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The five Ss: Enabling future-readiness 

14 Nov 2021

By Garrett Ilg Which critical issues are keeping government planners and policymakers up at night? Hindering many of them from catching their ZZZs are pressing concerns about future readiness, underpinned by the SSSSSs: smart cities, startups, skilling, sustainability, and security. As public and private-sector players take on all five of those socioeconomic challenges, a common factor in their success is their ability to collect, manage, and analyse massive amounts of data safely, responsibly, and to maximum effect. Let’s take a closer look at all five.  Smart cities: My home base of Singapore is at the forefront of confronting all of those data-driven priorities under the framework of its world-renowned Smart Nation initiative, applying a “digital first” mandate to healthcare, transportation, safety, financing, career-assistance, and other public services.  The Oracle cloud region in Singapore reinforces the city-state’s status as a regional hub for a variety of cloud-centric businesses. One such company, Singapore-based APL Logistics, is building its business across the region on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), giving it – and its supply chain partners and customers – visibility into every stage of a shipment’s journey, from order to delivery. Elsewhere in Asia Pacific, in the Philippines, the city of Baguio built a registration system and mobile application on OCI to track residents and interstate visitors during the Covid-19 pandemic, protecting the health of almost 360,000 people while supporting the reopening of the local economy.  The main goal of such public-private initiatives is to enhance the quality, efficiency, and accessibility of a range of services, boosting economic growth and improving the quality of people’s lives. Startups: Our second S, startups, are the seedlings of vibrant growth, fundamental to building a resilient economy. Startups keep established players on their toes, while the savviest ones turn into tomorrow’s market leaders and large-scale employers.  Government planners and policymakers play an important role in fertilising that soil. In the Asia Pacific region, the latest World Bank rankings put New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Korea at No. one, two, three, and five worldwide when it comes to setting regulations favourable to starting and operating businesses. Skilling: Half of all current workers worldwide will need to be reskilled by 2025, according to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2020. Nowhere is that need more acute than in the Asia Pacific region, which faces a shortage of almost 50 million STEM and other workers across all sectors. The onus is on companies to train workers and on governments to expand their education programs. That imperative is especially critical now that economies are starting to emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic, which pushed digitalisation and automation forward at a more rapid pace, creating an unprecedented reliance on digital skills.  Sustainability: Taken as a whole, environmental sustainability is the biggest socio-economic challenge of our time. It is everyone’s business – governments, companies, and individuals working together, one initiative at a time. We as a planetary collective are starting to make progress, with the help of a variety of advanced data technologies. Consider Okinawa Electric Power, one of several utilities across Japan using AI-based software to provide hundreds of thousands of customers with timely data on how to reduce their energy usage, helping the country reach its goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 46% by 2030. Startup AgroScout has developed machine learning software that analyses images taken by drones flying over crop fields, letting farmers identify diseases and pests so they can treat the problems quickly – or avoid spraying chemicals where there isn’t a problem. Indian co-operative IFFCO analyses a massive amount of data in developing its eco-friendly “nano-technology” fertiliser, capable of cutting use of conventional chemical fertilisers in half while raising crop outputs. Starting to bring accountability to people’s and institutions’ best intentions are chief sustainability officers (CSOs), now a fixture at most major corporations and federal, state, and municipal governments.  However, as Oracle CSO Jon S. Chorley reminded readers in a recent Forbes column: “Changing a system that has worked so well for so long for so many will not be easy, and there will not be a single answer. It will require behavior change, policy and regulatory change, business model change, and technological change.” Security: One of the most sleep-depriving concerns of every government and private-sector leader I talk with is our fifth S, security. Information security is now a top national defence and board-level priority, not just an IT organisation one, as reports of state-sponsored and profit-motivated breaches dominate the headlines.  In a recent panel discussion, former US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called cybersecurity “the battlefield of the future,” adding: “It also happens to be the battlefield of the present.”  If your institution’s most important data remains in your own data centres rather than in the cloud regions of one or more third-party providers, there’s little chance you’ll be able to keep up with the well-financed nation-states and profiteers that are after those valuable assets. That is, unless you’re prepared to hire some of the world’s most astute security pros and devote considerable financial resources to that massive DIY project – something very few companies and even governments can do. Leave information security to the experts.  


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