Singapore — an ‘ intelligent island ’ : moving from vision to reality with information technology

Information technology (IT) is increasingly becoming important not only for businesses but also for countries to remain competitive in the global economy. In Singapore, the first national IT plan was formulated in 1986 and the IT2000 vision was launched in 1992. Since then, many IT projects have been initiated to bring Singapore closer to achieving its vision of becoming an ‘intelligent island’ by the turn of the century. This paper examines the development of national IT plans as well as the most recent initiative called Singapore ONE (One Network for Everyone) project that aims to wire up Sing-apore to create a national information infrastructure (NII). Singapore ONE will deliver IT applications and services to every sector of the economy. Implications from the Singapore experience in national IT planning, which serve as important lessons to both developed and developing countries, are discussed.