surprise; citizens expect the public sector to follow suit.
The governments of today recognise this trend. In order to meet their citizen’s expectations, many government agencies are adopting Cloud computing progressively to enable their digital transformation. Recently, more than 60% of the governments’ Cloud initiatives have been successful, proving the effectiveness of this strategy.1
Some of the key benefits driving Cloud adoption among governments are:
By outlining the clear benefits of the Cloud, we want you to understand how governments are using it. Here, we will provide insights into how Singapore government agencies implement their Cloud strategy and share examples of services hosted on the Cloud.
GovTech Singapore
In order to understand Singapore’s Cloud transformation, it is important to understand the role of GovTech first. Established in 2016, GovTech is the main entity spearheading the digital transformation of Singapore’s government services.
Parked under the Prime Minister’s Office, GovTech oversees the digitalisation of all the ministries and agencies of the government. It plays a central role in the 5-year plan (initiated in 2018) to migrate the government’s IT systems onto the commercial Cloud. GovTech has since migrated nearly 600 systems to the commercial Cloud.2
The role that GovTech plays here is vital; it helps the country’s agencies and ministries to move away from the traditional silos that government agencies typically operate under. Moreover, having a centralised agency to implement the digital transformation ensures that all ministries advance consistently.
Building the Singapore Government Tech Stack
A very distinctive feature of GovTech’s role is the development of the Singapore Government Tech Stack (SGTS).
Here, GovTech built a centralised technology stack hosted on a commercial Cloud. This technology stack acts as the backbone of all the government agencies’ digital services. It consists of three (3) main components –
All these components make it easier for Singapore government agencies to deploy and maintain applications.
For example, in the past, each government agency would typically build their applications on top of their dedicated infrastructure.
These layered steps severely limited the speed and scalability of building applications for the public sector. The agencies had to maintain each application individually with different sets of architectures. With time, this gets harder to sustain.
With SGTS in place, the base application becomes easily reproducible. Depending on the service that the agency wishes to provide, they can now customise the solutions on top of that base application.
As such, this substantially speeds up and eases the process for Singapore government agencies to provide digital services. More importantly, the agencies can focus primarily on delivering value without the need to manage its underlying infrastructure.
The benefits don’t end there. Here are some other key benefits of this approach:
1. Shifting from a monolithic model to a microservices model with SGTS
In simple terms, a monolithic model application works as a single unit. This means that the agency must make any updates and maintenance to the entire application’s codebase. The model essentially limits the scalability and agility for pushing out new services.
In contrast, a microservices model breaks down the application into smaller independent components. Hence, agencies can apply updates without the need to deploy a new version of the whole application.
The shift to a microservices model provides the much-needed agility for Singapore government agencies to develop digital services faster. Moreover, this approach is crucial; the public sector needs to adopt agile software development practices, similar to what the private sector is already using.
Running on legacy systems with outdated security practices may leave the government applications vulnerable to cyberattacks. SGTS ensures that all government applications come with modernised security practices and data protection policies.
This situation extends to services beyond security. For example, having a modern architecture with SGTS allows government agencies to adopt advanced analytics tools similar to those used in the private sector.
With the speed and agility provided by SGTS, the public sector can now keep up with technology developments. Moreover, this can also benefit the public sector by attracting and retaining top tech talents.
Traditional application infrastructures meant that Singapore government applications operate in silos. Hence, they were not able to integrate data across agencies.
SGTS’s architecture loosens these barriers. Using a set of secured Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), the agencies can now share confidential data securely. Furthermore, GovTech complements this initiative with the development of the Application Programming Interface Exchange (APEX).4
APEX enables the secure transmission of confidential citizen data. It is a centralised API exchange that allows government agencies to tap into the wealth of data acquired across the government. This ability significantly improves the speed at which data can be shared and creates a more streamlined business process.
Another game-changing benefit is the ability to enable collaborations. The technology industry is a rapid race. Open-source tools are dominating the scene with innovations every day. Without access to these tools, the public sector may inevitably fall behind.
Having a common platform with SGTS creates the opportunity for the government to co-create solutions with the ecosystem players. In 2020, GovTech chose 17 companies to co-develop solutions using the SGTS platform.5
This was simply impossible in the past. The private sector typically worked as outsourced contractors but not as collaborators. This approach changes that dynamic by allowing the government to foster closer relationships with the private sector to build valuable citizen services.
Example applications hosted on commercial Cloud
Let us see how these developments have advanced Singapore’s citizen services. We cover the top three (3) applications that work on SGTS. This will give you an understanding of how impactful cloud can be for improving government services.
a. Singpass
Singpass is Singapore’s national digital identity system. Through this system, citizens can gain access to over 340 government agencies with over 1400 digital services. This singular platform eliminates the traditional customer experience of having separate logins for different government services.
Singapore citizens widely recognise Singpass as one of the best government services. It is ranked as the fourth (4th) most popular app in Google Play Store there, with an average rating of 4.8 stars. To date, there are more than 2.5 million users, with over 90% of them having at least one interaction per month.4
b. LifeSG (formerly known as Moments of Life)
LifeSG consolidates the best of Singapore’s government services onto one common platform – like a super app. Previously named Moments in Life, the updated app personalises a citizen’s journey based on their life stage. The services include birth registration, school registration, job-seeking portals, parking services, taxations, etc.
LifeSG simplifies the citizens’ search for information on relevant services. In addition, the app also has a user-friendly interface, giving an easy overview of important information. The application is widely in use, with over 140,000 downloads and 7 out of 10 Singaporeans registering births via LifeSG.
c. Health Hub
Health Hub aims to make it easier for Singapore citizens to access their health information and services under one platform. Built in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and the Health Promotion Board, this service contains information like immunisation records, medical appointments, prescriptions, dental appointments, etc.
This was possible by integrating several systems, ranging from the National Electronic Record System, School Dental System, School Health System to the National Immunisation Registry. The integration of multiple systems is a clear feature of how Cloud services have enabled the government to build this service. To date, the application has over 730,000 downloads and scores an average rating of 4.8 out of 5 stars on the Google Play Store.6
Meeting the expectations of citizens
Ultimately, customer experience matters the most. For the public sector, results are not as quantifiable in comparison to the private sector. Hence, metrics such as delivery time, user satisfaction surveys, and application ratings are applicable in performance reviews.
Singapore conducts the Survey on Satisfaction with Government Digital Services (Citizens) annually. Its recent results showed that their citizens rated the government digital services at the highest since FY2012. 86% of respondents said that they were extremely satisfied with the digital services. In addition, over 90% of respondents rated the government digital services as one of the best digital services they have used.
Lessons from GovTech
The approach taken by the Singapore government acts as a prime example of how governments can move forward in this digital era.
Singapore placed a strong priority on truly understanding their citizens’ pain points, which takes precedence over tools. For instance, each application goes through several rounds of pilots and surveys. Based on the feedback, the government agencies then apply amendments.
This is where migrating to the Cloud becomes valuable. It is not merely a ‘lift and shift’ process, but it enables the government to change how they build solutions for their citizens. Initiatives such as SGTS, APEX, data sharing, and fostering collaborations with the private sector are vital components of this renewed approach of building citizen services.
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June 07, 2022
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Many governments, state councils and local authorities talk about the potential of smart cities and how they unlock new possibilities in a hyper-connected urban environment. Ideas such as the sky being filled with flying taxis, robots sweeping the streets and rooftop farming on every building may seem like the epitome of human civilisation. But, is this the future we seek? The various studies into smart city concepts all lead us to one key observation, intelligence technologies will play a far more significant role in our daily routine as compared to massively disruptive ideas.
A brief look at the global smart city landscape reveals good progress in making our cities intelligent. Examples of the international efforts to build the foundations of next-gen digital playgrounds include prominent cities:
Malaysia is rising up to its global peers on this front. The national policies under the Malaysia Smart City Framework (MSCF), which includes MyDigital, IR4RD, JENDELA and GTMP, is set to enable the translation of blueprints into meaningful action plans.
From a survey held during the previous City Leap Summit 2020, TM One collected insightful grassroots data from 33 local councils or Pihak Berkuasa Tempatan (PBTs) on smart city implementations. Results displayed that most respondents were not ready to turn plans into actions due to gaps in infrastructure, shortage of financial resources, and below-average talent capabilities.
In addition, PBTs in Malaysia focused their efforts on basic systemic issues surrounding security, safety and transportation that have already been experimented on in other countries. Out of all the solutions introduced to local leaders, smart security & surveillance, smart traffic lights and smart parking systems were the top 3 priorities to help citizens achieve a better quality of life.
While the results may reflect the state of mind two years ago, we need to think bigger. A powerful catalyst for PBTs is to reimagine how their cities can create better living experience for Malaysians. While the extensive list of smart indicators provided by ISO 37122 may appear intimidating, the journey toward building smart cities begins with a single step forward.
Many around the world have already mastered of the art of building smart cities. So, as we celebrate the remarkable technological developments in major cities worldwide, we should also learn from them. Here are a few examples of cities that have embodied the critical success factors that contribute to a winning smart city:
TM One is in a prime position to support the government’s vision for smart and sustainable cities around the nation. While fancy solutions may capture headlines, we understand the importance of a strong foundation.
We provide an unparalleled level of robust and secured digital connectivity, coupled with a solid digital infrastructure. This includes Hyperscaled intelligent cloud solution and data centre infrastructure and services that protect data sovereignty.
As TM One continues to build solutions for the needs of tomorrow, we offer a wide array of smart city solutions to address the immediate PBT needs of today. Smart city applications, dashboards, smart street and traffic lights, smart parking systems and deep surveillance are great examples of our market-ready solutions to bring our customers closer to smart and sustainable cities. In fact, 25 PBTs around Malaysia have already deployed our smart surveillance systems to keep our citizens and utility infrastructure safe.
The icing on the cake is our integrated operation centre (IOC) which is a robust platform designed to efficiently consolidate various data types from networks and Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices to intelligent applications. This integrated monitoring system will enable local governments to make quick decisions and changes in response to real-time conditions.
TM One is the one-stop hub to support Malaysia’s smart city needs
While our solutions are ready to help PBTs in their mission to roll out smart city projects, we encourage a more structured approach.
The first step is to design a smart city blueprint that narrows down the PBTs’ concerns. We no longer need country-level frameworks; we need immediate action plans. Start by finding local priorities and focus on the key problems that would best benefit the citizens when addressed.
Next, implement solutions that have quick wins and solve the core issue. Take the initiative to experiment with niche smart city solutions and validate their benefits.
Last but not least, be open to exploring different types of collaboration models. Often, private-public partnerships are good ways to leverage the unique strengths of two distinct organizations to create a powerful solution. TM One is committed to helping Malaysia move toward smart and sustainable cities for a better future.
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Md Farabi Yusoff, Head of Smart City from PLANMalaysia delivered his presentation at TM One’s City Leap Summit 2002. This article summarizes the key takeaways from his address.
“Smartness” is not a measure of how advanced or complex the technology being adopted is, but how well the solutions solve the society’s problems and address existential challenges”
– YB Datuk Seri Reezal Merican bin Naina Merican, Minister of Housing & Local Government
Smart City has been a hot topic of discussion for the past decade. With the advent of IR 4.0, the technology underpinning smart cities has matured significantly. Over the years, the Pihak Berkuasa Tempatan (PBT)’s understanding of the potential benefits to be reaped through the implementation of smart cities has also evolved. The next big challenge is in making the implementation of smart cities successful. There are two key imperatives in making this possible, viz., (a) developing a holistic smart city plan and (b) a blueprint for turning fundamental concepts into action.
Smart cities cannot be developed in silos – it requires a network of connected solutions that are effectively integrated, with data feeding into each element to ensure all facets of city-dwelling are elevated to the same level of capability and efficiency. An effective smart city is both holistic in nature and all-encompassing. The network of connected solutions also needs to be functional, providing tangible solutions to actual issues faced by citizens.
Even at a conceptual level, holisticness and people-centricity need to be embedded into smart city development to guide decision-making and ensure the solutions chosen are people-oriented and realistic. For this to happen, smart cities require careful planning and development, with each decision accounting for infrastructure, city operations and digital capabilities to create the solutions capable of elevating all elements of city-dwelling.
PBTs should prioritise taking this holistic approach into the conceptual framework of smart cities:
While a holistic, all-encompassing conceptual framework underpins smart cities’ strategic development, implementing the said framework presents an entirely different challenge. Concrete action plans based on a flexible, adaptable blueprint is the surest way forward in making smart city initiatives a success.
In creating an adaptable blueprint, PBTs need to ensure that all the 4 fundamentals of smart city planning are covered. While the overall action plan can be carried out incrementally through stages, each stage needs rigorous review. Subsequent actions need to be adapted to fit needs of citizens and PBTs accordingly as new findings arise across the journey. The blueprint can broadly be classified into three distinct phases.
As the Federal Department of town and country planning for Peninsular Malaysia, PLANMalaysia’s role in the smart city agenda is to guide and support local councils in realising their smart city aspirations. Our work encompasses the four areas which are detailed below.
Creating Smart City blueprints: Effective smart city planning and implementation cannot be one-off decisions. Each element needs to feed into one another to create a network of systems and solutions. With that, PBTs need a blueprint that strikes a balance in being both definitive and flexible, and to assist decision-making when it comes to choosing solutions and deciding ways forward – this is where PLANMalaysia comes in, to guide PBTs on blueprint formation and ensure decisions made are holistic and adaptable to future needs.
Running Malaysia Urban Observatory (MUO): Data collection and interpretation are integral to smart cities. MUO is a data-sharing platform that enables public data sharing and supports decision-making. PLANMalaysia’s custody of MUO ensures that all local councils can benefit from the federal department’s collaboration and support, effectively interpreting public data in enhancing services tied to smart city systems.
SmartCity Accreditations: Involved in the makings of the standards or benchmarks for smart cities and data integration. To ensure usability of data and effectiveness of smart city implementation, certain criteria needs to be met to ensure systems chosen are in fact beneficial, functional and can be used to generate the right insights to enhance public services.
Increasing Awareness: One of the vital challenges to smart city implementation is stakeholder management, and there are many. PLANMalaysia endeavours to manage vital stakeholders by running several campaigns and programs to align all relevant stakeholders, from investors to local authorities to local communities. This fuels understanding of the ultimate goal of transforming into a smart city and the benefits that stand to be gained by all stakeholders.
When addressing smart cities in the past, we may have been uncertain of what was needed. We may have not fully grasped the technology or were not aware of what we wanted out of it. Today, we are in a much more secure position – enriched by knowledge, alongside the maturation of the technology, we are more ready than ever to be elevated towards a smarter future. The road ahead may not be simple or straightforward, but we are equipped with guides, blueprints and action plans which are both symbols and roadmaps to success. They represent our common goals is our binding objective in uniting all stakeholders towards a smarter, healthier, more sustainable Malaysia.
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Smart cities made its debut as an idea over a decade ago. The growing pains of urbanisation required governments around the world to consider leveraging technology to help alleviate the big challenges facing the cities. The problems for dense cities are many, ranging from high energy consumption, traffic congestion, pollution and increase in crime. The technology is ready and available, yet majority of the smart city projects have met with limited success. As with all new things, there are risks involved. But moving forward takes a bit of courage, and a leap of faith. After all, this is what defines a pioneer; bungee jumping into uncharted territory, outside their comfort zone.
The biggest challenge by far is the complexity of the initiative and managing the collaboration between the multitude of stakeholders needed to make smart city initiatives a success.
There are three crucial building blocks to overcoming the main challenges of smart city implementation:
Let’s start with technology which is what a smart city is all about. Technology plays a crucial role in the transformation of smart cities, with benefits that stand to be gained by all stakeholders. The role of technology can be dissected into seven key aspects:
Smart city development cannot be done in an ad-hoc fashion. The various elements need to come together to form a uniform vision and serve a core purpose – to solve specific problems of the city’s residents and improve quality of life. The development of a smart city vision should embrace the following four principles:
A smart city should aim to embrace technology across all aspects of the citizens lifestyle and tight integration of a range of services from transportation, health, education, etc built around citizen journeys.
The citizens are the heart-beat of every city. A successful initiative involves building trust between the citizens and the governing body through citizen-centric decision and policy making as well as transparency of data and information. Providing citizens smart tools helps with the data collection effort. This helps mitigate the “black hole” problem, with information on any pressing issues reported by concerned citizens made readily available for authorities to address them at the earliest.
Through widespread data collection, smart cities can solve many problems quickly, made possible by insights from data. An iterative approach that enables constant problem solving is crucial for long-term success. Data insights can also help city managers and planners address the core issues that impact every citizen and minimize chances of recurrence.
Another concept that smart cities should internalise is the DNA of a smart city, namely, Devices, Networks, and Applications. A successful smart city harmonises the interaction between its devices used in daily operations, connected by a network that sustains it, and managed through the use of applications and software’s to ensure a seamless operation and function void of errors.
A successful smart city implementation cannot be achieved without the proper governance and management, support from stakeholders buying into the idea, and the feedback from the citizens living within. Vision and ideas are relatively simpler to define, the challenge is the execution. The key success factors include:
While the task seems daunting, there are many global best practices we can follow. The technology has matured and the right funding models are coming into place. We need to act with a sense of urgency. As we embrace the new post-pandemic future, the time to act is now. Failing which we will have only compounded the many challenges for our already fast-growing cities.
Learn more on how Smart City contributes to our nation’s aspiration in becoming a Digital Malaysia.
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“Kerana kemudahan tidak hanya untuk sebahagian kelompok, tetapi untuk semua”
“Because convenience is not for a few, but the masses”
Setiaji, Chief of Digital Transformation Office at Ministry of Health / Assistant of Minister for Health Technology, Indonesia
Half of the world’s population are city dwellers, and with the breakneck speed of technological advancement, a government that fuels digital technologies stands to endure significant long-term economic benefits. Cities that are slow to embrace the digital race risk falling further behind the pack.
With an average density of 1,400 population per square kilometer, West Java is home to 50 million people across 27 regencies and 620 districts. While it is the most populous province in Indonesia, its human development index is lower than Indonesia’s national average. Wide socioeconomical and digital gaps are spread within its 1,576 urban villages and 4,301 rural villages.
Pemerintah Jawa Barat or the West Java Provincial Government understands that to inch closer to the smart city pole position, its version of smart city needs to be inclusive of the rural areas. Faced with complex government bureaucracy, compounded with a lack of innovation in the government service, West Java Provincial Government initiated an in-house digital team — Jawa Barat Digital Service or Jabar Digital Service. Early in our journey, we saw that to build a smart city tailored to the West Java ecosystem, we needed to bring together best-in-class tech talent and institutional stability in one team. Jabar Digital Service, in essence, is a start-up under government purview with a massive scale to impact.
There are three anchor drivers that propelled West Java into becoming one of the region’s fastest smart city adopters: People. Process. Technology.
For a city to become a leading smart city, the importance of talent is second to none. However, according to the World Bank, Indonesia will have a 9-million digital talent shortage by 2030 if initiatives are not taken to address this in the interim.
To fill this potential gap, Jabar Digital Service launched its inaugural Candradimuka Jabar Coding Camp in 2021. This first batch of full-fledged coding camps received 11,730 applicants, with 844 being successful in their applications. Additionally, and more impressively, 18.9% of the 844 successful applicants are among the underprivileged, disabled or high school leavers. All graduates of the coding camp are now either absorbed in Jabar Digital Service, assimilated into the Indonesian technology industry, or opted to become freelancers taking advantage of the budding gig economy. As a result, we now have more than 300 new additions to the digital workforce consisting of mainly young, exuberant talents mentored by senior government officials and private sector experts.
An advocate of the ‘Right First, Fast Later’ mantra, Jabar Digital service believes a deep and resilient process is the cornerstone of any smart city. There was a perception that regulations were a barrier to innovation. Hence, the first point to address was to fine-tune existing regulatory policies to foster regulator engagement in the innovation process.
At a broader level, to invigorate a culture of innovation at various levels and among diverse stakeholders, we took a 360° view and synergised the business process with governance and infrastructure to support this interactive innovation. All this, of course, needed to align with our budget and stretch every Rupiah.
Smart cities may have become one of the main agendas for governments worldwide, but there is still a substantially unmet need for the largely overlooked and underserved population.
As West Java comprises of primarily rural locations and with our citizens only being able to afford basic technical equipment, our smart city technology of choice needs to be brought down to the lowest common denominator to make it inclusive for everyone and reduce the digital divide.
At Jabar Digital Service, we believe the launching of a digital blueprint is not enough. The execution must be accessible for all stakeholders to be able to develop at a furious pace.
Here are some examples of our flagship products that have impacted the West Java society significantly.
The Jabar Command Centre is a data visualisation and monitoring centre which centralizes and integrates data from all operations and public services available to citizens of West Java.
Public Gathering Monitoring, Smart CCTV surveillance that feeds the command centre with information of an estimated number of mass gatherings, average density and peak hours. The collection, monitoring and analysis of information allows the government to monitor public protocols and coordinate for security measures whenever necessary.
Ekosistem Data Jabar (EDJ)， EDJ is a data ecosystem which integrates data from four main sources (OpenData, SatuData, Satu Peta & Core Data). Information gathered from this integrated ecosystem generates ‘smart’ insights which, in turn, supports data-driven decision making. The use of public and open data has also heightened transparent leadership while encouraging public participation in the urban development of West Java.
Sapawarga, the West Java government’s Superapp was launched in 2019 with 3 main purposes:
Pikobar, A day after West Java declared a state of emergency due to the COVID19 pandemic, JDS launched the Pikobar website. The Pikobar app was released 16 days later. Since the launches, Pikobar has been releasing real-time data and enabling integrated COVID-19 related services via both app and website. The services include 32 features such as teleconsultation / telemedicine, multivitamin prescription, delivery and administration of oxygen and more.
The overall objective of the Digital Villages Theme is to overcome the digital divide in rural areas, by covering 3 major pillars:
There is one key trait driving the success of West Java’s smart city transformation: unity. From governments and local officials having a clear and aligned vision of a smart West Java, to an inclusive action plan that aims to elevate the lifestyles of all members of West Java’s society; the province is an undisputable example of the value of unity and cooperation of all stakeholders in making smart city transformation a success.
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