Singapore’s investment in ICT to benefit SMEs
- Claire Lee
- Topics: Digital Transformation, Home Page - News, News, Singapore
The Singapore government has set aside S$3.8 billion (US$2.73 billion) for ICT expenditure in FY2022, with 80% of these contracts open to SMEs.
SMEs will be able to secure these contracts through streamlined procurement efforts, which will improve their access to government ICT tender opportunities, said GovTech, a statutory board of the Government of Singapore.
As more cloud-based services and smaller system projects are put out, barriers of entry for SMEs are lowered as this would allow suppliers with a lower financial grading to bid, it highlighted.
The government’s spending on ICT this year marks an almost 10% rise year-on-year, and the bulk of it — S$2.7 billion (US$1.94 billion) — will be channelled towards transforming government digital services and re-engineering digital government infrastructure.
Altogether, it intends to embark on some 250 projects used by citizens and businesses.
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Surveys conducted in 2020 also reveal that citizen and business satisfaction with government digital services remained high, with 85% and 76% of respondents respectively indicating that they were very or extremely satisfied in the G2C (government-to-citizens) and G2B (government-to-business) services.
