Speech by Senior Minister of State Tan Kiat How at the Committee of Supply Debate 2025

1              Chairman, we want Singaporeans to benefit from good jobs, good wages and better work environments. To achieve these goals, our enterprises must be competitive amidst rapid digitalisation. We are building on a good foundation.

              a. The digital economy has grown at a compound annual growth rate of 11.2% from 2018 to 2023.

2              We are doing more to help our workers and enterprises ride the next wave of digitalisation, particularly in AI, through the National AI Strategy 2.0 (NAIS 2.0), and the Digital Enterprise Blueprint (DEB) launched last year.

KM1: Updates on National AI Strategy 2.0

3              Ms Tin Pei Ling and Mr Sharael Taha asked about the progress of NAIS 2.0.

4              We are seeing encouraging progress.

              a. Last year, more than 26 AI Centres of Excellence (CoEs) were set up to push the frontiers of AI innovation and use.

              i. For example, Lilly’s Digital Health Innovation Hub will accelerate research and development of AI-powered digital health technologies, helping doctors better understand patient needs and provide personalised care.

              ii. Another example in the financial services, Prudential’s global AI Lab incubates tools to enhance customer experience and improve staff efficiency. The Lab will also partner Institutes of Higher Learning to provide students with opportunities for hands-on-learning.

5              The Enterprise Compute Initiative (ECI) announced by Prime Minister in his Budget Speech will help anchor more CoEs in Singapore and support more innovative AI applications.

6              We are also seeing more organisations use AI for the Public Good.

              a. For example, NParks is exploring an AI application named KOEL built by participants of the Build For Good Hackathon to help with biodiversity surveys using bioacoustics. With KOEL, researchers can identify animal species from audio recordings, which can save thousands of man hours, increasing efficiency and accuracy.

              b. Another example is iFerret. It is an AI-enabled detection system deployed at Changi Airport to help keep our runways safe. In the past, daily manual inspections were needed. Now, staff can rely on around-the-clock automated scanning of foreign objects on our runways which enables them to remove these objects quickly.

Empowering enterprises to be smarter through adopting AI-enabled solutions

7              Ms Tin, Ms Jessica Tan, Mr Sharael and Ms Mariam Jaafar asked how we are assisting our enterprises, especially our SMEs, to benefit from AI.

8              Through initiatives such as the SMEs Go Digital Programme, we have helped about 100,000 SMEs since 2017, with 40,000 SMEs benefitting over the last 4 years.

              a. The share of SMEs adopting at least one digital solution for general business functions increased from 53% in 2020 to 84% in 2024. Very encouraging.

              b. On average, SMEs that adopted digital solutions under the Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG) between 2018 to 2023 reported cost savings of 48% per solution.

9              Mr Derrick Goh and Mr Christopher de Souza sent the gist of their cuts to us separately. They will be pleased to know that we are committed to accelerating AI adoption among SMEs.

              a. We are updating the Industry Digital Plans (IDPs) to include sector-specific AI tools and training. We have done so for the Retail, Security, Built Environment, Legal and Tourism sectors. We will update more IDPs this year, such as for the Food Services and Hotel sectors.

              b. In 2024, over 330,000 users accessed resources on the Chief Technology Officer (CTO)-as-a-Service platform, which helped almost 3,000 SMEs adopt AI-enabled solutions.

              i. Of the approximately 300 pre-approved solutions supported by PSG, about 30% of them are AI-enabled. About a third of them are AI-enabled.

              c. Last year, we launched the GenAI Sandbox, allowing SMEs to experiment with 13 GenAI solutions to improve their marketing and sales, and streamline customer engagement efforts.

              i. One of the over 150 participants is AHA Inspiration, a health and wellness service platform provider. By integrating a GenAI chatbot into its website and mobile application, AHA’s employees can now handle customer inquiries almost twice as fast as before while providing more personalised customer service.

              ii. AHA Inspiration is just one of the 120 SMEs that continued using the GenAI solutions after the three-month sandbox period. Our experience with the Sandbox reinforced the importance of providing opportunities for SMEs to discover the value of GenAI through experimentation.

              d. Building on this success, IMDA launched GenAI Sandbox 2.0 with 14 solutions in December last year to support a wider range of GenAI solutions in areas such as Generative Web Design, enabling SMEs to create websites using prompts. SMEs can also try GenAI tools for HR operations to create job descriptions and schedule interviews more efficiently.

              e. If these GenAI solutions prove useful, we intend to add them to the list of pre-approved solutions so that all SMEs can benefit. 

              f. We also received feedback that it could be useful for the Sandbox to offer sector-specific solutions. IMDA is happy to work with interested sector leads and industry associations on curating these solutions.

10              Besides broad-based support for all SMEs, we are tapping on the capabilities of tech giants through the GenAI x Digital Leaders (GenAI x DL) programme to accelerate GenAI adoption among the more digitally mature enterprises. These enterprises may require customised solutions that off-the-shelf products do not fully address.

              a. To date, over 120 enterprises have used resources provided by tech giants and their partners. A quarter of them are working to build and deploy these solutions.

              b. Take for example iHub Solutions, a third-party logistics service provider. iHub’s employees grappled with high volumes of ad-hoc requests for reports. The time taken to manually create these reports hindered efficiency, and reports were often error prone.

              c. During the programme, iHub leveraged expertise of tech partners to develop a report generation tool using AI. With this tool, iHub’s employees can create reports automatically using simple prompts, reducing the time spent on these reports by half. iHub’s customers can also use it to derive real-time supply chain insights to inform their decisions.

              d. To seize opportunities to deploy GenAI solutions at scale, IMDA will expand the GenAI x DL partnerships to leverage tech partners’ new development tools and pre-packaged software modules to deploy solutions for common use cases more quickly. This is being piloted, and we will share more details when ready.

11              Ms Tin also asked how the Government can encourage more enterprises to adopt GenAI. We recognise that enterprises face different challenges in doing so.

12              Building on the experience and best practices of early adopters, IMDA will launch a GenAI Playbook for Enterprises catering to different stages of their digital maturity.

              a. For enterprises just starting to explore GenAI, the Playbook illustrates the benefits of GenAI through examples and offers resources on GenAI solutions for specific needs.

              b. For those deciding between buying off-the-shelf solutions and building proprietary ones, it provides an evaluation framework and information on associated risks to help them make informed choices.

              c. For digitally mature enterprises seeking more customised solutions, the Playbook provides insights on tech capabilities and partners needed to ensure successful implementation, alongside potential risk and governance considerations. So, the Playbook has something for all enterprises.

              d. Complementing the Playbook, IMDA will launch an online tool - the GenAI Navigator that recommends the right GenAI solution for specific business needs. The Navigator will also point to solutions with grant support and SSG-funded training that can help SMEs understand how to leverage GenAI for growth.

13              These tools will be available on the CTO-as-a-Service platform from today.

14              Chairman, please allow me to speak in Mandarin.

15              在政府的支持和推动下，已经有超过八成的中小企业成功赶上数码化的浪潮。这些企业来自各个领域，在业务中, 采用了至少一项数码方案，并获得了良好的成效。

              a. 许多企业也发现，人工智能能够帮助他们降低成本、提高效率，缓解成本上涨的压力。

              b. 在2018年到2023年之间，生产力提升计划下的数码解决方案，就为中小企业平均削减近一半的成本。

16              为了让更多企业受益，政府会为不同行业更新数码化蓝图，提供更多的人工智能解决方案。

17              同时，我们会推出新的指导手册和指南，向企业推荐适合他们的生成式人工智能工具和培训。

              a. 有兴趣的企业可以上首席科技官数码咨询服务平台了解详情。

18              人工智能的普及对我们的工作和生活，带来了巨大的影响。本地企业和员工只有跟得上脚步，才能保持竞争力，不被淘汰。

              a. 所以，我呼吁大家加快步伐，充分利用政府所提供的援助和资源，来提升数码能力。这样，我们才能把握科技发展所带来的机遇，并在竞争中脱颖而出。

Equipping enterprises to be safer by raising cyber security resilience

19              Chairman, as enterprises digitalise, they will be more exposed to cyber threats. Mr Sharael asked how we are helping our enterprises stay safe.

20              CSA’s SG Cyber Safe programme provides differentiated support for enterprises.

              a. As a baseline, CSA provides resources for various enterprise stakeholders, such as SME owners, employees and cybersecurity personnel.

              b. Enterprises looking to implement cybersecurity measures can refer to the Cyber Essentials and Cyber Trust certification marks, which were developed as national cybersecurity standards in 2022.

              c. To assist enterprises that need help with cybersecurity certification, CSA launched the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)-as-a-Service scheme in 2023. CISO-as-a-Service complements IMDA’s CTO-as-a-service scheme. It onboards cybersecurity consultants to help enterprises develop cybersecurity health plans to implement the preventive measures in Cyber Essentials.

              d. This has benefitted over 270 enterprises.

21              We will continue to do more to improve enterprise cyber hygiene standards.

              a. We aligned SMEs Go Digital with the Cyber Essentials mark last year. Under the pre-approved solutions, SMEs can now subscribe to an integrated package covering anti-malware, firewall and backup.

              b. We also required pre-approved solutions under SMEs Go Digital to meet minimum data protection and security controls standards.

              c. Going forward, CSA will expand Cyber Essentials and Cyber Trust in the first half of 2025 to cover the security of digital technologies like cloud and AI, keeping them relevant for the evolving digital landscape.

22              Besides uplifting standards, CSA will introduce a post-incident reporting and response function on CISO-as-a-Service.

              a. Cybersecurity incidents cannot be fully prevented. It is more important for enterprises to be resilient and recover from incidents.

              b. Under this new function, enterprises can approach their CISO-as-a-Service consultants to help contain and recover from cybersecurity incidents.

23              Members can refer to handout D1 for a summary of our enterprise digitalisation and cybersecurity efforts.

Conclusion

24              Sir, I will give an update till here, and answer questions later on.