IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

The Singapore government has revamped its free, nationwide wireless internet service Wireless@SG to give citizens and businesses faster and easier access to the internet. It is hoped that the service – which will be free until 2013 - will boost innovation and business activity as the island nation’s economy emerges from recession.

The new service is twice as fast as the original offering, with access speeds up from 512 kbps to 1 Mbps, and has an automatic log-in feature to make using the service easier. While the use of Wireless@SG has grown quicker than expected since it launched in 2006, with 1.5 million subscribers registered by December 2009 and usage time up from a monthly average of 2.1 hours to 6.7 hours per user, the service has received some criticism for being slow, unreliable and cumbersome.

Weiterlesen: Singapore overhauls free wireless service

China and Singapore have struck a deal that will see the two governments share their experiences in public administration and training. The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), signed by China’s State Administration of Foreign Experts (SAFEA) and the Singapore Cooperation Enterprise (SCE) at the end of last year, will also see the two agencies hold training programmes for other countries looking to learn from how China and Singapore have modernised public services.

The partnership will focus on training government officials in disciplines such as urban planning, e-government, human resources and transportation.

Weiterlesen: Singapore and China forge public sector training alliance

The Singapore Government and the World Bank jointly organized a knowledge sharing event "The Singapore Experience - Ingredients for successful Nation-wide eTransformation" on the 'Singapore ICT Day event for South Asia’ in the city Wednesday.

The event was important in case of Bangladesh’s journey towards economic development as ICT has improved the quality of life worldwide and acted as a key driver of economic growth for both the developed and developing economy.

Weiterlesen: Singapore shares experience of eTransformation with Bangladesh

The head of Ministry of Education’s (MOE) IT department has detailed reasons why the agency is forging ahead with plans to use Google Apps, in addition to a parallel move to standardise the Ministry’s operating environment, known as the ‘SOE (Schools)’ project. Speaking exclusively to FutureGov, Lim Teck Soon, IT Director of MOE, explained that the need to quickly roll-out new email, messaging and collaboration applications was the key driver.

“We went ahead with the launch of a messaging system because we believe there is an urgent need for a resilient and scalable system to be ready in case of emergency when the messaging system becomes a critical component among teachers to interact and collaborate,” explained Lim. “Messaging is an optional item within the SOE (Schools) contract which is up for tender. In the event we are not satisfied with the current service provider, we will still have the option to leverage the SOE (Schools) platform for messaging.”

Weiterlesen: Why Singapore schools chose the public cloud