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Thumbs up for Singapore's IT under crisis

SARS has put Singapore to the test in many ways – and the nation has emerged resilient. In terms of IT, the country has scored well too – according to a research team from the School of Computing led by Assistant Professor Pan Shan-Ling, Department of Information Systems. They have given Singapore the thumbs up in e-government capabilities and crisis management.

TESTED CAPABILITIES: Dr Pan Shan-Ling and team's research documented Singapore's e-government capabilities when the country combated SARS.

In a paper (E-Government Capabilities and Crisis Management: Lessons from Combating SARS in Singapore by Dr Pan and Mr Paul Devadoss, NUS and Mr Gary Pan, University of Melbourne) published by the University of Minnesota in December 2005 in MIS Quarterly Executive, the team reported that Singapore Government Agencies utilised the e-government infrastructure and related resources to quickly bring the outbreak under control. "Singapore was able to keep the public up-to-date, enlist help from many sources and rapidly develop innovative IT applications to contain the outbreak", the researchers wrote in the paper.

In his research, Dr Pan looked into e-government efforts from the 1980's till 2004. This is an area which he has great interest and good understanding -- having conducted training workshops for e-government teams of various Singapore Government Agencies. He has also consulted for Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and The Pacific (UNESCAP) of the United Nations.

Singapore, said Dr Pan, is one of the first countries in the world to develop an integrated and coherent approach to computerising the government. Singapore's e-government initiative began in 1980 with the Civil Service Computerisation Programme (now the National IT Plan) – bringing about technological, business and social changes in the country.

In the 1990s, the National Computer Board coordinated policy changes across agencies, providing integrated services to the public through cross-agency links. In the new millennium, Singapore launched the InfoComm 21, an initiative to develop the country into a global capital with an IT-savvy population. Singapore's IT systems continue to improve and were proven to be robust when crisis hit.

Next, the Tsunami test

After their study on the utilisation of IT efforts during the SARS crisis, Dr Pan said they are ready to explore how Singapore fared during the Tsunami crisis. The situation is different from the SARS crisis, said Dr Pan. In the case of Tsunami, it is more of Singapore applying its e-capabilities as a relief co-ordinating centre.

Also in Dr Pan's research radar is the interaction of the government with the private sector and the citizens themselves -- to come out with a model for e-government implementation. "This is a journey that never ends. We would like to look at the capability aspects and the knowledge management perspective, for example, how inter-agency knowledge transfer and sharing can be improved," said Dr Pan.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)

Dr Pan is also interested to research IT and lifestyle. He observed that one area which is becoming really popular is the integration of computing gadgets into the objects of our everyday life. He gave the example of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) which is a tracking technology.

RFID has been tested for contact tracing during SARS. Every patient was tagged with RFID and each time the patient came in contact with an electronic reader at various points in the hospital, the location and time of visit was recorded. Stored in databases, the data could provide a complete list of all who had come in contact with these patients.

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