Opening Remarks by Minister for Foreign Affairs Dr Vivian Balakrishnan at the High-Level Virtual Event “Digital Transformation in the Age of COVID-19”, 24 February 2021

OPENING REMARKS BY MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS DR VIVIAN BALAKRISHNAN AT THE

HIGH-LEVEL VIRTUAL EVENT  “DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN THE AGE OF COVID-19” ORGANISED BY THE UNDP GLOBAL CENTRE FOR TECHNOLOGY, INNOVATION AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND THE PERMANENT MISSION OF THE REPUBLIC OF SINGAPORE TO THE UNITED NATIONS IN NEW YORK,  ON 24 FEBURARY 2021

Excellencies

Distinguished Guests

Ladies and Gentlemen

It’s a pleasure to be here and especially with Achim Steiner, whom I’ve met so many times in the past few years. Achim, I need to give you special commendation for the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme), your leadership at the UNDP, your presence in Singapore and indeed, for the Technology, Innovation, and Sustainable Development outfit here as well. In a sense, these two trends are long-term tectonic trends which have been occurring for several years and I don’t think we’ve even reached the crest of it yet.

My central proposition tonight is that COVID-19 has not changed history. It has not even changed these trends. But what it has done is to accelerate these trends. In a sense then, it is a stress test. A stress test of what we have prepared. And it has exposed in a merciless way, both shortcomings as well as opportunities. It has exposed political and economic faultlines, but it has also accelerated economic, social, and strategic changes which are sweeping across the globe. So, that’s what COVID-19 represents: a stress test. The fact that we are even convening today via webinar is just another example of this rapid digitalisation that has swept the world. And in fact many of us today – I think we’re all familiar now with “working from home” – have had to carry out our jobs in a hybrid way.

In Singapore, we experienced first-hand how digitalisation enabled us to adopt a more nimble and adaptive response when COVID-19 first hit us, and that’s been our story for the last one year. When it first emerged, our engineers – our government engineers – were able to quickly develop tools to communicate accurate information. And you know, we live in an age of misinformation, but the ability to provide accurate information to the public through a variety of websites – we called it “MaskGoWhere”, “SupportGoWhere”, “FluGoWhere”. Websites and messaging platforms like Telegram, WhatsApp, have provided crucial, timely, accurate information from trusted sources. Believe me, that made a pivotal difference in the necessary collective response by our population, who responded in a calm, measured, rational, and scientific way.

We were also determined that our education, schools, would not be adversely affected, despite the fact that we did have to close schools for some period of time. And we then had to facilitate home-based learning very rapidly, very urgently. And this required not just the rapid distribution of hardware devices to ensure no one was left behind, but our teachers also had to rapidly digitise their lessons. And those of you who’ve been teachers would know, it’s not so straightforward.

On the health side, we also developed a digital contract tracing tool, which we called “TraceTogether”, which basically collects encrypted proximity data using Bluetooth signals. And this has been able to shorten the average time required to perform contract tracing, which you will recall is normally a very laborious process. Today, it takes us less than 1.5 days to identify all the potential contacts who need to be quarantined or need further testing. And that has made a difference to the management of COVID-19 in Singapore.

Whilst technology has certainly provided solutions to some of our difficulties, I think we should not overlook the challenges that this poses for many governments and many segments of our population. The speed and scale of changes can overwhelm our systems and expose policy and regulatory gaps, and sometimes leads to the under-provision of government assistance precisely at a time of profound crisis. The question then is, how do we harness these technologies to enhance social welfare, whilst cushioning disruptive transitions, reducing inequalities – which is a key political challenge all over the world – and at the same time prepare our population for opportunities and the future?  How do we ensure countries have the necessary digital foundations to adapt and to grow in a sustainable way? Allow me to quickly make three recommendations.

First, at the national level, we need to ensure that digital inclusion is across the board and that we reskill our entire workforce so that every worker can successfully adapt to a digital future. It’s no point protecting yesterday’s jobs. You need to create future jobs and prepare our people for those future jobs. COVID-19 has shown that the poorest and the most vulnerable often lack access to these technologies and are in fact at the greatest risk of being left behind. To help them stay relevant, we need to raise digital literacy across the board, the entire population, and we need to enhance Infocomm Technology capabilities through a whole-of-society approach. In our case, we brought forward our plans for students – for every student – to have a personal digital learning device. We will in fact accelerate the implementation of our Digital Readiness Blueprint as a whole, including the establishment of a dedicated office to drive inclusive digital transformation across the country – this means down to the community level.

Second, we should scale up – and I am a firm believer in open-source solutions. We believe open-source solutions can be deployed at a lower cost and at a faster pace than traditional closed proprietary software development. They can also be accessed and improved upon by the larger global community. It is also critical for governments. The other point, often overlooked, is that open-sourcing requires transparency on the part of producers and the authorities, and this ultimately strengthens a virtuous cycle of public trust. This enables governments to provide safe and secure public services quickly, at lower cost, and with higher levels of public participation.

That’s why we made the source code of our contact tracing application, TraceTogether, open source. We wanted enhanced trust, enhanced collaboration, and to allow the global community to build upon our protocols, improve, and build your own contact tracing tools. I am pleased that our BlueTrace Protocol is included in the COVID-19 Open Source Digital Toolkit which the UNDP – again another advertisement for Achim Steiner – through your Global Centre for Technology, Innovation and Sustainable Development in Singapore, has helped to enable other governments to better respond to the pandemic in your own way. This in a sense represents our contribution to your success.

Finally, we must promote the interoperability of digital technologies across national borders in order to maximise their benefits. Each government remains ultimately responsible for both dealing with the challenges, and providing the solutions. But we need to pay attention to interoperability, and contact tracing is one example. E-payment systems are another example. Digital vaccine or health certificates – these will be challenges and opportunities as we open up our borders, hopefully in the course of the next few months and year, as we recover from COVID-19.  Singapore has therefore strongly promoted the development of not just open source, but also common standards and frameworks. In this regard, Singapore has forged Digital Economy Agreements with Chile, New Zealand and Australia last year in order to foster cooperation on these emerging issues in the digital economy and to promote interoperability between our national systems.

So it is in this context that I would like to express Singapore’s appreciation for the UNDP’s role in accelerating the use of digital technologies in order to deliver sustainable development solutions through your global network. The UNDP’s Digital Strategy, the Accelerator Labs, the Global Policy Network have all helped to transform the way we create partnerships, deliver solutions and support governments to implement sustainable development. The UNDP Resident Representative Network has also been a tremendous asset in building connections, sharing best practices and serving as
co-learning hubs for digital transformation. And all of us have benefitted.

So on that note, again, I just want to emphasise that we attach great importance to our collaboration with the UNDP and the work of the Global Centre in Singapore. Rest assured, we will continue to support the UNDP and the Global Centre, as you work with partners across the world to co-create sustainable digital solutions, a fairer, greener, more resilient world. And this ultimately should be the way we respond to this existential challenge of our generation. And it would also have lessons for us as we deal with the other longer-term challenges, including climate change. On that note, let me thank you all for participating in this session today.

Thank you very much.

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