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Connected Government

Singapore gives ICT retraining to civil servants

By Xinghui Guo | 16 March 2011

While Singapore’s Infocomm Manpower Development Roadmap V2.0 (MDEV 2.0) looks to develop infocomm experts and leaders for the country, the government itself has been giving its workforce continual learning and skills upgrading for an effective, productive and efficient ICT workforce.

Under the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), provides regular ICT training programmes are given to internal infocomm personnel and the end-users in the public sector. IDA told FutureGov Asia Pacific that the courses for the infocomm workforce are compliant with the National Infocomm Competency Framework (NICF) which articulates the competencies needed for key infocomm job roles, aims to widen and deepen the infocomm capabilities of infocomm professionals and guide their career development against standards agreed by the industry and companies.

As for non-IT public sector officers, training and courses are aligned with IDA’s Public Sector Infocomm Competency framework with the key objective of expanding the infocomm capabilities and capacities and also to raise the levels of infocomm standards in the public service.

Andrew Khaw, Senior Director, Industry Development Group, IDA, said that infocomm has been the key strategy to deliver better quality and efficient public services.

“Infocomm professionals with up-to-date and relevant skills, expertise and good sector knowledge are required to develop relevant infocomm solutions. For example, the healthcare sector leverages on infocomm to cut down waiting time for new beds. Having an infocomm workforce has also allowed the government to deploy a total of about 1,600 online services and over 300 mobile services which have allowed users to search for information on the move, transact on the go, and obtain information in the context of the users’ location,” Khaw explained.

IDA is keen to develop “emerging skills like those in area of business analytics and cloud computing”. Khaw said that business analytics gives the ability to organise and manage data so as to be able to extract valuable insights and analysis and “such insights and findings can then be used to make better informed business decisions”.

“With the use of cloud computing by both private and public sector organisations, CIOs must be able to address the related security, compliance and privacy issues. Hence, having a team of infocomm professionals skilled in these areas will be important,” Khaw said.

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