Singapore – the first smart nation in the world
In 2014, The government of Singapore launched one of the largest smart cities initiatives to make the entire country “smart”.
Smart Nation is Singapore’s smart cities initiative established in 2014. It was designed to give rise to a smart and connected nation in its entirety, by providing tech-enabled services, good governance, and sustainable environment. The main objective of a smart city is to offer effective solutions by collecting relevant data through sensors and smart cameras, to improve government services using technology, and to drive economic growth in the country.
In the Smart Nation project, people and businesses, together with the government, are entitled to access their online data and take part in Singapore’s innovation and technological development. Smart Nation is Singapore’s national effort to upgrade the quality of life of its citizens through smart solutions.
Sensor collected data is sent to an online platform known as Virtual Singapore, that gather data from a network of sensors, installed throughout the whole country. Khoong Hock Yun, IDA Singapore Chief Data Officer, explains in an interview at TelecomTV, that Wi-Fi is a fundamental technology to make Singapore a smart city. Though, Vivian Balakrishnan, Singapore’s foreign affairs minister and minister-in-charge of Smart Nation, is of a view that by deploying sensors all over the city, it is most likely to cause an infringement of the privacy of people. In response to Balakrishnan’s concern, the government officials declared that having Wi-Fi and sensor collected data will assist the government in providing a more effective, smarter and more innovative services to solve the city’s strategic problem and better serve citizens’ needs by using advanced technology. Furthermore, the Smart Nation initiative and its digital infrastructure will leverage on investments that create business opportunities for enterprises and promotes usage of analytical technologies in the cities.
Image source: http://bit.ly/1j4qjmU (PMO Singapore)
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