2 May 2013 - The Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI) and the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) are pleased to announce the appointment of Mr Steve Leonard as executive Deputy Chairman and Ms Jacqueline Poh as Managing Director of IDA Singapore.
Singapore, 2 May 2013 | For Immediate Release
Mr Steve Leonard and Ms Jacqueline Poh to join IDA
The Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI) and the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) are pleased to announce the appointment of Mr Steve Leonard as executive Deputy Chairman and Ms Jacqueline Poh as Managing Director of IDA Singapore. They will officially assume their new appointments on 10 June 2013. The current IDA CEO, Mr Ronnie Tay, will return to the Administrative Service for another posting in the Public Service.
Mr Steve Leonard, an industry veteran with more than 28 years of international experience working in global technology firms, will have executive leadership responsibility for IDA as the new Deputy Chairman. He will focus primarily on industry promotion and development. This includes strategic planning and development of manpower for the infocomm sector, infrastructure development, spearheading the transformation of innovative start-ups and local enterprises, and overseeing various national cross-sectoral programmes. Mr Leonard, who has been serving on the IDA Board of Directors since 2009, was President of EMC Asia Pacific and Japan for more than six years, and previously served as the senior leader for Symantec software in Asia. He was also a senior executive of EDS Corporation in both Asia and Europe.
To assist the Deputy Chairman, IDA will also be appointing a Managing Director who will lead IDA's policy and regulatory functions, including developing infocomm policy, telecoms regulation and information security, as well as guide the strategic Government Chief Information Officer (GCIO) function.
Ms Jacqueline Poh will be seconded from the Administrative Service to take up the new position at IDA. Ms Poh was previously the Divisional Director, Workplace Policy and Strategy Division, Ministry of Manpower (MOM). Prior to MOM, Ms Poh served in other ministries including the Ministry of Finance where she oversaw issues relating to social and security, and taxation related matters.
On the new management appointments, IDA Chairman, Ms Yong Ying-I said, "Infocomm technology is now pervasive, transforming how societies function, how government engages with citizens, and how business is done. The possibilities and the challenges have increased. The appointments of an executive Deputy Chairman and a Managing Director at IDA, who bring strong private sector and public sector experiences with them, will enable IDA to more strongly drive impactful transformation across a broad range of sectors and issues affecting our economy, society and government."
Mr Steve Leonard said, "I have been a long term resident of Singapore, and I have seen how important technology is here. I am keen to help move Singapore forward with the many exciting national initiatives IDA is championing, such as the ones in smart cities and big data. Together with Jacqueline, I look forward to working with the IDA team to forge a common vision and further deepen Singapore's commitment to innovation both locally and internationally."
Ms Jacqueline Poh said, "Recent advances in both information and communications technologies have made it an exciting time to be in this space. The pervasiveness of connectivity in Singapore puts IDA in a good position to capitalise on ICT to help the government deliver more value to the public and to help businesses delight their consumers. IDA has an important role as the Government's CIO to champion the development of novel digital capabilities and approaches to improve our services to our citizens."
The current IDA CEO, Mr Ronnie Tay, will return to the Administrative Service from 10 June 2013 for another posting. Ms Yong said, "The IDA Board expresses its deep appreciation to Mr Ronnie Tay for his many contributions to IDA and Singapore's infocomm development. Under Mr Tay's leadership, IDA has made very significant progress in realising Singapore's iN2015 vision of developing into an intelligent nation, global city powered by infocomm."
Mr Tay has helmed IDA since November 2007 and under his leadership, Singapore has successfully deployed the Next Gen Nationwide Broadband Network to 95% of homes as well as businesses, with more than 250,000 fibre broadband subscribers. For the infocomm industry, the S$46 million Infocomm Industry Productivity Roadmap was launched in 2011 to push for productivity in the ICT sector, benefitting more than 70 companies and 6,700 infocomm professionals to date. Similarly, through the Infocomm@SME programme, more than 5,000 SMEs have benefitted from the iSprint grant scheme to use infocomm to enhance business productivity. In addition, various sectoral transformation programmes for education, healthcare, finance, logistics and transport were implemented, and the eGov2015 masterplan was launched in 2011.
During Mr Tay's tenure, IDA worked with the Ministry of Communications and Information to introduce the Personal Data Protection Act. IDA also worked to review the spectrum allocation frameworks for mobile broadband services such as that for 4G, and introduced various consumer protection measures such as enhancing 3G Quality of Service standards. New initiatives such as the Smart Cities Pilots & Trials Programme and New Ways of Work which included the setting up of Smart Work Centres have been introduced. Leveraging on emerging technologies and trends such as business analytics and Big Data, IDA also encouraged the development of innovative services through CFCs for mobile positioning and analytics services, and harnessing data for value creation. "It has been a great privilege for me to have served with the team in IDA, in our efforts towards harnessing the potential of infocomm for economic and social development. I very much appreciate the collaboration and support of the infocomm industry, government agencies and various partner organisations during my term in IDA." said Mr Tay.
ISSUED BY MINISTRY OF COMMUNICATIONS AND INFORMATION AND
THE INFOCOMM DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY OF SINGAPORE
Related Resource
For media clarifications, please contact:
Melanie Koh (Ms)
Manager, Corporate & Marketing Communication
Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore
Tel: (+65) 6211 0297
Email: melanie_koh@imda.gov.sg
Tricia Chiu (Ms)
Manager, Corporate Relations Division
Ministry of Communications and Information
Tel: (+65) 6837 9023
Email: tricia_chiu@mci.gov.sg
.webp)