Second Committee

STATEMENT BY MR JEREMIAH LO, DELEGATE TO THE 65TH SESSION OF THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY ON AGENDA ITEM 17, ON INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGIES FOR DEVELOPMENT, SECOND COMMITTEE, 26 OCTOBER 2010

Chairman

1. Information and communications technologies, or ICT, provide a very positive source of leverage for the development process. In this regard, I would like to share three thoughts on this issue.

First, ICT aids connectivity, synergy and collaboration for both the private and public sectors, within countries, regions and across the world.

2. For businesses, access to good communication platforms and information about supply and demand situations, opportunities and risks, both within and beyond their borders, enhances their prospects for growth and probability of success.

3. For the public sector, ICT provides a platform for a whole-of-government approach, allowing various parts of government to synergise and make full use of the potential within their systems.

4. Singapore believes in adopting ICT as a key enabler to enhance Singapore's economic competitiveness. The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, or IDA, works with both public and private organisations to spearhead the strategic use of ICT in the various sectors such as education, healthcare, manufacturing, logistics, tourism, transport, entertainment and finance.

5. IDA also works with other public agencies to increase the reach and richness of e-Government services. Today, about 1,600 public sector services are available online. Furthermore, IDA is driving efforts to make these services available on mobile platforms to enable users to transact with the Government while on the move.

6. Beyond the business and government sectors, IDA is developing initiatives to encourage the less ICT savvy to enrich their lives through adopting ICT and using ICT in a more sophisticated way. This includes providing assistance to low income households, senior citizens and people with disabilities to acquire computers and get connected to the Internet.

Second, ICT has a longer-term benefit of enhancing the education of future generations.

7. Substantive use of ICT can widen the spectrum of knowledge available to both teachers and students. They no longer need to be limited to the words and pictures between the pages of books. They can now, with a few mouse clicks, not only access unprecedented amounts of information, but also think about and organise and re-organise that information in multiple ways, depending on their respective needs.

8. Such processes also allow a greater possibility of minds being broadened through exposure to a wider variety of ideas and opinions. Both levels of positive impact have implications for the type of people countries will produce in the future. ICT can help in the process of producing people who have an instinct to be connected, to seek to understand and sympathise with people from different backgrounds.

9. Singapore's third Masterplan for ICT in Education (2009-2014) represents a continuum of the vision of the first and second Masterplans i.e. to enrich and transform the learning environments of our students and equip them with the critical competencies and dispositions to succeed in a knowledge economy. The third Masterplan includes four broad strategies:

(i) Strengthening integration of ICT into curriculum, assessment & pedagogy: There will be greater alignment of students' learning outcomes in the syllabi, national examinations and classroom experience to 21st century skills such as IT skills and the ability to communicate persuasively and collaborate effectively. Students will be required to use ICT to look for information, synthesise reports, give feedback on each others' work and collaborate with peers within and outside school.
(ii) Differentiated professional development: This involves creating the environment for teachers to reflect and learn from each other about effective teaching practices that incorporate ICT use in the classrooms to achieve desired learning outcomes for their students.
(iii) Improving the sharing of best practices and successful innovations: This involves the establishment of a network of educational labs where innovations can be prototyped and tested. These labs will provide the latest technologies to promote exploration of learning possibilities. They can also serve as training ground for pre- and in-service teachers.
(iv) Enhancing ICT provisions: Accessibility of ICT to students will be increased through more flexible and mobile infrastructure provisions such as wireless Internet access, piloting 1-notebook-to-1-pupil ratio in more schools and higher data bandwidth to the Internet.

Third, having experienced for itself the benefits that ICT brings to development, Singapore has been making a deliberate effort to share what it has learned with other members of the international community

10. Our efforts to share our ICT lessons occur primarily under the umbrella Singapore Cooperation Programme, or SCP, which is Singapore's main channel of sharing with other developing countries the technical and systems skills that Singapore has learned and acquired over the years. SCP is grounded in the philosophy that if we give a man a fish, he will eat for a day, but if we teach a man to fish, he will eat for the rest of his life. Since 1992, the SCP has organised training programmes for over 70,000 participants from 169 countries in various areas including Economic Development, Education, Environmental Management, Public Administration, Governance, and ICT.

11. In the area of ICT alone, over 7,700 officials from developing countries have been trained through more than 570 training courses, workshops and study visits conducted under the SCP. The majority of these training programmes are conducted bilaterally by Singapore under the SCP Training Awards and the Small Island Developing States Technical Cooperation (SIDSTEC) programme. Under the SCP's Initiative for ASEAN Integration framework, we also organise IT training programmes regularly at our four training centres in Southeast Asia.

12. Apart from organising our own programmes, the SCP has also conducted joint ICT training courses under our Third Country Training Programmes (TCTPs) with country partners including Japan, Korea, China, Denmark, Germany, Norway and Thailand, and partners in the UN system such as the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) to conduct ICT training courses benefitting participants from Asia, the Pacific Islands, Africa, the Middle East, East Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. Collectively, we are able to do more and offer greater breadth in coverage and depth in expertise.

Chairman

13. Singapore became independent in 1965 and we benefited from the help that other countries gave to us. As a country with very limited resources, we are acutely aware of the important leverage that ICT can provide to the process of development. With these driving factors, Singapore is committed to doing our part as a responsible global citizen and sharing our knowledge, expertise and experience in ICT with fellow countries.

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