Closing Remarks by Minister Josephine Teo at Build For Good Accelerator Finale

CLOSING REMARKS BY MRS JOSEPHINE TEO, MINISTER FOR DIGITAL DEVELOPMENT AND INFORMATION, AT BUILD FOR GOOD ACCELERATOR FINALE ON 17 AUG 2024

1. Firstly, I would like to say a big thank you to the organisers of this Build for Good (BfG) event. I also want to make a special mention and acknowledgement of our esteemed colleagues from GovTech Edu Indonesia. I hope this was a fruitful morning for you. 

2. I would give my reflections on this morning by talking about the significance of the Build for Good projects at three levels. 

a. The significance of these projects to me personally 

b. The significance of these projects to my organisation, the Ministry of Digital Development and Information (MDDI), and 

c. The significance of this initiative and the projects at the national level. 

Build for Good Accelerator Projects 

3. Firstly, at the personal level, I usually go for my walks on Saturday mornings, and I do go to the beach for my walks. What Coastal Clear presented was a means of helping people do a more efficient search for places where they should do their beach cleanup. This is something I can relate to, because quite often on my walks, I encounter groups who are searching for debris. So I can appreciate a tool that can help them so they won’t have their efforts go to waste.

4. There are also occasions that I go to MacRitchie and so Project Koel is something that I can resonate with too. It's certainly of interest to me that one day, we do a better job at this Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). 

5. In fact, I was in the Ministry of Transport when it was doing an EIA for the Cross Island Line. I was sharing with Team Koel how I remember sometime in 2016 or 2017, sitting down in the LTA boardroom, engaging with a group of environmental activists on how we can assure ourselves of an assessment that is robust enough, that will tell us whether we can actually tunnel under the Central Catchment Nature Reserve. I'm glad that while there's more work to be done, we have made progress in that direction through Project Koel. 

6. ReportLah! resonates with me, not only because one of the things I’m scared of when I go for my walks is having to use public toilets, but for the reasons that you already know, there is a high concentration of food centres in Jalan Besar, my Group Representation Constituency (GRC). People love to come to food centres in my constituency, and of course, we welcome them. We actually have a lot of international visitors. But I really do believe, like you do, that we would like to make sure that all aspects of their experience are a pleasant one, and that's not entirely the case now. I hope that ReportLah! and other innovations could go some distance into improving the current state of affairs, and I want to applaud you for doing that too. 

7. SUSFeed has a resonance with me too, because the food waste situation can similarly have a lot more improvements too. If we could find some way of getting the salt content out of cooked food waste, and remove contaminations in the food processing as part of food consumption, it can be further recycled and put to better use. 

8. Finally, I wanted to touch on the first project that was presented today, which is RemediSG. We learned a lot about our migrant workers at the height of COVID-19 and one of the things that we learned was that their health-seeking behaviour is actually very different. It is fairly the case that, because finances are going to be much tighter for them, there's only so much that we can expect their employers to do to support their seeking of medical treatment. The people and organisations that RemediSG work with could potentially be on the receiving end of medication that are still perfectly usable and that is something I think is very meaningful. 

9. I should just say that it turns out that all five projects have some personal significance to me, and judging from the questions that were raised earlier in the Q&A segment, I believe I'm not the only one who feels this way. I believe that for everyone here, there's something about each of these projects that means something to us. I want to applaud you again for very good efforts that you've had. 

Becoming A Best-in-Class Developer 

10. Now, perhaps I would just like to move to the significance of BfG, as well as the projects, to MDDI, which is a very new ministry. We were officially only born on 8th July 2024. 

11. The question I sometimes get asked is, why do you choose to be the Ministry of Digital Development? Why are you not the Ministry of Digital Technologies, Digital Advancements or Digital Innovations? The answer is actually a very simple one. 

12. It is that we don't just care about the technologies, the advancements and innovations. We care a lot more about the impact to people and societies. We care about how they potentially can benefit or harm communities, and that is why we adopt the mindset of a developer, and we challenge ourselves to think of how we can be a best-in-class developer. Let me explain a little bit about what we mean by that.

13. Physical developers, such as those for this building, housing estates, or shopping complexes, all have to go through the process of conceptualization, design, mobilizing resources and implementation, which will include watching out for mistakes along the way, doing rectification… You name it. Developers of any form must do a range of those things, but a best-in-class developer will aim to do more than that. 

14. There are at least three things that a best-in-class developer would seek to achieve. 

a. You would seek to be a leader in thought and action. You want to find breakthroughs. You want to discover new ways of doing things that could be more beneficial, resource efficient, responsible, and trustworthy. A best-in-class developer would seek to be a leader in thought and action. 

b. Another thing that a best-in-class developer would seek to be is to strive for a higher purpose. You don't just want to develop for the sake of it. You want to ask yourself to what purpose does it serve and what good can it produce? That's what we're trying to do. 

c. The third aspect about being a best-in-class developer is to try and bring others along with us. There are two parts to it. One part of it is the humility in accepting that as a developer, you may not be fully aware of all the problems that exist, and at the same time, you may also not have the competence, the resources and the solutions to all these problems. 

15. That is what Build for Good is all about. We do not have a monopoly of good ideas. We don't even have a monopoly on understanding of the problems, so being able to reach out to a far wider group of stakeholders and getting everyone involved is a very important part of acknowledging this reality. 

16. I should also say the reason why, for the first time, we are doing this Accelerator programme. If we just throw the problem out there and say, “Come, everyone. Come and help solve it.” That's not quite how it works, because as you can see from each of the projects, some resourcing is involved. This needs some sort of support infrastructure, and that's what the Accelerator attempted to do. 

17. Compared to some of our previous attempts, which already yielded very good results, it certainly shows us that when we are prepared to put in a little bit more resources, the results can be more impactful and have much more potential for development. In a way, it's a proof of concept that we're very happy to produce this kind of result. 

18. The other aspect about us thinking of ourselves as digital developers, developers of Smart Nation, a digital Singapore that is best-in-class, is related to the idea of how we support each other. 

19. After independence, Singapore was figuring out how to build up a nation. For the physical aspects of it, there were many references that we could draw from the book,For example, if you want to know how to build a good road system, you don't have to invent that approach. There are many other countries and cities in the world that already have very good road systems. You can go and study them, and ask, what can we do for ourselves? You can do the same for a whole variety of things. You can study other people's education and healthcare systems, and then figure out what you think works and what doesn’t, and then you adapt it to your own circumstance. 

20. When it comes to digital and sustainability, so many of us are still at the starting line so there are not that many playbooks that you can just either copy and paste or even use as very robust reference points. This idea of learning together and contributing to the whole body of knowledge that is beneficial to the world is a worthwhile pursuit.

21. You may or may not know this - Singapore is the convener of the Forum of Small States (FOSS), and this is a United Nations (UN) grouping that has been around for more than 30 years. 

22. On the occasion of its 30th anniversary, two years ago, we decided as the convener to introduce a digital pillar of the FOSS. It has been very useful in bringing together our colleagues from other countries who are equally trying to figure out what to do with digital development, to share our knowledge and experience, and also to learn what kinds of problems our colleagues face, so that we may ourselves think of better ways of introducing our own products and services digitally. 

23. This Forum now has two programmes that run every year – one at the fellowship level for policy makers and another at the executive level for people who actually have to design and develop the products and services. At these capacity-building programmes, I believe, participants will find a lot of interest in knowing how we are dealing with digital challenges in our city. 

24. That is one application that we hope also contribute, not just to improving citizens lives in Singapore, but also to enable colleagues elsewhere in the world, particularly among small states, to make advances in their use of digital technologies. That is the significance of BfG and your projects at the organisational level. 

Growing as a Smart Nation 

25. Finally, let me just say something about the significance of BfG at the national level.

26. As you know, this is the 10th anniversary of the Smart Nation effort. It started in 2014 so we will mark 10 years in the not-too-distant future. In about six weeks, our Prime Minister is going to launch Smart Nation 2.0. 

27. Now, reflecting on this 10-year journey, we started off with a simple idea that technology can help us to live better as a people. The question has always been, how do you look beyond the hype, and not just fall for the glitziness of technology, but actually make it useful, relevant and beneficial to citizens’ day-to-day life so that it improves our lived experiences. 

28. I think your projects demonstrate very well this ethos and I hope that after this 10-year journey, this kind of ground-up efforts and momentum continue to sustain. It won't stop there. 

29. In fact, I'm very pleased that what started out as quite modest hopes and aspirations, has turned out to have energized so many people like yourselves, and it gives me a lot of hope and optimism. 

30. Perhaps it is fitting that you are doing this on the eve of the National Day Rally that will, for the first time, be delivered by our new Prime Minister. Tomorrow, he will tell us his plans, right? But I believe that you can be assured that what you are doing today is already part of that plan, because he has said this on previous occasions. He has talked about what it means to be Singapore in the current times, and he has talked about how we take Singapore forward together. 

31. I'm not sure whether you recall, but he has said that we don't just want to be a democracy. We want to be a democracy of deeds, and that is, that each one of us brings something to the table, to contribute to better lives for our fellow citizens and potentially for our friends around the world.

32. So, I want to thank you for contributing to this very important effort. I want to congratulate you once again, and I hope that your journey doesn't stop here. I'm quite confident that there will be many other partners, some of them who are here and interested to take your ideas further with you, whether it is in making the coastal areas cleaner, or improving accessibility of medical treatments to vulnerable groups, or in preserving our environment so that for generations to come, we continue to be able to enjoy clean and green Singapore. 

33. On that note, thank you all for being here again, and I wish everybody a very good weekend, and as it is still the National Day season so Happy National Day too.