Foreseeable Podcast - Future-Ready Governance

Intro: Hello, and welcome to the latest episode of the Foreseeable podcast series. I'm Zubaidah Nazeer from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, and host for today's conversation. We'll explore how governments like Singapore's are preparing for an uncertain future where economies and societies are in constant flux. We'll explore how to strengthen the human capital in the face of an ageing population. We will also look at how to future-proof the workers in the gig economy, and we'll also talk about how to ensure that we can shore up resilience, even as the social fabric of Singapore remains strong.

Joining me today is Terence Ho, Adjunct Associate Professor in Practice at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. A former policymaker and now academic, Terence's latest book, ‘Future-Ready Governance: Perspectives on Singapore and the World’, is a collection of essays exploring how Singapore is addressing critical issues like tech disruptions, climate change, social stresses, leadership transitions, and fiscal sustainability. Drawing on Singapore's experience, the book illuminates broader governance and leadership principles and aims to provide insights for those interested in Singapore's approach to navigating a complex future.

Terence, welcome, and thanks for joining us.

Terence Ho: Thank you, Zubaidah. Thanks for having me.

Zubaidah Nazeer: Thank you. Let's plunge in. The first set of questions are broad, and I thought I'd get your views on this first: the very first of the first really, "Future-Ready Governance: Perspectives on Singapore and the World.” Why did you write this? What is "Future-Ready Governance"?

Terence Ho: So, this is my third book, and the second volume of opinion pieces I've written for local media organisations. This was a collection of 50 articles, and when I was thinking about the common theme that runs through all my writing on public policy issues, I realised that beyond effective governance, all the topics are really about how we are preparing for the future, and really getting Singapore and our society and people ready for the future, hence this underlying theme.

And beyond the interests to Singapore and Singaporeans of course, many of these topics are also relevant to many other countries in other parts of the world; hence I mentioned as a subtitle, it’s about the perspectives of Singapore as well as the rest of the world.

I think there are so many common challenges we face, and Singapore is really a microcosm in terms of how we try to address these challenges.

Zubaidah Nazeer: I mean that's actually a good perspective in that Singapore is always somewhat seen, from the lens of Asia at least, as a leading country. Some countries look at it for some examples of how policymaking should be.

Moving on to the next thing. This year, Singapore turns 60. Given Singapore's experience, and we are talking about Singapore leading by example, what are the key governance and leadership issues critical for any nation's long-term success?

Terence Ho: So here at the Lee Kuan Yew School, we're of course very careful and mindful that not everything that Singapore has done necessarily translates immediately or directly to countries with a very different context. At the same time, because I speak to so many foreign delegations and international students who are here to find out about the Singapore experience, I have been reflecting a lot about what can be translated. I've come to the conclusion that there are a few things that are really essential for good governance, for the progress of any country.

And the first, of course, is something we take for granted quite often, which is really that a country must have peace and stability. When a country is wracked with military conflict or unrest, it's really hard to get anything done.

Next, of course, would be countries keeping corruption under control, because it's very hard to get the finances of any country on sound footing where there's endemic corruption.

Beyond that, we can think about the other factors that are really helpful for long-term success of any country. And I think one of the key ones is really investment in people, or human capital investment.

So, there's this concept of the so-called resource curse, which is this paradoxical observation that countries which are very well endowed with natural resources, many developing countries, ironically, don't perform as well as maybe smaller countries like Singapore, with no natural resources to speak of.

And the reason for this is really that in Singapore's own development history, industrialisation, because we did not have other resources, the MNCs, the companies that invested in Singapore came here for our people, for the labour force. And hence there was, in a sense, a common objective by both the government and these other companies to invest in people.

Another set of factors that's related to this is Singapore's openness, to trade, to investment, to talent. And I think this has been vital for us to overcome the constraints of a small market to draw on the best ideas and talent for the world , and to provide useful services that make us relevant to the world. You know, I think this is another part of Singapore's success, which I think does translate very well to other countries as well.

Zubaidah Nazeer: What specific ways is Singapore grappling with technological disruption and what lessons can other countries learn from this?

Terence Ho: Yeah, as we all know, we are in an era of huge technological change and progress, but on the other hand, there's always been technological change and one of the key areas of disruption, so to speak, is of jobs, the nature of work. And the good news, of course, is that in past waves of technological change and advancement, while many jobs have been displaced or transformed, many other new jobs have been created too.

So this is a challenge that, of course, we face here, how to equip our people, how to re-skill them, to meet the challenges of technology disruption, so that even if the jobs change substantially, they have this career health and resilience, that they know that they can equip themselves with new skills to stay relevant, because there'll be new jobs and new opportunities, and there's a suite of opportunities and challenges that technology brings.

So, it has a tremendous potential to improve productivity, particularly when we are labour-scarce here with our population ageing as well. The opportunity to really improve the quality and convenience of a whole range of public services. And within even the private sector, of course, a range of products and services that will benefit us in many, many ways from healthcare to education.

But then of course, the risks, which are also well known to us: beyond job disruption, we have all manner of disinformation, scams, that new technology brings about; recently a new figure was published, our amount of money lost to scams has reached a new high. And so the regulation, of course, has to continually adapt to these new challenges.

Zubaidah Nazeer: You know, the rise of AI has really impacted jobs. DBS Bank announced recently that it will reduce its employment of contract and temporary staff by around 4,000 over the next three years as AI increasingly takes on roles carried out by humans.

I guess the question I wanted to really dive into is two-pronged, really; in terms of governance, what can be done to mitigate this impact?  I know you went into it a bit just now to talk about how we should improve the quality of the human capital. And perhaps you can also delve into factors beyond policies, like the kinds of mindsets both employees and employers need to cultivate?

Terence Ho: So, at the very basic level, of course, is providing the kind of courses and support for re-skilling, subsidies and so on. I think when workers want to invest their time and energy to re-skill, they want to know that the courses that they're taking up are of a high quality.

So over at the Institute for Adult Learning, where I am based as well, a key motivation for that is to equip adult educators with the good skills to effectively facilitate the sharing of knowledge. I think that is going to be critical so that the time that people spend is well worth it. And of course, for workers, being very busy people, there's always an opportunity cost. And different people have different work demands and contexts.

So, we need to provide this entire range of different types of courses online, e-learning, in-person, that would fit people with different constraints and different objectives as well.

The challenge, as you rightly mentioned, is really one of mindset. It's about forming habits of mind that make it a norm to re-skill. Having people look at it not just as, ‘oh, my job is at risk. I'm about to be displaced. I better start to re-skill now,’ but more to build up my career health and resilience, knowing there will always be change.

Then the companies as well, they must see this as an investment for productivity, not just for the present but for the future as well. And I think some companies would feel that: ‘if I invest a lot in training my workers, what if they leave after that?’ So again, we need to broaden mindsets on this.

Companies that have a reputation for investing in the workers, for building up human capital, even if some of the workers move on, this reputation will enable them to attract other talent to join. And I think that's what all employers should also be looking at.

Zubaidah Nazeer: On this note, I want to take it to the ageing economy because it kind of links. One in four Singaporeans will be aged 65 by 2030. In a separate podcast, Dr Reuben Ng, who at LKYSPP discusses issues on ageing among others, talks about a third demographic dividend, which means everyone, regardless of their age, is going to be valued for how productive they are. So how is policy keeping pace to tackle this ageing wave, and what needs to be accelerated?

Terence Ho: Yes. So, I think there are many facets, related to ageing, and many policy areas that need addressing. And we've already touched on one, which is really, how do we extend the so-called productive longevity?

So treating the older workforce not as a liability, but really an asset, and giving people opportunities to work as long as they are willing and able to do so, I think. And that of course requires a whole suite of mindset changes, laws, norms, and of course, in terms of having the opportunities there, where seniors can contribute the whole suite of things. And I think Singapore has done well in this, but there's still much further work to be done.

In the whole area of demographic ageing, there's so many other challenges. They're all interrelated somehow or other, a whole spectrum of active ageing, suite of policies and measures, and community involvement as well.

So I think in all these areas, perhaps there’s some areas that we have addressed, but maybe even more work needs to be done. I think one of them would be the senior-friendly housing options. So, the government has been investing in pilots for community care apartments. So, these are flats with senior-friendly features, and they come with integrated services as well.

And there have been a few sprouting out in different parts of the island. But right now, we really need to scale. So some of these solutions, we need to propagate on a larger scale and more quickly given the large numbers of seniors as the population ages.

The other area would be caregiving, in particular home care services. And that's also being ramped up. And we need to explore and pilot new caregiving models such as shared stay-in caregivers. I think the pilot's already being done. We need more such models to experiment and have the breadth of services that the ageing population needs.

Zubaidah Nazeer: Just to follow up on that, do you think these are keeping pace? Is there something that you think we need to move with a bit more speed?

Terence Ho: Yeah, so both in the area of senior housing options as well as the caregiving options, I think a lot is being done, but maybe the speed of implementation needs to be accelerated further. And some of this will require regulatory innovation or changes, especially in new caregiving models.

Zubaidah Nazeer: And I know one of the other pet topics you had, which is also in the book, is about the gig economy. You've written quite a bit about this, right? So, my question is: what are the main challenges and opportunities in creating a better platform economy for gig workers in Singapore? Because this speaks to inclusiveness.

Terence Ho: Yeah, so with the new Platform Workers Act, I think that it's a major progress made in three areas. One is retirement adequacy with the CPF contributions; the opt-in for that. The second would be work injury compensation now, that's very important too. And the third would be the representation of platform workers with union structures.

But there, of course, remain challenges. There's the trade-off between retirement adequacy, building up retirement savings, and take-home pay. So, for the middle-aged to older workers, of course they can opt into CPF.

Many of them haven't made up their minds yet because there's this tension between securing their take-home pay, versus saving up for the future. And these are some hard decisions that have to be made.

Another area of concern, I would say, would be getting more platform workers to invest in re-skilling. It's already challenging enough as employees, but at least employers may be able to give the workers some time off for training.

For the gig workers and platform workers, the opportunity cost is very real. Every hour they spend training is an hour away from working and earning money. And the government, of course, has stepped in with much support for the retraining and re-skilling. The concern is also that, perhaps compared with employees, they may not be picking up a lot of new skills in the job.

There may come a day where the autonomous vehicles will replace private hire drivers, and so how can we then, in policy terms and governance, give them these opportunities to also re-skill, maybe through other kinds of part-time stints in other sectors, to expose them to other areas such as in the care economy where the needs are growing as well?

Zubaidah Nazeer: There's actually a lot of things to do for getting all these different kinds of diverse types of sectors to be on board like the gig economy. In what ways do you think Singapore is working to promote social inclusiveness, assurance, and trust among its citizens?

Terence Ho: Yeah, so Singapore has always prided itself on inclusive development, and this has been key, because as the country progresses the rising tide will lift all boats. And from the beginning, from 1965 onwards, there's been heavy emphasis on social investment, investing in human capital, investing in people, public housing, healthcare, and so on.

And I think this has to continue in today's context. But the challenges are increasing, if you like, because of global competition, because of technology, the upward pressures on inequality and social mobility. So, while we double down on the strategy of social investment, the government has to step in to shore up assurance in many other aspects, to almost directly try to mitigate inequality.

So there's several ways this is being done. One, of course, is over the past 15-20 years — and I wrote about this in my first book, ‘Refreshing The Singapore System; — is how the government has stepped up risk pooling or social insurance in the form of, for example, MediShield Life, universal healthcare, and insurance. We also have the longevity insurance, CPF life, long-term care insurance, CareShield Life, and so on. That's one area.

The other is to step up direct permanent social transfers. So, these will include the wage supplement we have, the Workfare income supplement introduced in 2007, and we have the GST vouchers as well, and the Silver Support for the retirees. And these are also intended to help shore up the support and strengthen assurance.

Beyond these, we have the progressive wage model, which aims to uplift the wages of the lower-income group. So, all these things I think are an important part of the social setup we have here now, and not the government going alone, but we continue to have the community involved in it, so people still must take responsibility for themselves.

I think that way, we can continue to be an inclusive society. And going back to the social investment again, is the efforts are not letting up in any way for children from disadvantaged homes.

There are many, many schemes that provide wraparound support in the means of schools, partnering with the community, the voluntary organisations to support them. And of course, education, not just at the school level, but going earlier at the early childhood education, helping kids from less well-off families also to have access to very high-quality preschool education, to set them off on a good start to life and continuing the workforce as well after people leave school.

And the tertiary institutions — opportunities for continual re-skilling, upskilling. So, all that is part of that social investment, which is ongoing.

Zubaidah Nazeer: Thanks for going into that because you talk about shoring up trust, social resilience and such. And I wanted to dive into this, you know: as a policy maker, what do you see as potentially becoming grey rhinos and how can Singaporeans be encouraged to anticipate and address them to manage or avoid future crises?

Terence Ho: Thanks for bringing this up, because the grey rhino was, uh, the topic of one of my articles in the book.

And this is really a metaphor that describes an issue that is in fact well known, but some say it's inevitable or even, has a high likelihood of happening, and yet it's something that maybe people haven't paid sufficient attention to. So, I raised a couple of examples in my article, one of which is ageing.

And another would be the climate challenge, sustainability, which again, we know the challenges confronting the planet and much action has been done, but much more is needed because of this urgency.

Another area would be the need for re-skilling as well, as technology changes. In fact, this one is going to come at us very quickly as well, so there must be a call to action for people to work together with speed and urgency.

So, as policy makers, we've talked about many of these things, but how do we accelerate change? How do we motivate people to tackle them?

Zubaidah Nazeer: So is it possible to even tackle all these issues?

Terence Ho: Yeah, there are myriad issues and unfortunately, all the issues and challenges we face are coming at us simultaneously. So, the government, the people, we have to multitask, in a sense, of addressing all simultaneously because we can't afford to wait. It's not a sequential thing.

The good thing is, of course we have the financial resources in Singapore, at this particular stage, and we have the human capital resources too; our population is more educated, they have the wherewithal to really work together, hand in glove with the government, with the private sector, the people sector, working together to address all of these.

Zubaidah Nazeer: So, 60 years on, Singapore is at this point where we’re like an octopus dealing with all these issues, but it can be done. We have done so in the past, in the face of impossibility, or at least what looked like impossibility. So, we'll come to our last segment. I just wanted to quickly give you some quick-fire questions, and let's see how it goes. Okay. Tell me about governance. What does it mean?

Terence Ho: For me, governance is about a whole set of public policies, the institutions, the processes, and to me this is all founded on a set of values and principles as well. So, they're not immutable. I mean, public governance will change and evolve over time, but they still must be grounded, anchored in societal values in a sense of principles, and it’s critically important for the success of any nation, given how much governance, public policy touches everybody's lives. It is definitely something critical for each of us as citizens, as residents here.

Zubaidah Nazeer: If Singapore was a person, how would you describe its traits or character?

Terence Ho: That's a really interesting question. I suppose if I were to describe Singapore as a person, he or she would be fairly diligent, trustworthy, I think, and perhaps a bit strait-laced.

But now that Singapore, the person is maturing, we are gaining a bit more self-assurance, readiness to express ourselves a bit more in terms of exploring our creative side. I think that's where we are right now.

Zubaidah Nazeer: I like that! It sounds very dedicated, focused and pushing on. Last one. Describe in a few words how the public service has changed in the last three decades; asking you this because you're a policy maker and you've had the insight.

Terence Ho:  I've seen a lot of changes. In particular, how the size and complexity of the public sector has grown, and this partly reflects the increasing complexity of the governance challenges we face. At the same time, it's very important for, I think, the public service to continue to try not to grow faster than it really needs to.

And one of the other major differences is how much the public service is really engaging and working with citizenry. As the challenges get more complex, the need to work very closely in a concerted effort, not just whole-of-government, but whole-of-society.

Working with the non-profit sector, NGOs, the private sector, the people sector, and this is reflected in many different forms of engagement from the Forward Singapore exercise, which is really about engaging people in the social compact, to really deep diving into policy co-creation as well.

We are starting something called citizen panels, which was explored during the Forward Singapore exercise; I had the opportunity to be in one of them, that really engaging a group of Singaporeans from different walks of life, to understand the policy issues and work out proposals over a period of time. So many different sorts of modes of engagement. And because many of the national programmes require this kind of partnerships, the government has even set up a Partnerships office recently to spur this.

Zubaidah Nazeer: Thanks Terence, for the enlightening conversation and sharing your insights.

Terence Ho: It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

Zubaidah Nazeer: And thank you all for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please search for the Foreseeable podcast series on the YouTube channel of Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, for this and more. You can also listen to us on Spotify or wherever you enjoy your podcasts. Thank you.