With the growing demand for digital services during the COVID-19 pandemic, Singapore allowed access to citizen services via a digitalised identification certificate called Singpass. The national digital identity is critical to achieving the country’s vision of improving the lives of citizens, creating opportunities for businesses and transforming the capabilities of government agencies. To do this, the government must ensure secure, reliable, and complete online citizen identity and centralisation of databases across different government services.
Mohit Sagar, Group Managing Director and Editor-in-Chief, OpenGov Asia, believes Singaporeans trust their government as, over the last 50 years, it has been working to instil confidence and create an environment of transparency. However, Mohit acknowledges this is an exception, not the rule as other Southeast Asian countries do not enjoy the same level of trust from their citizens.
Despite a quite high level of trust from Singaporeans, the government still needs to improve in many aspects, including data management. Mohit emphasises that it only takes one or two critical breaches to radically diminish faith. Therefore, the…
