Singapore’s Ministry of Communication and Information (MCI) will, later this year, launch a Digital Enterprise Blueprint which would be a “comprehensive roadmap that builds on MCI’s ongoing efforts to drive digitalisation across the economy”.
This blueprint will complement the digital connectivity blueprint announced by the Singapore government.
MCI said it would be consulting industry leaders, trade associations, and companies across different sectors which have “worked closely with the MCI family in developing our upcoming initiatives”.
Outlining some of the initiatives MCI said it is developing and scaling the adoption of digital utilities, which are foundational digital services to enable firms’ access to the digital economy.
These include CorpPass, InvoiceNow and PayNow.
“To encourage the adoption of digital utilities such as InvoiceNow, we have rolled out the InvoiceNow Transaction Bonus in November 2022. This provides S$2001 to all businesses for sending a total of 10 e-invoices on the InvoiceNow network,” MCI said.
Currently, companies already have options to onboard CorpPass upon incorporation and PayNow upon setting up a bank account. MCI will work with service providers to expand this to InvoiceNow.
MCI added that, in order to address sector-specific opportunities and challenges, the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) of Singapore will work with sector-lead agencies to progressively refresh the existing Industry Digital Plans (IDPs) to guide firms on digital solutions and corresponding training programmes to adopt, based on sector and growth stage.
Refreshed IDPs for the Retail and Security sectors and a new IDP for the Legal sector based on the refreshed IDP framework will be launched in 2023, MCI said.
The ministry noted that it would continue to raise small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) digital maturity by extending the Advanced Digital Solutions scheme (ADS), which was launched in 2020 and has supported close to 750 SMEs in adopting 33 advanced and integrated solutions.
Help against cyberattacks
In order to do this, MCI will provide better support for SMEs “to protect themselves from cyberattacks” by launching a scheme to provide subsidised cybersecurity consultancy services and tailored cybersecurity health plans
This, MCI said would help SMEs to work towards national cybersecurity certification.
Cybersecurity consultants will take on the role of the SMEs’ Chief Information Security Officers (CISO), and the approach would be similar to providing a Chief Information Security Officers-as-a-Service (CISOaaS) to SMEs.
MCI will make this initiative available through the existing Chief Technological Officer-as-a-Service (CTOaaS) platform.
MCI said it is also working with government agencies to identify the skills and jobs needed to thrive in a fast-changing digital future to anticipate industry needs and guide reskilling efforts for emerging job roles.
