Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 1. Indexes of hourly compensation for production costs in manufacturing for select countries (U.S.
Bureau of Census, 2009)
1990
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
U.S.
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
Canada
111
85
80
79
88
95
101
108
Japan
85
112
98
88
91
96
92
85
Hong Kong
22
28
28
27
25
24
24
24
Singapore
25
38
36
33
34
32
31
36
Korea
25
42
38
41
43
47
54
62
Taiwan
26
32
30
27
27
26
27
27
Portugal
24
23
23
24
28
31
31
32
11
Mexico
11
11
12
12
11
11
12
Sri Lanka
2
22
2
2
2
2
2
n.a.
The Singapore ONE (One Network for Ev-
eryone) program, is a high-speed optical fiber
network that manifests the government's IT2000
master-plan, a blue-print to deploy IT in almost
every government department with the end goal of
transforming the state into an “intelligent island”
(Economist, 2000). The IT2000 master-plan was
designed to allow all of Singapore's over 800,000
households to connect to a hybrid-fiber co-axial
network, irrespective of whether they intended
to subscribe to the various services (Cable and
Satellite Asia, 1997). The Singapore ONE initia-
tive strives to develop a nationwide broadband
network to link businesses, homes and schools, to
deliver interactive, multimedia applications and
services (Santiago, 2000). It is estimated that by
2005, some forty-three percent of all households
had connected to this broadband network (Burton,
2005). In this respect, the Singapore government's
eCitizen Center, an integrated service delivery
system, was designed to ensure that the public
sector operated, and was seen to operate, as a
single entity. This particular project is aimed at
bringing together useful services and delivering
them to Singaporeans in convenient and easily
accessible packages. The Singapore government
hopes that eCitizen will enhance the ability of the
public to be increasingly familiar and comfortable
with IT, which has become a critical component
in the knowledge economy (Economist, 2000).
In June 2006, the Singapore government
launched its latest 10 year masterplan, dubbed
iN2015 (Intelligent Nation 2015,) which estab-
lished ambitious goals for the country: to establish
Singapore as first in the world in harnessing ICT
to add value to the economy; a two-fold increase
in value-add of the ICT industry to S$26 billion; a
three-fold increase in ICT export revenue to S$60
billion; the creation 80,000 additional jobs; a 90
per cent rate of home usage for broadband; and
the achievement of 100 per cent computer own-
ership for all homes with school-going children
(Business Wire, 2006). The government hopes
to accomplish these goals through programs and
initiatives that include for example, the CXO
programme to facilitate strategic discourse among
key decision makers, CEOs, CIOs and CFOs and
the iEnterprise Challenge Programme focuses on
developing innovative products and solutions as
reference projects, which is intended to have an im-
pact across various sectors, while simultaneously
creating new intellectual property (Lim, 2006).
A third government initiative seeks to raise the
percentage of small and medium-sized enterprises
(SMEs) conducting e-commerce to twenty-five
percent within three years' time. According to a
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