Development of New Digital Identity System

Ms Tin Pei Ling asked the Prime Minister whether he can provide an update on the progress of the new digital identity system development in Singapore and how the Government intends to scale up on the use and applications of biometric elements.

Mr Speaker, Singaporeans have been increasing their volume of online transactions with both the Government and private companies. It is essential to have a secure digital identity system to protect the integrity of these transactions. Our current digital identity system relies on the SingPass with 2-Factor Authentication. The next step is to develop a mobile software token-based authentication system. We will also remove the inconvenience of repeatedly entering the same data on multiple forms by expanding the MyInfo service for more digital services. These will take place in the first half of 2018.

Beyond security and convenience, our larger goals include enhancing the efficiency of our enterprises and business processes. A fully functioning national identity system and e-payment platform will enable the delivery of more innovative services to a wider client base at lower cost. For example, there would be less need for counter services and the processing of paper forms. The National Digital Identity (NDI) will create opportunities for new business models.

To realise these outcomes, we need the public and private sectors to collaborate and to develop the appropriate industry standards. We have started consultations with several industry sectors, and plan to conduct trials for value-added services with the participation of companies. These services include digital signatures and document vaults. This will be developed in 2019.

We are also exploring various forms of biometric technologies, such as facial recognition, to enhance the security for identification, authentication and authorisation. We are particularly interested in form factors that make it convenient for the elderly, the young and the disabled to use and benefit from NDI. A Smart Nation must serve all segments of the population.

Mr Speaker, I have to declare that I am from a relevant industry, that is, the financial technology (fintech) industry. I would like to ask two quick questions. Firstly, with the increase in applications with biometric elements, how will this affect the current public services and systems, as they transition over? Secondly, may I ask whether some of the services or applications, such as PayNow, will be open to the private players to build on, such as through opening up of application programming interfaces (APIs)?

Mr Speaker, I thank Ms Tin for her questions. With respect to the first issue about the transition into biometric systems, for any of the transitions, we are not aiming for nor planning a complete cut-over. So, whatever solutions and processes that are in place, it will be a gradual phased transition. For any given platform, service, product or process, there is likely to be a transition phase where there will be multiple pathways. You should be able to use various ways to authenticate and verify identity. You will have that parallel process for some time. So, it will be a very phased transition. This will also allow us to make sure that whatever new solutions we put in place are robust, user-friendly, effective and we would be able to update the technology over time. It also requires us to put in place some discipline about how we design our solutions to make sure there is significant interoperability among the standards.

This feeds into the second question that Ms Tin asked. The various systems, including PayNow, are designed to be interoperable. We want that interoperability to extend into the private sector as far as possible. Private sector players would, of course, have to then comply with the various regulations that we impose. Effectively, it is in the private sector. The banks are private sector players and they are riding on PayNow.

So, we do expect and hope that more and more of our Smart Nation platforms will extend out from the public sector to the private sector.