As part of the Singapore government’s objective to harness the capabilities of commercial cloud computing platforms to governmental systems, many public sector agencies are migrating their IT systems to the Government Commercial Cloud (GCC). Government agencies can use commercial clouds to incorporate advanced functionality into their digital services thanks to the GCC, which eliminates the need for them to set up their own data centres.
Agencies require a reliable and secure data management platform that allows for quick migration to the GCC, high data quality and managed data access for users. As a result, choosing the correct data strategy and the long-term platform is even more crucial in their migration to the GCC. In light of this, Singapore’s Government Technology Agency (GovTech) is upgrading the Government Commercial Cloud (GCC) service to make it easier for government agencies to manage and safeguard their use of public cloud services.
According to Kevin Ng, Director of Core Operations Development Environment and Exchange at GovTech, the upgraded service, dubbed GCC 2.0, boasts enhancements in user onboarding and security, among other areas. Speaking at the virtual conference, Ng said the enhancements are being made in response to feedback from GCC users and the learnings that GovTech has gleaned from managing the service. The change in mindset about cloud as code and software, rather than a distinct form of on-premise hardware infrastructure, is the foundation for GCC 2.0’s advancements.
“Today we still think of a cloud as a piece of hardware. We still like to review our architecture diagrams, but it’s also useful to put this architecture into code and deploy it,” said Goh. “And if it is incorrect, let’s tear it down and redeploy again. We no longer need to be constrained by the art of planning in a waterfall manner.”
According to GovTech, the government has around 600 systems on the cloud and is on track to have 70% of eligible systems on the cloud by the end of the year. A good chance for individuals and businesses, as well as the addition of new public services.
In addition, GovTech is making things easier with TechPass, a single sign-on service that gives users access to cloud management portals, public cloud services, and engineering tools in the Singapore Government Technology Stack (SGTS), a compendium of shared software and infrastructure services for quickly developing and testing new applications.
TechPass is part of the Seed security suite, which combines the concept of zero trust with other parts of cloud-based access restrictions to create a secure endpoint device platform. Only secure and authorised devices will be able to develop and manage government cloud apps due to this.
OpenGov Asia reported that the official opening of a Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (DS&AI) Lab was recently announced with the support of the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB). Singapore’s IT manufacturer and Nanyang Technological University’s (NTU) collaborated to enhance local DS&AI education, empowering students with the tech tools and skills needed to inspire a brighter future.
The Lab will put together the IT firm’s cutting-edge deep-learning technology with NTU’s global strengths in artificial intelligence and data science, allowing local data scientists and AI experts to pioneer the development of meaningful AI solutions in important industries. According to NTU, the Lab was still in the planning stages in 2018, and roughly 150 NTU students enrolled in the Bachelor of Science in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence programme have benefited from the Lab’s resources since then.
These undergraduates attended lessons at the Lab and used the IT company’s sponsored servers to access computing capabilities for their projects and other activities. This effort also aims to help Singapore’s AI programme and its transition to Industry 4.0.
