1. 11/19/2016 CIO­Asia ­ Public­private partnerships key for Singapore’s Smart Nation
http://cio­asia.com/print­article/83892/ 1/2
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Public­private partnerships key for Singapore’s Smart Nation
Nurdianah Md Nur | July 28, 2015
An open data ecosystem is needed for such partnerships to be effective.
(Left to right): Manik Bhandari, Accenture; Zafar Anjum; Eddie Toh, Intel; Rick Scurfield, NetApp; Jason Hunter,
MarkLogic; Krishna Arani, NetApp; and Hugh Mason, JFDI. Credit: NetApp.
Collaborations between the public and private sectors will be integral for the success of Singapore's Smart Nation
vision, asserted panellists at the recent "Driving the Smart Nation Vision with Data" dialogue in Singapore, organised by
NetApp.
According to Eddie Toh, Regional Director of Datacenter Platforms at Intel APAC, the idea of the public and private
sector co­creating Smart Nation solutions is encouraged by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore. "Instead
of selecting one vendor to develop and deploy Smart Nation solutions, IDA chose to provide the infrastructure for such
solutions to be built on. One example is the Heterogenous Network (HetNet), which is key for the Internet of Things
(IoT) as it allows everything to be always connected."
"By laying down the groundwork, the government is enabling businesses to create solutions that will improve the lives of
citizens, thus driving the next wave of innovation," added Zafar Anjum, author of Startup Capitals: Discovering the
Global Hotspots of Innovation.
This is because innovations related to big data and the IoT require the right foundation in place, explained Hugh Mason,
Chief Executive of Joyful Frog Digital Incubator (JFDI). "Startups are great at innovating new service offerings rapidly
but anything involving big data and scale has got to connect to the existing public­ and private­sector enterprises that
form the bedrock of a nation."
Besides public­private collaboration, government agencies should share data with each other too, said Manik Bhandari,
Managing Director of Accenture Digital. "For instance, video feeds from the SMRT and SBS cameras could be analysed
and sent to the police to help in their gang prevention efforts, and the Land Transport Authority to deal with the illegal
parking problem. Government agencies need to work together and intelligently apply technology to solve citizen issues."
For effective public­ and private­sector collaboration to happen, an open data ecosystem is needed. "Since data silos
prevent the full potential of big data from being realised, Singapore needs to mesh data from different sources to tackle
future megatrends, such as urban density and ageing population. To enable this, we need solutions that are
interoperable, as well as allow data to move and be worked on as needed," said Krishna Arani, NetApp's managing
director for the East Asia Region.
"Companies today require solutions that can store and process all sorts of data from a central location. Relational
databases won't work anymore as most data collected today and in future will be unstructured," added Jason Hunter,
Chief Technology Officer of MarkLogic Asia Pacific.

2. 11/19/2016 CIO­Asia ­ Public­private partnerships key for Singapore’s Smart Nation
http://cio­asia.com/print­article/83892/ 2/2
The panel concluded that although the various initiatives launched by the government as well as by the private sector
have been encouraging, a cohesive approach would be key to achieving the objectives of realising the goals of big data
and to turn Singapore into a "smart nation".
Recommendations included various ways that technology partners can further contribute to the positive momentum of
the national Smart Nation initiative, in particular improving the way data is captured, collected and analysed in a
standardised manner to encourage smarter application development.
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