Singapore's Information Technology Strategy
Singapore's information technology strategy rests on two major legs. The first leg is world-class basic facilities. Being a city-state, it is relatively easy to connect every home, office and hotel room. Our objective is to provide broad-band everywhere, either wired or wireless. We will make it a readily available utility like water, electricity, gas and telephone. We are well on our way there. We now require, by regulation, every new home to be equipped with broad-band in the same way as it is required to have water and electricity.
The second leg is the education of our entire population in IT (information technology). Like reading, writing and arithmetic, computers are best learnt when we are young. Today's children can click the mouse faster than we can blink. In many countries, children of middle-class families have no difficulty with this new technology. But, without special effort, there is a danger that children of poorer families will miss out on the opportunity to learn IT. Like the piano and violin, one can still learn the computer as an adult. But rarely does one acquire the same facility. The strategy in Singapore is therefore to teach information technology to every child regardless of his family background. The Education Ministry now has a multi-billion dollar programme to provide one computer for every 2 schoolchildren in Singapore from first grade onwards. Every teacher will have a notebook.
Most Singaporeans now understand the importance of IT, if not for themselves, at least for their children and grandchildren. Over 40% of households in Singapore now own PCs. Over one-third of households in Singapore already enjoy access to Internet. What we want is for every Singaporean to be computer literate so that he can function effectively in any bank, factory or restaurant, just as one would expect an employee to be able to read, write and count. An employer in Singapore in the future should not have to worry that his employee does not now how to use a computer or the Internet.
