How Singapore Transformed from Physical to Digital Identity Successfully

BEHIND THE SCENES: Transforming from “Physical Me” to “Digital Me”

DOMINIC CHAN

Member, SCS Director, National Digital Identity, GovTech

Digital identity is a cornerstone of digitalisation. It empowers users to identify themselves when transacting in the digital realm. Naturally, National Digital Identity systems have to be inclusive and accessible for all residents. Our National Digital Identity system – Singpass – is no exception. It needs to serve everyone.

Although I have always known this, I took it for granted until over a year ago when I came to lead the National Digital Identity (NDI) team. From my vantage point, Singapore’s success in transforming from physical to digital identity is no coincidence, but a culmination of various calibrated moves.

Singapore has an advantage with an existing national registration system that records every birth and death in Singapore,

and every immigration and emigration in and out of the country. This provides a strong foundation for Singpass. However, we did not start by telling our citizens that we were introducing a national-level digital identity.

EMBEDDING VALUE INTO EVERY SOLUTION

Our journey which began almost twenty years ago set out to solve problems that everyone was facing. Singpass was designed to be a unified Identity and Access Management (IAM) system for the government so that citizens no longer need to grapple with multiple credentials when they interact with government agencies digitally. This created tremendous value for Singaporeans.

Subsequently in 2016, the NDI team introduced Myinfo, a platform that provides verifiable credentials to the appointed receiving party. The product focused on supporting the “tell-usonce” principle. Instead of updating multiple government agencies about personal data changes like residential addresses, citizens only needed to inform one government agency, and other agencies they have provided consent to would automatically have access to the updated information.

Committed to the mission of making lives better, the product was enhanced incrementally with useful and userfriendly features. One such iteration resulted in the extension of Myinfo to Myinfo business, which enables digital forms to be pre-filled with data from verified government sources such as corporate profile, financial performance and ownership information. This helped users to save time and organisations to ensure information accuracy.

BUILDING TRUST IN THE SYSTEM EVERY STEP OF THE WAY

Thanks to trust in the system, adoption became easier along the way. Trust is vital for digital identity to achieve its intended purpose because users need to trust that their digital identity is secure and cannot be easily stolen. That is why the NDI team continuously reviews Singpass’ security posture to ensure that it remains relevant and is capable of defending itself in the evolving threat landscape. Scam incidents dominate the reported crimes in Singapore last year. To keep scammers at bay, the NDI team works in close collaboration with users and relevant agencies, studying the scammers’ modus operandi and setting up countermeasures. Educating users on how to spot a phishing site is one such measure.

ENSURING CONTINUED RELEVANCE TO EACH AND EVERY USER

Security aside, a high level of service availability is equally important to ensure that users can assert their digital identity when needed. For the NDI team, this means that we need to interoperate seamlessly with an ecosystem of reliable partners and data providers. This goes beyond government transactions to encompass private sector services when businesses tap on Singpass’ suite of open-sourced application programming interfaces (APIs). With Singpass, users should be able to enjoy enhanced experience and efficiency for both government and private sector engagements.

To enable this, the NDI team is relentless about making Singpass easy to use. The NDI team applies design thinking to understand user needs as well as test and improve features iteratively so that they become more intuitive. The number of required clicks and steps taken to complete transactions is scrutinised and reduced where logically possible.

That’s not all. In multiracial Singapore, the Singpass app is made available in all vernacular languages – Chinese, Malay and Tamil – even when the non-English speaking population in Singapore is small. The app is also equipped with various accessibility options such as Apple Voiceover and Android Talkback, enabling visually impaired users to navigate the app.

ENHANCING ITS INTEROPERABILITY WITH OTHER SYSTEMS

From time to time, the NDI team receives enquiries from peers in other countries about whether they can replicate Singpass for use in their jurisdictions. As eager as we are to share the Singapore Singpass story, each country has a unique landscape and set of challenges. Therefore, digital identity systems that work in one country may not deliver the same set of outcomes in another.

Since every country and region is different, it is a given that the landscape of digital identity will continue to proliferate. Some will be centrally run by government, while others will be supported by private sector players. But no matter what, these identity systems have to interoperate with one another like a mesh ecosystem.

Singapore may be an island, but our economy is not. In an increasingly borderless world where users expect seamless experiences, it is important that Singpass interoperates well with different digital identity systems and supports cross-border use cases like international digital identities or passports. The NDI team has covered close to the total addressable market with our large user base, but we need to keep abreast of such developments in order to strengthen Singapore’s position as the linchpin in the digital economy.

DID YOU KNOW

Singpass is Singapore’s National Digital Identity system. Led and owned by the Singapore government, 97% of eligible Singaporeans and Singapore Permanent Residents (PRs) currently use Singpass – one of the highest adoption rates in the world.