I HAD A chance to talk to a visiting delegation of Singaporean information and technology (ICT) experts when they presented to a local audience composed of local ICT practitioners who are mostly chief information officers (CIOs).
Since they talked about Singapore as a “smart city”, I asked them what was new about that, because I knew that many years ago; Singapore was already proclaiming itself as an “intelligent island”. I knew that early on, Singapore was already a connected city, having laid the fiber that was needed to bring about a digital city.
Yes, you can call it what you like, an island or a city, but in political terms, Singapore is really a city state, perhaps the best there is, somewhat in the league of Vatican City.
The speaker from Singapore smiled, perhaps proud of what they have done in the past, but then he became humble enough to admit that even if they have installed the hardware to become an intelligent city, their software still lacked the “soul” to make it really intelligent, perhaps in his own understanding of what that term really meant.
I get sentimental whenever comparisons are made between Singapore and the Philippines. I remember when we were the ones teaching Singapore about computer policy and technology, by way of our National Computer Center (NCC). At that time, scores of delegations were coming from the National Computer Board (NCB) of Singapore, wanting to learn from NCC.
Moving fast forward many years later, the NCB evolved into the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) of Singapore, as a result of their strategy to move towards the convergence of ICT with music and film, among others. Eventually, it was the IDA that was already sharing its knowledge with the NCC, indeed an unexpected twist.
Looking back now, it seems that Singapore did not really have that much edge over us, except that they were more consistent and persistent in their moves towards being more and more advanced in ICT. Consistency and persistence are apparently two characteristics that are hard to come by in our part of the world, perhaps as scarce as political will.
On the upside, we could say on the other hand that all along and up to now, we have always had the “soul” that Singapore is still looking for up to now. Singapore might have the edge over us in terms of money and technology, but we will always be ahead of them in being a warmer perhaps being also a happier people.
In spite of the highly technical nature of the Singaporean presentation, it became apparent to me that the focus was more on the wellbeing and happiness of their people, rather than on the soundness of their technologies.
I got that same impression when I attended a technology presentation by a British delegation about a month ago, wherein I sensed that it was really their loving and caring approach that drove them to develop public services that would make people happier than they used to be.
For more than thirty years now, in various capacities, I have gained many experiences in formulating policies that would enable the application of technologies for the public good. I have realized, however, that for the most part, I faced the challenges of how to make computer systems work from the technical side, a relatively easy task I would say so myself.
All along however, I have not come across the challenge of adding “soul” to a system, unlike what the Singaporeans and the British are trying to do now.
Going back to the theoretical side, hardware and software are just inanimate objects that money could buy. What money could not buy is a profound love for people, the human beings that constitute the living society, being the same people that pay the taxes that make the government run.
That brings me back to the direction of policy, because it is public policy that dictates how technology should be used. It is really difficult to depart from the theoretical side, but let us just say for now that our love for our people, and not our fascination for technologies would lead us towards building intelligent cities.
Looking now at the long term, I would say that eventually, an intelligent city should have a lower poverty rate, and even among those who would still remain poor, there should be a higher happiness index.
I am just being realistic, because poverty has always been with mankind from the beginning of civilization, and it is difficult to imagine that it would be eventually completely eradicated. What is imaginable, however, is the possibility that technology would become the equalizing factor in an intelligent city, meaning that both the rich and the poor would have equal access to the same quality of public services, services that are more loving and caring./PN
