CIOs Roundup 2016: National Library Board

By GovInsider

What are the top priorities of Singapore’s public sector IT chiefs?

Singapore plans to transform its public libraries to support a vision of continuous and lifelong learning. It will not just provide physical spaces for citizens to learn but also deliver digital services to meet different reading preferences.


The National Library Board’s priority this year is to digitally engage customers with the help of the Internet of Things. Lee Kee Siang, Chief Information Officer, NLB tells us more.


What technology are you most excited about in 2016?

As the technologies for the Internet of Things evolve to a higher level of maturity with more defined standards across applications for interoperability, this would be an area that we need to watch closely to see how it can be applied in our environment.


How does Smart Nation affect your agency?

The move towards customer self-service to support a seamless customer experience is in line with the call by the government to improve productivity and customer service excellence. It embodies the Smart Nation vision of leveraging technologies to transform the nation for the betterment of the residents.


We have embarked on this journey and are continually identifying new ways of leveraging on technologies to stretch the boundaries of customer service excellence and resource optimization.


What is the biggest challenge that you had to overcome in 2015?


The challenge is the ability to understand the customers’ needs, trends in digital lifestyles, and the use of different technologies to innovatively push out new and better services to the customers. We need to provide a seamless experience for our customers in the digital and physical space. This requires innovative adoption of the technologies to meet customers’ needs. Underlying all these, the use of business analytics is paramount to understanding the trend and customer needs to support the new services.


What is your key priority in 2016?

My priority is to further transform our services to reach out to our customers digitally through the use of mobile and Internet of Things technologies. My priority is to further transform our services to reach out to our customers digitally through the use of mobile and Internet of Things technologies.


Where did you work before you joined your current agency?

I started my career in the public sector before joining multi-national companies in the private sector. I am now back in the public sector. This has certainly helped me to be versatile in meeting the diverse demands between the two sectors.


As a lighter question, how do you like to unwind after a long week at work?

 spend time with my family and take on the weekend job of chauffeuring my family to different places to attend different events.


This is an ongoing series of interviews with Singapore CIOs, outlining their top priorities over the coming year.