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EXCLUSIVE OpenGov Asia Breakfast Insight – Making Digital Transformation a Reality: Are You Ready?

Distinguished participants at the OpenGov Breakfast Insight: Making Digital Transformation a Reality – Are you Ready?

Organisations across different sectors are rapidly transitioning to cloud platforms as a business-critical strategy. Cloud is, without doubt, the linchpin to digital transformation. Not merely a cost-saving mechanism, it is critical to deployment of innovative and disruptive applications such as the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics and automation.

Benefits of Cloud

The public sector, always needing to be current and future-ready, moves to cloud infrastructure because it resolves age-old challenges of data storage and alleviates pressing concerns like data management, analytics and security. Moreover, it allows governments to save time and money.

From a citizen point of view, users benefit from the significant reduction in errors, duplication and even oversight.

Above all these, cloud services have the potential to deliver seamless services, thereby raising citizen satisfaction.

The Singapore Government model

As an early adopter and an aspiring leader in digital transformation, the Singapore Government is expected to move most of its IT systems to commercial cloud services over the next five years.

This is part of ongoing efforts to deliver citizen services more efficiently, at the same time, reducing the costs required to deliver them.

One of the government’s key multi-cloud enabled approaches is to utilise data hubs that support seamless integration between cloud services and providers.

Discussing Cloud

Public sectors continuously explore strategies for the betterment of their respective departments and a great way to determine available options is through collaborative learning.

Learning from other agencies and understanding their journey can save a lot of time, energy and resources.

On 17th January 2019, senior executives from a wide range of key public sector agencies in Singapore gathered for an insightful discussion on the innovative and practical ways of leveraging cloud to procure, design and deliver services seamlessly while striking a balance between security, accessibility and usability.

OpenGov Asia’s Breakfast Insight: Making Digital Transformation a Reality – Are you Ready? gave delegates the opportunity to learn, discuss and share challenges associated with cloud migration.

The discussion focused on how they can fully utilise their cloud infrastructure, deriving benefits from its efficiencies and economies of scale.

Mohit Sagar, Group Managing Director and Editor-in-Chief, OpenGov Asia

Mohit Sagar, Group Managing Director and Editor-in-Chief of OpenGov Asia, set the tone of the day by speaking about cloud being the enabler of digital transformation and how cloud-based infrastructure is key to delivering flexible, agile, and on-demand access to the services.

Mohit reminded the delegates that digital transformation is not a buzzword but a key word. Cloud deployment is critical and instrumental in accelerating these digital efforts.

He stressed the importance of data classification and the criticality of having educated teams equipped with the required skill sets to guarantee success.

Matthias Zastrow, Senior Director Software Sales & VMware APJ, Dell EMC

Matthias Zastrow, Senior Director Software Sales & VMware APJ, Dell EMC, created the context for discussion by sharing his European experience. He shed light on some of the challenges faced by the German government in its infrastructural projects.

Consolidation of data centres, according to him, does not equate to modernisation as it is more akin to housekeeping. Governments need to set a different and bold course to innovation and modernisation.

He complimented the Singapore government for its efficient procedures, using his efficient and seamless experience of obtaining an employment pass as a positive example.

Cheong Yen Niap, Go to Market Lead – Cloud Services, Singtel

Taking the discussion forward was Cheong Yen Niap, Go to Market Lead – Cloud Services, Singtel, who spoke about cloud being the platform and the fundamental enabler of beneficial citizen services.

Emphasis was given on collaboration and partnerships in ensuring the success and agility of these projects.

Yen urged agencies to explore how they access, secure, manage, integrate and govern across hybrid environments.

Bas Wilson, Chief Technology Officer, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Australia

International expert speaker, Bas Wilson, Chief Technology Officer from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Australia, shared an inside preview of the Australian government’s monumental journey of building digital platforms, utilising cloud infrastructure, challenges they encountered and the road ahead via a teleconference.

The key take-away for the Australia journey was that there is no getting it right the first time.

Australia, according to him, is concerned with classification and jurisdiction. The offering in the country is not as rich and the cultural challenges are more real.

Risks Involved

Successful implementation meant getting agencies and security officers to understand it as a risk analysis.

An agency in Australia, for instance, had their database compromised. Later on, they discovered that the compromised data was actually published data.

This reinforces the need to consider data classification, access and jurisdiction beforehand.

Government agencies are reluctant to risk, especially with the added dimensions of culture and skill sets playing a major part.

Road Ahead

However, Bas opined that on-premises are no longer an option, stressing that the move to cloud is a must.

Large legacy migrations entail a lift and shift scenario wherein the need to scale the migration is quick and requires a cloud-based SAAS approach.

The rise of DevOps is a major factor driving the move to a cloud-first approach.

Bas concluded by noting that there were a lot to learn from the Singapore government agencies and their approach toward a smart nation transformation.

Delegates of the OpenGov Breakfast Insight: Making Digital Transformation a Reality – Are you Ready? left the session with a far more comprehensive and pragmatic understanding of cloud migration.

They learned that ambitious plans have the potential to succeed only with supporting talent, right partnerships, and the continuous upgrading of skills and required technical tools.

The genuine sharing of real journeys, robust discussions and insightful interactions provided not only food for thought but a better idea for a way forward.

PARTNER

Qlik’s vision is a data-literate world, where everyone can use data and analytics to improve decision-making and solve their most challenging problems. A private company, Qlik offers real-time data integration and analytics solutions, powered by Qlik Cloud, to close the gaps between data, insights and action. By transforming data into Active Intelligence, businesses can drive better decisions, improve revenue and profitability, and optimize customer relationships. Qlik serves more than 38,000 active customers in over 100 countries.

PARTNER

CTC Global Singapore, a premier end-to-end IT solutions provider, is a fully owned subsidiary of ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation (CTC) and ITOCHU Corporation.

Since 1972, CTC has established itself as one of the country’s top IT solutions providers. With 50 years of experience, headed by an experienced management team and staffed by over 200 qualified IT professionals, we support organizations with integrated IT solutions expertise in Autonomous IT, Cyber Security, Digital Transformation, Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure, Workplace Modernization and Professional Services.

Well-known for our strengths in system integration and consultation, CTC Global proves to be the preferred IT outsourcing destination for organizations all over Singapore today.

PARTNER

Planview has one mission: to build the future of connected work. Our solutions enable organizations to connect the business from ideas to impact, empowering companies to accelerate the achievement of what matters most. Planview’s full spectrum of Portfolio Management and Work Management solutions creates an organizational focus on the strategic outcomes that matter and empowers teams to deliver their best work, no matter how they work. The comprehensive Planview platform and enterprise success model enables customers to deliver innovative, competitive products, services, and customer experiences. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, with locations around the world, Planview has more than 1,300 employees supporting 4,500 customers and 2.6 million users worldwide. For more information, visit www.planview.com.

SUPPORTING ORGANISATION

SIRIM is a premier industrial research and technology organisation in Malaysia, wholly-owned by the Minister​ of Finance Incorporated. With over forty years of experience and expertise, SIRIM is mandated as the machinery for research and technology development, and the national champion of quality. SIRIM has always played a major role in the development of the country’s private sector. By tapping into our expertise and knowledge base, we focus on developing new technologies and improvements in the manufacturing, technology and services sectors. We nurture Small Medium Enterprises (SME) growth with solutions for technology penetration and upgrading, making it an ideal technology partner for SMEs.

PARTNER

HashiCorp provides infrastructure automation software for multi-cloud environments, enabling enterprises to unlock a common cloud operating model to provision, secure, connect, and run any application on any infrastructure. HashiCorp tools allow organizations to deliver applications faster by helping enterprises transition from manual processes and ITIL practices to self-service automation and DevOps practices. 

PARTNER

IBM is a leading global hybrid cloud and AI, and business services provider. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Nearly 3,000 government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM’s hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM’s breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and business services deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM’s legendary commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.

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