Government services are well known to be slow and cumbersome. With technology, that should not be the case, but it is not easy to implement and roll out these services well.

Singapore is possibly the one of the best implementations of e-government services that is secure and fast.

There is SingPass, a secure 2FA login that allows every citizen and PR to access a myriad of services, from buying a house to submitting tax returns to applying for a passport. The list goes on. The key is that this is a single username and account that all agencies use to allow the user to access their services. This encourages all citizens to use it for their own convenience, and for agencies to make use of it to move more services online.

To give an example of how efficient the system is, I recently applied for a passport. It took me about 15 minutes to fill in some information on the government portal, and in less than 1 week, I was notified via email to make an appointment online to collect the new passport. At the appointment portal, I had the option of collecting at 20 different locations for my convenience. I selected 1 that is close to my home and booked a time. Upon arrival at the stipulated time, I scanned my ID and received a queue number. In less than 5 minutes, it was my turn and I collected the new passport happily.

Having a strong common standard for payments is crucial for a city to become cashless.  A strong common standard creates value and encourages both consumers and businesses to adopt.

I find that the Octopus Card in Hong Kong is one good example of a strong common standard. You can use the Octopus for almost anything and everything, from taking a bus, taxi, ferry, airport express, 7-eleven, supermarkets, and probably everything else that you might need to buy or use regularly. That is why Hong Kong, a country very much similar to Singapore, is moving more quickly to becoming a cashless society.

Let’s compare to Singapore, where we do not have a strong common standard. There is the Ez-link that we use for transport, the Cashcard for carpark payments, eNets, Flashpay, and a host of other options. This is not only confusing for the consumers, but also troublesome for businesses to adopt. And this is why we are still a cash reliant society.

aining to ensure they remain relevant.

As cities become more congested, the amount of waste increases. Furthermore, we now live in a society that encourages buying new products rather than repairing old ones. Despite its importance, this topic rarely gets the limelight because well, no one likes to listen to rubbish (pun intended).

I will like to cite the example of the waste management system in Japan. If there is any country that is cleaner than Singapore, it will probably be Japan. How they achieve their level of cleanliness is quite different from how we do it.

For instance, you find trash cans or rubbish bins all over Singapore. This is to encourage people to throw their trash at designated places. This is good because our streets stay clean, but it does mean a lot more money spent in waste collection services. Also, we don’t inculcate values of responsibility for our own trash; we just do it out of convenience.

In Japan, however, it seems impossible to locate a trash can, and if you find 1, you probably find 5 different colored bins beside it. This is because Japan has a strict and comprehensive waste sorting system, and such values are imbued from young. You take care of your own trash despite the inconvenience.

Therefore because of differences in culture, technologies developed for waste management becomes very different for each city. Singapore has embarked on projects to make waste collection more efficient, such as bin sensors to indicate that they are full, and enforcement cameras to catch people littering. Japan has focused on technologies that allow waste to be sorted more efficiently, and also recycling technology, because sorted waste makes recycling much easier. For instance, many restaurants in Japan invests in machines that converts food waste to fertilizers.

Jason Wei, Senior Manager
International