SINGAPORE, Oct. 16 (Xinhua) -- Singapore’s Minister of State in the Ministry of National Development and Ministry of Manpower (MOM) Zaqy Mohamad announced the launch of several initiatives involving government and industry to help propel enterprises’ digitalization efforts further on Wednesday at the Future Economy Conference and Exhibition (FECE).
The first initiative is a partnership between Singapore Business Federation (SBF) and Workforce Singapore, a statutory board under the MOM, to scale the development of strategic Human Resource and job redesign capabilities to encourage the adoption of technology solutions by manufacturing enterprises.
The second initiative is a Digital Acceleration Index self-diagnostic tool to help companies understand where they are in their digital transformation journey and provide actionable insights. The third one is the Digital Platforms in a Digital Economy, which is a white paper by Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) to help business leaders understand platform business models and the role companies can play in the platform economy.
The Minister of State also witnessed the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between SBF and the Institute of Systems Science at the National University of Singapore (NUS-ISS) to deliver a series of digital competency training courses to SBF members to provide companies with the skills and knowledge required for digital transformation.
This year’s FECE is the third edition of the SBF-organized event. It aims at exploring how technology is changing the way business is conducted, how jobs will change as a result and how there should be stronger linkages between technology adoption, job redesign and worker reskilling. Representatives from some 800 companies participated in the event, according to the organizer.
SBF chairman Teo Siong Seng said when delivering the welcome address that Singapore’s companies need to press on with business transformation and invest in both technology and their workers, to brace short-term headwinds and to thrive in the future.
“The government, together with businesses, unions and workers need to collaborate closely to enable industry transformation so Singapore can stay ahead of the competition,” he added in a press release sent by SBF.
The FECE comes this year together with two other events. They are the IMDA’s SG: D Industry Day and the FUTR Asia Summit organized by the FUTR Group.
Teo said that it is the first time for the SBF to join hands with IMDA and FUTR to help enterprises with their digitalization efforts, and “the three events will underscore the importance of digital transformation across various industry sectors, and showcase how companies can prepare for technological disruption.”
