GovTech Director for Singapore’s Government on Commercial Cloud will speak at GovInsider’s upcoming session

Moving to the cloud is like shifting houses, and just as shifting houses is the best time to upgrade appliances, moving to the cloud gives organisations the opportunity to replace unwieldy processes and outdated systems, shared Lim May-Ann, Emeritus Director at the Asia Cloud Computing Association at GovInsider’s AI x Gov in April 2022. 

Today, cloud migration has become an inevitability rather than an option, helping organisations address their scalability, cost, and flexibility concerns. Recognising this, the Singapore government has embarked on creating a “wrapper platform” for all its government agencies to migrate to the cloud with ease. 

The platform, coined the “Government on Commercial Cloud” (GCC), provides government agencies with a consistent and regulated means to engage with commercial cloud service providers, and will enable government agencies to deliver their digital services more quickly, securely and cost-efficiently. 

As of 2022, Singapore’s Government Chief Digital Technology Officer has shared that the government is on track to migrating 70 per cent of government workloads to the cloud by mid-2023, GovInsider previously reported.

Now embarking on its second iteration, the GCC 2.0, Singapore’s Government Technology Agency (GovTech) will aim to enhance cloud security practices and further leverage on cloud-native capabilities to improve the cloud migration experience for government agencies. 

GovInsider’s upcoming panel, ‘Navigating the cloud landscape for the public sector’, held in conjunction with Xtremax and AWS, will discuss the opportunities and challenges that arise when governments adopt cloud solutions. 
 
Among other esteemed speakers, Mr Tang Bing Wan, Director of GovTech’s GCC programme, will be sharing his team’s key learnings from developing the first GCC, and his take on Singapore’s whole-of-government cloud migration strategy moving forward. 
 

Tell us more about you! How did you come to lead the Government on Commercial Cloud programme in Singapore? 

I have been involved since 2018, when it was announced that the Singapore government would move the bulk of its IT systems to commercial cloud services with a target of migrating 70 per cent of eligible government systems to the commercial cloud by 2023.

Given my role as one of the infrastructure architects assisting government agencies to modernise their application systems and adopt cloud services, it is a natural progression for me now to manage the GCC programme in its next phase.

Who or what inspires you? 

I am inspired by how much technology made available by commercial cloud service changes our operating paradigm. One good example of this is during the COVID-19 pandemic, Singapore’s Ministry of Education was able to successfully enable Home-Based Learning (HBL) within a week’s notice. 

This was due to the hosting of its Student Learning Space (SLS) on commercial cloud, which allowed SLS to ride on cloud IaaS and PaaS functionalities to deliver a seamless and smooth HBL experience for students. This allowed SLS to meet the increased demand for HBL during the pandemic by scaling its uptake from 100,000 to 300,000 concurrent students.

What is your key vision for the GCC initiative? What are the main ways in which it will aim to benefit the government and citizens of Singapore? 

My key vision is to be able to continue supporting and easing government agencies’ adoption of commercial cloud solutions that will enable them to deliver government digital services more quickly and securely at reduced costs.

What does the government of the future look like to you? 

To better serve our citizens without leaving anyone behind, through the more pervasive use of digital technologies tapping on what cloud solutions have to offer. 

Hear more from Tang and other prolific speakers on how to navigate the cloud landscape for the public sector at Xtremax and GovInsider’s in-person session, held on 16 February 2023, 2 - 4pm. Register now!