The Economic Development Board (EDB), Enterprise Singapore and Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) have established Digital Industry Singapore (DISG) to better support and capitalise on the growth opportunities for the country’s technology sector.
The new joint office brings together 45 existing officers from EDB, Enterprise Singapore and IMDA, drawing upon and combining strengths in industry development, market access, capability development and policy formulation from the three agencies.
DISG will transform the way the Singapore government engages with the technology sector, as it serves as a single interface for the industry.
“DISG will seek to achieve our mission to establish Singapore as a global-Asia technology hub with deep capabilities, strong infrastructure and a vibrant ecosystem of local and global enterprises, from which new products, services, business models and partnerships are created for Asia and beyond,” said Kiren Kumar, chief digital industry officer of DISG.
The new office will build up both the consumer technology and enterprise technology segments. On the consumer technology front, it will assist companies to tap into the growing, mobile-first Asian market to capture opportunities in areas such as ride-hailing, e-commerce, fin tech and new media.
In enterprise technology, DISG will leverage Singapore’s established base of diverse industry sectors and ongoing investments to digitalise the economy to help companies build new solutions in areas such as cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, payments and cloud, that can scale globally from Singapore.
In collaboration with industry and relevant government agencies, DISG will co-create future-ready policies and guide investments in areas such as data, talent, trade and digital infrastructure.
These efforts, taken together, are expected to create up to 10,000 new jobs within the technology sector over the next three years.
Beyond technology roles in engineering, software and product development, DISG expects that jobs in other functions, such as finance, human resources, innovation and business development, will also be created.
To prepare Singaporeans for these frontier jobs, DISG will work closely with IMDA, the industry and local education institutions to implement training programmes and on-the job training. These training initiatives will cover areas such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, data science, network engineering, software development, user experience design and product management.
