

Singapore's Smart Nation Minister - ValentineC
http://www.futuregov.asia/articles/6488-exclusive-interview-singapores-smart-nation-minister

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balsam
''Vivian is both a hacker and a dabbler – He used to be an eye surgeon but
since he does not get to operate on eyes nowadays, he dabbles in building
simple robots, assembling watches, wireless devices and programming apps. His
day job is to be the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, and so
when he builds apps, he uses the real time APIs generated by the Ministry.
That’s called user-testing. I used to enjoy this; it is a long time since I’ve
done anything. The last programme I wrote was a Sudoku solver in C++ several
years ago, so I’m out of date. My children are in IT, two of them – both
graduated from MIT. One of them browsed a book and said, “Here, read this”. It
said “Haskell – learn you a Haskell for great good”, and one day that will be
my retirement reading. ''

[0] [http://www.pmo.gov.sg/mediacentre/transcript-speech-prime-
mi...](http://www.pmo.gov.sg/mediacentre/transcript-speech-prime-minister-lee-
hsien-loong-founders-forum-smart-nation-singapore)

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frankchn
Might be the first time Haskell is mentioned in a speech by a head of state or
head of government anywhere in the world.

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j_lev
Singapore's sovereign wealth funds Temasek and to a lesser extent GSIC have
been going on a bit of a tech buying spree in recent months. If you're a tech
startup in the region looking for funding these guys would be your first port
of call.

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andrewfong
> However, the government also is concerned that this democratisation of
> publishing could cause greater tensions in its society. “We get it that
> something fundamental has changed. At the same time, we don’t accept that
> freedom of expression is the ultimate value,” the Minister says.

> Balakrishnan notes that “reactionary governments” tend to try to shut these
> sites down, “which doesn’t work”. Others “just ignore it, which also doesn’t
> work”. The Minister explains that “what I believe, and it has been
> strengthened by my experience in the week in which Lee Kuan Yew passed away,
> is to get the silent majority to step up. Suddenly you realise the tone,
> even of hitherto raucous, noisy, critical, cynical, gets altered. So the
> answer is not to reject those technologies or posts, but to mobilise real
> people to express real views on the basis of data and accuracy.”

While it's concerning that Singapore assigns a relatively low value to free
speech and minority viewpoints, it's also refreshing to see someone in
government recognize that the solution to unfavorable speech isn't censorship,
but more speech.

~~~
digitalzombie
Singapore for the uninformed have always been Authoritarian democracy.

A hybrid between Authoritarian and Democracy.

While it may looks negatively in many western worlds, it seems to be working
for Singapore. And from what I've read their citizens are very well educated
and their officials aren't all lawyers, they are far more educated than US
politicians.

> unfavorable speech isn't censorship, but more speech.

They're probably going to some how have their own government sponsor speech to
counter online speech from what I've gathered. It's seem like the implicit
thing the dude implying, where his government will get these unvoiced people
to talk about online articles and judge how true it is.

~~~
crdoconnor
>While it may looks negatively in many western worlds, it seems to be working
for Singapore.

The things that work in Singapore are as follows:

* Public housing (90% of the country lives in public housing projects and they are all high quality).

* Unapologetic Keynesian macroeconomic management -- when unemployment is edging higher, they might decide to build a new airport terminal. When inflation bumps a little high, they won't. No bullshit about debt ceilings.

* Mercantilist trade policy (similar to Germany, Taiwan, Japan, SK and Germany) - suppression of the value of their currency in order to give their exports a boost. Not used as much any more, but it built their industrial base.

* Intelligent city planning - development policy that is people centric rather than market centric.

Things that don't work:

* Authoritarianism - a culture of authoritarianism it's not just bad for people, it's bad for business. It's particularly bad for the software development process, because it hampers creativity and fosters slavish behavior (it's not just the government that is authoritarian).

* No minimum wage / pathetic levels of unemployment benefits / pension benefits - that's a feature if you _own_ a company. It's a bug if you earn a wage (even a non-minimum wage). You don't see many beggars in Singapore. You do see 85 year old women collecting bottles for recycling and selling tissues.

* Mandatory 2 year military service - doing useless crap for two years won't help the country if Indonesia decides it wants to invade. Again, fosters slavish behavior (possibly a feature if you own the right kind of company).

* Restricted freedom of speech - that's a feature if you run a government, otherwise it's a bug. No, it doesn't help with racial harmony and it never did, despite the government's protestations. Neither does it have any impact on economic growth.

