Singapore is slated to open up its data and work more closely with the public and businesses to tap new technologies and social innovation to improve public service delivery, as the city-state advances into its next phase of the e-Gov masterplan.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of eGov Global Exchange yesterday, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance Tharman Shanmugaratnam said the government will adopt a more "pervasive approach" to cross-agency data-sharing and proactively share more data with the public. As part of Singapore's new "Open Data" philosophy, it aims to encourage more feedback, research and analysis on issues of public concern.
"The issues which the government faces are increasingly dynamic, multi-faceted and complex. We have a more educated and technologically-savvy citizenry who have higher expectations and want to play a more active role in national affairs," said Shanmugaratnam.
He noted that Singapore will be releasing a set of principles to guide government agencies in sharing more data and co-creating with the public. The government is looking to develop analytics that will allow agencies to derive richer insights from the data collected to improve the government's policy formulation and enhance agency operations, service delivery and customer engagement.
The government is also working toward making all datasets on data.gov.sg and OneMap, the government's one-stop geospatial data portal, available in machine-readable formats.
Shanmugaratnam also announced the launch of PopulationQuery, a new service on OneMap that aims to give the public free and easy access to graphic and visual representations of Singapore's demographic landscapes by displaying the country's population data on a map by residential zones or commercial areas.