The government will today unveil at CommunicAsia its billion-dollar ten-year masterplan to make Singapore a regional hub for the digital economy.
The Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, Lee Boon Yang, will announce the Intelligent Nation 2015 (iN2015) plan when opening CommunicAsia2006 this morning. It will be the sixth Singapore ICT plan and the first with a decade-long horizon.
Chan Yeng Kit, CEO of the Infocomm Development Agency (IDA), said the plan includes infrastructure and policy 'enablers,' manpower planning and programs for seven industry verticals.
The previous ICT plan was released in 2003 with a three-year window. But Chan told CommunicAsia Show Daily because infrastructure and manpower planning now often took five to eight years or more, 'we felt it was time for a longer horizon'.
Chan said the IDA's role was to be the 'national CIO,' to first catalyze and then implement ideas. It also plays the role of de facto standards body to prevent resources wasted on duplicate technologies.
'We see a role we can play in catalyzing these ideas. We also see a role for ourselves in helping prevent fragmentation.'
A small economy such as Singapore's cannot afford to support multiple platforms for things such as micro-payment systems, Chan said.
Some parts of the iN2015 plan have already been released. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced the infrastructure plan in February, and the manpower program was handed down in November.
Chan said that in developing the plan over the last 12 months the government had consulted widely with the industry and other government agencies.
Madhusudan Pandya, CTO-ASEAN for Lucent, said the company had worked closely with the IDA on the communication aspects of the plan.
'iN2015 will be an excellent case study for assessing how effectively the regulator can drive the growth while enhancing people's lives,' he said.