The Government’s Technology Agency, GovTech, engaged Accenture as one of the partners to support Singpass’ growth plans and improve resiliency.
Realizing that a simple "lift and shift" to replicate the on-premise architecture in the cloud wouldn't suffice, the team opted for a carefully managed migration with a new microservices architecture for service reliability, small-scale user testing and a user onboarding program that took place in waves.
One of the first moves was innovation on the security front, starting with the introduction of Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) to better protect user data. This also allowed users to perform government digital transactions involving sensitive information—such as filing taxes and viewing CPF statements—more secure.
To support the digitalisation of the economy, Singpass services were extended to the private sector. Financial institutions began integrating their digital services and allowing customers to do away with the need to submit supporting documents, such as NRIC scans or proof of address – ensuring greater ease and faster transaction times for services such as opening new bank accounts and applying for credit cards.
Another opportunity that presented itself was going mobile. GovTech launched the Singpass app in 2018, enabling users to log in to government’s digital services using fingerprint, face recognition or a 6-digit passcode. The app now serves as a secure mode of 2FA, with less reliance on SMS or hard tokens.
The early push to expand access to Singpass proved especially valuable as the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded. NDI’s infrastructure was used to develop SafeEntry for seamless registration for contact tracing purposes, allowing users to check in to thousands of establishments they visited through a mobile app.
