Fortifying Singapore’s digital transformation through AI-powered platforms

The next phase of Singapore’s Smart Nation journey was launched last year, with the vision of using technology more effectively to transform the future of the nation.

One of the key goals of this refreshed plan was trust – to ensure that citizens can navigate the digital world with confidence that systems and services remain secure.

The efficacy of government services thus required a high level of security to guarantee wider digital adoption and continuous innovation as the country moves steadfast in its Smart Nation 2.0 journey.

“Trust is emerging as the true currency of digital progress,” noted Fortinet’s Head for Singapore and Brunei, Jess Ng.

As the government adopts advanced technology like artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics to power citizen services, the public sector must be prepared to protect their digital environment.

“Our focus at Fortinet is to help public sector agencies to embed security into every layer of their digital infrastructure, so that innovation and trust advance hand in hand,” said Ng.

This focus on trust and innovation was also emphasised by Minister of State for Digital Development and Information, and Ministry of Education, Jasmin Lau.

She was delivering her keynote address at the AWS Public Sector Day Singapore 2025, which showcased sessions that evidenced Singapore’s commitment to strengthen its position as a digital leader.

Minister Lau urged attendees coming from private and public sectors to think of the event as “less of a conference, but more as a bridge between two ideals”, adding that Singapore’s shared vision was to ensure that public services and technology must serve every Singaporeans’ daily lives.

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Simplifying complexity for public sector transformation

Public sector agencies navigate an increasingly complex digital landscape as AI, data, and digital systems converge across government with the purpose of transforming services for citizens.

To drive AI deployments at scale, organisations began adopting cloud as a way of managing digital infrastructure. But with so much data going into the cloud, security must be at the forefront of digital transformation.

“Every new technology adds opportunity, but also new layers of risk,” said Ng.

But relying on separate security tools to protect these layers was increasingly time-consuming and complicated.

Understanding what it took for public sector agencies to deliver secure and uninterrupted services that citizens could access with trust required a solution that could make this journey easier.

That was why Fortinet offered a unified Security Fabric solution that cut through the noise – integrating networking and security into a single, AI-powered platform.

This helped to reduce operational complexity as technical teams would no longer need to rely on multiple products to provide basic security to their digital infrastructure, Ng added.

The unified approach delivered what agencies needed most: “visibility, control, and automation together, to innovate with confidence, scale securely, and deliver services with greater speed and trust,” she said.

Additionally, the platform-led approach enabled control across IT, OT, cloud, and endpoints, with

AI and automation capabilities designed for government-scale deployments required to stay ahead as a digital leader.

Safe cloud for secure innovation

Fortinet’s Consulting Systems Engineer, Sean Techavatnavisal, noted that while the recent development of Singapore’s Government Commercial Cloud platform enabled agencies and companies to adopt multi-cloud architectures, there was a need for a solution that could support this type of deployment.

He was presenting at the Security Without Boundaries track about the benefits of securing cloud data resources through a unified platform approach.

“It’s no longer an option to have side load security tools, each one providing different capabilities. When it comes to securing your cloud, you need to think holistically about your network data, your application data and your infrastructure data,” he said.

Fortinet’s cloud security platform that integrated all these elements could help to safeguard critical assets across complex multi-cloud environments without slowing down innovation, shared Techavatnavisal.

What this meant was a platform that consolidated different capabilities and requirements to move seamlessly across these different layers to find where issues came from, he said.

As the solution leveraged AI to “tune out the noise” and identify real threats, this helped reduce alert volumes by 98 per cent and investigation times from hours to five minutes.

Additionally, this approach helped to reduce cloud spending by consolidating different products and vendors into one, added Techavatnavisal.

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AI as an enabler

While AI could present challenges when used by the wrong hands – such as AI-powered cyber threats – the technology had the potential to not only strengthen defence, but also simplify operations for teams, said Ng.

According to Ng, secure digital infrastructure would lead the way for innovation and trust in public sector.

“We see AI as an ally that enhances resilience, accelerates response, and empowers government agencies to focus on what matters most, protecting people and the essential services they rely on,” she added.

Showcasing a successful implementation of digital technology to improve public service, Central Provident Fund Board (CPFB) ICT and Digital Services’ Deputy CEO, Hock Keong Ng, shared about leveraging AI capabilities to transform call centres.

This was during a series of presentations at Public Sector Day on different digitalisation projects that contributed to the objective of advancing Singapore’s digital leadership.

CPF’s Ng noted that AI was implemented on live calls for automatic transcription and summary, and afterward, AI agents evaluated the quality of the call with real-time feedback.

This was an important move toward workflow efficiency, as CPF handled over 620,000  calls a year, and call agents used to handle transcription manually after every call.

“Digital leadership is not about championing the latest tech, but about having the acumen to discover the business use cases that can use the tech to give you real value to citizens,” said CPF’s Ng.