OPENING REMARKS AT LAUNCH OF UNDP STRATEGIC ISSUES BRIEF “BUILDING DIGITAL FOUNDATIONS IN SMALL ISLANDS DIGITAL STATES 2.0: FROM DIGITAL PRESENCE TO DIGITAL UTILITY AND IMPACT”

Excellencies, Friends, 

1     Thank you for joining us at this launch of UNDP’s Strategic Issues Brief “Building Digital Foundations in Small Island Digital States 2.0: From Digital Presence to Digital Impact”. Let me begin by congratulating and thanking UNDP and the Global Centre for Technology, Innovation and Sustainable Development (GC-TISD) hosted in Singapore, for the analytical depth of the brief. Singapore is proud to support this work. The SIDS digital agenda is one of the most consequential conversations on technology and development at the UN today. 

2     The brief makes a simple argument. The last decade has been about getting people, governments, and services online. The next decade has to be about something harder — ensuring that what is online actually works, is trusted, and is used. The brief calls this the move from digital presence to digital utility. I would put it more directly: digital infrastructure that does not translate into impact is not infrastructure. It is overhead. For SIDS, this is not an academic distinction. It maps onto the realities we live with every day. 

3     Let’s think about these realities.

·  Remoteness collapses when a citizen can complete a service end-to-end without needing to fly to their capital or another island. 

·  Access to international capital markets depends on trustworthy registries, identity systems, and audit trails that others can verify. 

·  The credibility of public service delivery depends on digital channels reducing the burden on citizens, rather than adding new ones.

·  And climate resilience depends, very concretely, on whether the identity, civil registration, and payment systems that underpin disaster response continue to function when a storm makes landfall. Vanuatu’s experience, captured in this brief, speaks directly to that point. 

4     What the brief makes clear is that the constraints are institutional. Fragmented data, weak coordination, thin delivery teams, low trust, procurement frameworks that lag the technology, and a lack of continuity. 

5     The brief sets out three reinforcing pillars: data governance and interoperability; digital inclusion and human capacity; and cyber resilience treated as a public good. Singapore’s contribution to this conversation — through Singpass, ScamShield, and the ASEAN-Singapore Cybersecurity Centre of Excellence — is offered in that spirit. Not as a model for replication, but as reference points for SIDS that have to build systems they can govern, maintain, and trust over the long term. 

6     SIDS are already leading on this agenda. Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Timor-Leste, the Dominican Republic, Vanuatu, Fiji, and the OECS — the brief is full of examples that other regions, including ours, can learn from. 

7     Singapore’s remains committed. We will continue to partner with UNDP and with SIDS to put practical tools, training, and convening capacity behind the foundations this brief describes. And we will continue to make the case that responsible digital foundations are not a sectoral issue. They are a development imperative. 

8     I look forward to hearing from my fellow SIDS Ambassadors here today. Thank you.

.   .   .   .   .