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As more people return to work, both the public and private sectors encourage a flexible work arrangement that promotes collaboration, social connection and concern for employees’ well-being.
Without question, remote working helped government staff to continue to serve and be productive while being safe during the pandemic. However, it made it more difficult to create and maintain ties among colleagues, coordinate within teams and build organisational culture.
In the post-pandemic era, government agencies are encouraged to create a new working experience that blends the benefits of remote and onsite work. Agencies should strive to improve organisational effectiveness by implementing more responsive ways of collaboration.
With this, organisations are seeking solutions to ensure worker access and productivity while putting a greater emphasis on IT modernisation for rapid response, resilience and agility. This expanded digital surface makes cybersecurity a key component of all operations.
With platforms, systems and data being accessed from various locations on diverse devices, security is of the utmost significance. In a VUCA environment, hybrid workspaces using cloud allow teams to operate effectively in various contexts and on wide-ranging equipment.
Software applications, data storage and retrieval as well as communication between officials and citizens can be safely deployed on government commercial cloud, allowing agencies to be highly responsive to public needs while ensuring security.
The OpenGov Breakfast Insight on 7 September 2022 held at the Mandarin Oriental Singapore offered the latest information on the benefits of a cloud-based model to enjoy cost savings and operational efficiencies for Singapore’s public sector.
Technological Security in a Hybrid Workplace
Kicking off the session, Mohit Sagar, CEO & Editor-in-Chief, acknowledges that in a post-pandemic society, hybrid workplaces will become the new standard.
With the gradual easing of restrictions, a fusion of work environments that support a combination of at-home and in-office settings have emerged. This means that while setting up such models, firms must consider a variety of aspects, including productivity, communication and – most importantly – security.
“Security is of the utmost consequence, especially when it comes to access to platforms, systems and data,” Mohit believes firmly. “Preventing cyberattacks from outside or inside the organisation is vital as bad cyber actors are growing more sophisticated in their approach and complex in their techniques.”
Security needs must always be a top priority for businesses, and with the growth of remote and hybrid workspaces, difficulties and complications will only get more complicated as businesses try to keep up. With a greater focus on IT modernisation and security, companies are looking for ways to make sure their employees have access and can do their jobs well.
This situation is the same for government agencies, where cybersecurity is just as important for citizens as it is for business customers. Officers have access to sensitive government information and confidential citizen data from a range of internal and external networks and devices on the government-commercial cloud.
By addressing the operational issues posed by complicated, dispersed and siloed infrastructure, appropriate IT modernisation produces flexible solutions with strong security and efficiency. As a result, officials may work efficiently and concentrate on completing their strategic deliverables without wasting time or resources on dealing with IT or system inefficiencies.
Organisations are rapidly developing new cloud applications and transferring data and existing applications to the cloud as they transition to hybrid working paradigms.
“By developing a solid hybrid cloud adoption strategy and plan will benefit the workforce and the general public,” Mohit is convinced.
To guarantee their assets and end users remain productive and secure, IT organisations must go beyond appliance-based security solutions as more employees work remotely and apps continue to migrate to the cloud.
Mohit emphasises that establishing a safe government-commercial cloud policy will better serve the public by utilising the capabilities to increase public sector resilience and stimulate innovation.
Enable Your Hybrid Workforce in Government, Education and Healthcare
Digital operations have become the method of choice for many citizens, according to Gregor Preidl, Vice President, Customer Success, APJ, Citrix.
“The days of travelling to a government office and speaking with a person in person directly are long gone,” says Gregor. “Government institutions must cater to the distinct digital demands of its citizens as part of the ongoing evolution of the public sector in the post-pandemic age.”
Online engagement and consumerisation have now exceeded face-to-face citizen service in government. While these trends present government organisations with opportunities, they make it necessary for both citizens and government workers to have access to advanced digital technologies. This has resulted in a wide range of issues that every governmental entity must deal with.
The prevailing conditions, institutional obstacles and IT challenges, Gregor agrees, are all difficult. The push to create novel approaches and goods, as well as to shorten the time it takes for government services to reach the market, is a result of the market environment. Another constant issue is a lack of funding – thus finding new revenue sources is an ongoing exercise.
Institutional difficulties exist as well, such as attracting and maintaining the best candidates. Promoting customer and employee retention is essential and the new working practices as well.
Gregor believes a novel approach to crucial government services is the need of the hour. Utilising a digital platform that offers excellent experiences for citizens and government employees is crucial.
“IT has numerous challenges such as technology and app rationalisation,” says Gregor. “Cybersecurity dangers are persistent. An organisation’s infrastructure must support web apps, SaaS and the cloud. And the demand for readily available regulatory compliance data.”
Gregor opines that an organisation’s challenges likely fall into four categories: market forces, employees and citizens, IT demands and applications. Organisations must deal with consumerisation, bringing new goods and services to market, satisfying competitive demands and regulatory compliance under the heading of market forces. They must additionally evaluate the technology that has been phased out or may need to be.
Employee expectations, including remote work, usage of any device over any network and support for various work styles, must be managed. In terms of applications, this entails moving to the cloud, using SaaS and modernising apps. Moreover, there are IT requirements for things like enhancing business continuity, putting in place a comprehensive cybersecurity defence and making sure compliance information is accessible.
“Ultimately, improving the employee experience will increase employee engagement, which is the key to everything. In the end, providing excellent employee experiences is what allows you to provide excellent customer service,” Gregor believes.
He offers a few choices that a company, particularly one in the public sector, must think about while evaluating its surroundings and digital IT requirements:
Governmental organisations that can provide a uniform, unified, secure and streamlined work experience across all work channels, on any device, from any location, will succeed.
“You can achieve this by putting in place a digital workspace platform based on Citrix DaaS,” Gregor concludes.
In Conversation: Modernisation of data and migration to hybrid cloud to foster public-sector innovation
According to Kevin Tay Chong Keg, Group Chief Information Officer, SingHealth, to be sustainable, daily technology services must always be updated. Thus, the public sector should continually modernise to improve its efficiency, agility, security and privacy protection.
A wide number of industries, including ICT, AI, ML and robotics, among others, are experiencing significant technical advancements. It is anticipated that these discoveries will have a profoundly disruptive impact and fundamentally alter how societies operate.
Kevin emphasised the importance of cloud adoption, “Enterprises employ cloud adoption as a tactic to increase the scalability of Internet-based database capabilities while lowering cost and risk. To accomplish this, companies use cloud computing, which involves storing, managing and processing important data on remote servers.”
Along with this, Kevin stresses the importance of the cloud policy, which is frequently developed to safeguard the confidentiality and integrity of company-owned data.
He added that mobile app development now has the unique opportunity to reach a wide range of potential customers due to the rise in the number of individuals using smartphones and tablets to access the Internet.
Therefore, it is necessary to continuously update the mobile application management that enables the deployment of comprehensive, fine-grained security policies, visibility, and management controls for specific apps.
These technological accelerations promise substantial social and economic benefits, improved production, and higher efficiency across a variety of sectors.
Likewise, as more businesses utilise cloud infrastructure to protect their essential data, there is a growing concern about data privacy and security. As a result, organisations should deploy elaborate cloud security procedures to establish a strong data encryption and protection posture.
Gregor suggests that an organisation should not automatically trust anything inside or outside of its perimeters, according to the zero-trust security principle, which holds that all connections to an organisation’s systems must first be verified.
Speeding up technological progress through time may portend a faster and more significant change in the future, which may or may not be followed by equally significant social and cultural change.
Moreover, according to Kevin, one of the innovations that should be considered, to ensure the efficiency of business continuity and disaster recovery while keeping costs under control, is online delivery.
“Our patients are our top priority; thus, we created the Medicine Delivery Service, an online consultation and medication delivery service that will offer the public’s essential medications at the convenience of home residents,” Kevin explains.
Businesses need solutions that can expand in terms of speed, accuracy, and convenience while also being more affordable as they progressively shift their operations to the cloud.
Companies may now more effectively link their mobile workers, manage their productivity tools, and lower the total cost of ownership of their IT investments thanks to such a powerful capability at their disposal.
IT needs to react to changing situations and governmental organisations now are accelerating what used to be multiyear journeys. “It’s important to speed the process of modernising IT. In addition, businesses should make use of the tools offered by cloud service providers to encrypt data, manage access rights, and put in place cloud rules that deal with the problem of deployments that are not adequately protected.
Companies can utilise cloud management solutions that gather and analyse logs and build audit trails to discover and remedy policy violations to make sure these policies are followed.
Closing Remarks
There is an urgent need to create a digital platform that facilitates secure distributed work and provides the optimum user experience. Therefore, it’s crucial to strike a balance between security, legal compliance and employee expectations to empower workers who wish to continue using remote working arrangements.
It is necessary to make sure that consumers may access information via a variety of devices and from any location. Boosting individual productivity by equipping users with the appropriate technology that is simple to use, intuitive and allows them to complete all their essential tasks.
“At the end of the day, it’s all about the experience of our clients, citizens, employees, and security automation and I hope that the next generation will consider the technological challenges to be words of the past and concentrate today on how we might offer solutions,” says Gregor.
Cloud technology is a crucial factor in this, as it enables the delivery of meaningful, tailored experiences faster and cheaper. Citrix is a cloud-based platform for managing and deploying Citrix products, desktops, and applications to end users, in which the data is stored in the data centre.
Mohit is firmly convinced that the traditional workforce is being quickly replaced by hybrid labour as the effects of the pandemic become more evident. In light of this, building a secure hybrid workforce has gained importance.
“Partnerships play a vital role in cloud adoption as they can offer the knowledge required to market, sell, create, integrate, customise, deploy, and maintain new applications in any cloud architecture. For businesses looking to grow quickly, partnerships are the way to go,” Mohit concludes.
The Vietnam E-Commerce and Digital Economy Agency, under the Ministry of Industry and Trade, is now using QR codes for genuine product authentication. The technology has been put into operation to support and encourage people and businesses to use digital solutions to prevent counterfeit goods in e-commerce transactions.
A representative from the Agency’s informatics and digital technology centre, Do Dinh Tan, stated that the application allows consumers to retrieve information about the origin of products and when they purchased goods. This offers transparent information and prevents the sale of counterfeit and low-quality products.
The system is expected to help end the fear of counterfeit and imitation goods using technology and it also creates a foundation for applying more digital technologies in e-commerce transactions. Through the system, businesses and consumers can easily connect regarding warranty process information and promotions. This will create trust among customers and protect the reputations of products and businesses, helping them conquer foreign markets which usually have strict authentication requirements via QR Code. The system is also a useful tool for state management agencies to manage and control the commodities market, Tan said.
The Vietnam e-Commerce and Digital Economy Agency assists the Minister of Industry and Trade in the state management and law enforcement of e-commerce and digital economy activities. The Agency participates in drawing up and reviewing legal documents, strategies, plans, mechanisms, and policies to support and develop e-commerce. It receives and handles the registration, notification, and granting of permits for e-commerce activities.
The Agency sets out to establish and operate the essential infrastructure for e-commerce and digital economy building, including architectural frameworks and common technical platforms for business models that apply digital technologies.
Vietnam’s digital economy revenue reached US$ 53 billion in the first quarter of this year, according to a report by the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) from April. The digital economy is made up of the information communication technology (ICT) digital economy, the Internet digital economy, and the digital economy of industries. In the first quarter of this year, the Internet digital economy’s growth rate was 28%, reaching US$8 billion in revenues. The ICT digital economy and digital economy of industries each had average revenue growth rates of about 15%. By the end of February, the number of newly-established digital technology enterprises reached 65,329, an increase of 487 enterprises compared to 2021.
Regarding the e-government, as of April, the National Public Service Portal integrated 3,552 online public services, creating favourable conditions for people and businesses. In the first quarter of this year, the portal registered more than 167,000 accounts, synchronised over 14 million records, and clocked 163,000 online payment transactions worth US$15.9 million. Further, earlier this year, the country deployed a nationwide electronic invoice system and, according to the tax authority, it has currently received and processed 77.7 million e-invoices. MIC’s report also revealed that human resource training for digital transformation has been a government priority. Nearly 1,000 officials and civil servants have been trained so far. About 10,000 government personnel are expected to be trained by October.
The Hong Kong Productivity Council (HKPC) is working to promote the innovation and advancement of food technology (FoodTech) to enhance the productivity and competitiveness of the industry. To this end, it launched a Future FoodTech Lab to showcase world-leading novel food processing technologies with some being winners of international research awards.
The Commissioner for Innovation and Technology of the HKSAR Government, and the Chairman of HKPC, officiated the opening. Food industry leaders were also invited to share their insights on FoodTech development at the opening ceremony to encourage fellow industry peers to engage in advanced manufacturing and promote reindustrialisation in Hong Kong.
HKPC’s Future FoodTech Lab is Hong Kong’s first-ever FoodTech prototype display platform. Showcasing advanced FoodTech at different stages of the food supply chain, Future FoodTech Lab provides a platform for site visits and technology testing for the industry.
The technologies at the lab will be updated regularly to keep the food industry abreast of the latest technology development. At present, the lab displays HKPC-developed food processing technologies, including Pressure-Assisted Ultrasound Thawing Technology, High-Pressure Disinfection Technology, CAPfresh — A Game Changing Cold Atmospheric Plasma Disinfection Technology for Fresh Food, and Liquid Chilling Technology.
The Commissioner for Innovation and Technology of the HKSAR Government noted that concerning technology support, HKPC provides a showcase platform for the industry to learn about new technologies in the food sector. In terms of funding, the Innovation and Technology Commission’s Re-industrialisation Funding Scheme (RFS) subsidises manufacturers, on a 1:2 (Government:Company) matching basis, to set up new smart production lines in Hong Kong. The funding for each project is capped at HK$15 million.
She added that RFS provides material assistance to local manufacturers, assisting them to move toward high-value-added production and upgrade to Industry 4.0. Industry players are encouraged to leverage the government’s support in technology, capital and infrastructure to upgrade and transform in the process of ‘re-industrialisation’ to achieve greater success.
Meanwhile, the Chairman of HKPC stated that establishing Future FoodTech Lab signifies an important milestone for food industry development. HKPC hopes it can encourage the food industry to embrace advanced manufacturing and promote reindustrialisation in Hong Kong.
A majority of the food processing technologies showcased are ‘first-in-Hong Kong’ or even ‘world-leading’. For instance, CAPfresh – A Game Changing Cold Atmospheric Plasma Disinfection Technology for Fresh Food was recognised at the 2022 R&D 100 Awards in the United States. This proves that Hong Kong’s R&D capabilities are of a world-class level.
The official added that HKPC will continue to meet the needs of the industry and provide appropriate support in the areas of technology, talent and capital, and promote the commercialisation of R&D results. In the long run, it will help the food industry to expand to the Greater Bay Area and overseas markets, thereby enabling the ‘Made in Hong Kong’ brand to shine on the international stage.
The Director of one of the companies at the Lab stated that the company hopes to expand its products to neighbouring cities and even overseas markets, but this has been limited by production capacity and shelf life. The intelligent production line, being set up with the assistance of HKPC, can effectively solve the above pain points.
In addition to significantly raising the production capacity, it also improves the sterilisation process. The sterilisation parameters such as temperature, pressure, time, etc. are collected and monitored by intelligent sensors, which not only prolong the life of the machine but also ensure the reliability and stability of sterilisation and improve product quality and safety. Without the use of additives and preservatives, it is expected that the shelf life can be extended effectively.
Then, the Managing Director of another manufacturer stated that the traditional production process of fresh egg liquid needs to be completed manually and cannot raise productivity effectively. With intelligent production, the production capacity can increase by 2 to 3 times. Concurrently, manpower, production time and human error will be reduced. Staff can also be re-assigned to handle high-tech work, reducing costs and raising efficiency. Intelligent production will also help diversify our business, expanding from B2B to B2C retail business.
Apart from technical support, HKPC also actively helps enterprises identify the appropriate government funding schemes to subsidise them to set up intelligent production lines locally. The above enterprise solutions have successfully applied or are currently applying for the Re-industrialisation Funding Scheme of the Innovation and Technology Commission of the HKSAR Government to help reduce production costs further and raise cost-effectiveness.
The modification of the PeduliLindungi application, which was created into a citizen health app, was made public during the 4th Digital Economy Working Group (DEWG) Meeting and the G20 Digital Economy Ministers Meeting (DEMM).
The PeduliLindungi application must also be downloaded and used by all delegates attending G20 events, including the G20 Summit in November 2022, to spread awareness of it through DEWG and DEMM.
PeduliLindungi will also include new elements to support its status as a citizen health app, such as a “health resume” in compliance with the policy. This includes a history of domestic and international vaccinations -for foreigners to simply use it. Future versions of the PeduliLindungi programme will be created to be prepared for any other potential pandemic outbreaks outside COVID-19.
Indonesia’s Ministry of Health previously stated that it will maximise the health services offered through the app and include “Care for Protect” in 13 languages. Thus, the G20 presidency’s guests will receive the greatest calibre of medical care because of the Ministry of Health’s preparation of PeduliLindungi in 13 languages.
PeduliLindungi is currently available in 9 languages and others are being worked on. The 9 languages are specifically Indonesian, English, Chinese, French, Japanese, Russian, Arabic, Korean and Spanish, with Portuguese, German, Italian, and Turkish making up the other 4 languages being processed.
Recently, as part of the digital transformation that is taking place in the health sector, the Indonesian government, through the Ministry of Health Affairs, started the process of digitising the data of the children who have received immunisation and integrating it into the PeduliLindungi app.
The app was initially created to help the appropriate government organisations track and control the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19); and to perform contact history tracing with COVID-19 patients, the programme depends on community participation to allow users to contribute location data while travelling.
Users of this programme will also be notified if they are in a crowd or a “red zone,” or a neighbourhood or village where it has been noted that there are persons with positive COVID-19 infections or patients who are being watched if they are in these places.
Meanwhile, the G20 Digital Innovation Network (DIN) prizes were given to five Indonesian startups. Semuel A. Pangerapan, Director General of Informatics Applications at the Ministry of Communications and Informatics, thinks the prize would foster a culture of worldwide competitiveness while accelerating the five firms’ growth.
The Director General wishes for the G20 DIN to develop into a venue for Indonesian companies to form partnerships. The G20 DIN will be able to help digital entrepreneurs comprehend how businesses in other G20 members operate.
Furthermore, the presence of a 5G signal was confirmed during the DEMM and the 4th DEWG Meeting, and it conforms with the ITU institution’s reference. This ensures that the quality of telecommunications network services is on par with that of other nations.
In terms of speed, the quality telecommunications network can already access data at a rate of up to 5 gigabits per second, thus standardisation is crucial if Indonesia’s 5G network is to work with the right gadgets.
The fifth generation of cellular networks, or 5G, has significant benefits over the fourth generation. With 5G, data access speeds are significantly increased, data access latency is significantly reduced, and the network’s capacity to connect with a variety of devices is significantly increased. Artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR), cloud gaming, drones, robots, autonomous vehicles, and smart factories are just a few applications of this technology.
The Telangana AI Mission (T-AIM) recently launched the Mobility AI Grand Challenge, seeking artificial intelligence-enabled solutions to detect and classify potholes based on their severity in the city of Hyderabad. T-AIM launched the challenge on behalf of the local government body, the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC). The solutions will help GHMC undertake targeted repair work projects in the city.
Using AI, participating teams will need to analyse video feeds (40 fps or higher) from specific routes in Hyderabad for potholes. The potholes in the video feed need to be identified and classified using AI. The classification of pothole severity may be undertaken based on the surface area and depth of the pothole, the official T-AIM portal mentioned.
Apart from the opportunity to win financial support to the tune of IN ₹2 million (US$ 25,118) to implement pilot projects, start-ups will be able to network with AI leaders, government officials, and industry players. It provides a platform for new innovators to showcase their AI solution development capabilities at a larger scale.
T-AIM has outlined the criteria for start-ups to participate. Indian startups registered anywhere in India can participate and they should be in existence for no older than eight years (incorporated not prior to 1 January 2014). Innovators will be selected based on their approach note and the shortlisted ones will get six weeks to present a proof-of-concept.
The teams will be given four weeks to work on the use case and will then have to submit the results, approach, and code for evaluation by the jury. They will also have to host the solution online to be assessed. The winning criteria will be a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to solve the problem. The first criterion is the Approach, which judges the team’s description of how they understood the problem statement and their suggestions on how the solution can be taken to next level with the use of data/algorithms. The second is Technical, which will evaluate innovation, code quality, use of data, scalability of the solution, use of standard libraries, and algorithms used. The final criterion, Results, will measure the accuracy of the solution by comparing it with unseen datasets.
On 15 September, the government will hold a webinar to provide a detailed description of the challenge, participants will learn in-depth, the objective, the process outline, and the expected outcomes of the grand challenge.
From 2017 to 2020, 22,631 accidents were reported due to potholes. These accidents led to 9,223 lives lost and 19,977 injuries. Statistically, 16 accidents occur in India on an average day, and they result in the loss of 6 lives and injure more than 13 people. Road safety is an integral part of road design and the government is investing in tech to reduce human error.
Earlier this year, the Minister of Road Transport and Highways, Nitin Gadkari, announced plans to put AI-based technology in government systems to improve mobility. He identified priority areas for AI applications, including forensic post-crash investigations, the pattern of accidents due to black spots, fatigue indicators, sleep detectors, and advanced vehicle collision avoidance systems.
The NSW Government announced the release of the new NSW Virtual Care Strategy which outlines the steps to integrate virtual care as a safe, effective, and accessible option for healthcare delivery in NSW. This will contribute to a world-class and digitally enabled health system that invests in wellness.
THIS WAY UP exemplifies how innovative digital solutions are being used to help people manage their mental health. Based at St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney, THIS WAY UP provides evidence-based, digital mental health programs that can be accessed on-demand, anytime by people in NSW and across Australia.
The COVID-19 pandemic has seen levels of psychological distress increase across the community. THIS WAY UP aims to help consumers who often face long wait times for specialist care, and clinicians and health services that are struggling to cope with the increased demand.
Over 170,000 people have used THIS WAY UP’s safe and effective online treatment programs for anxiety, depression, stress, chronic pain, and insomnia. THIS WAY UP has also grown a community of over 12,000 clinicians in NSW and 30,000 Australia-wide.
The unique prescription-based model allows GPs (general practitioners), psychologists, psychiatrists and other health professionals in primary care, hospitals, and community mental health to integrate THIS WAY UP’s digital treatments with their patients’ regular care.
What is virtual care?
According to the NSW Government, virtual care, also known as telehealth, safely connects patients with health professionals to deliver care when and where it is needed. It complements the face-to-face care that most people are used to.
In NSW, virtual care can be administered in different ways, including:
Potential benefits of virtual care for patients, carers and healthcare professionals
Providing world-class healthcare that is personalised, safe and of the highest quality is an NSW Health priority. Virtual care aids this endeavour. Virtual care can assist patients in obtaining more appropriate care faster, and provides benefits for all patients, regardless of their region of residence. It enables patients and families to:
Healthcare professionals have been using technology to deliver care to patients for decades. Today, with advances in technology, the support for health professionals and benefits for patients and the health system are even greater.
Virtual care supports healthcare professionals by:
Virtual care supports NSW Health’s vision for a sustainable health system that delivers outcomes that matter to patients and the community, is personalised, invests in wellness and is digitally enabled.
The income of the local farmers suffers despite providing high-quality and fresh farm products in the market because of their restricted access to consumers. With this, the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) established and offered several technology-based platforms where social marketing and data analysis might expand livelihood options and boost earnings for regional smallholder farmers and micro, small, and medium companies (MSMEs).
Agriculture, which is regarded as the foundation of the Philippine economy, is vital to boosting the national economy, but it faces numerous obstacles that have an impact on farmers’ income, including a lack of fully automated equipment, high input costs, and devasting natural disasters.
As a result, Farm Konek was created. It is a farm management tool for inventory and management that focuses on community impact. Through data-driven clustered and climate-proofed production among smallholder farmers living below the poverty line, it seeks to produce a sustainable clustered production of high-value and lowland vegetables.
The government offers numerous marketing opportunities through a powerful marketing network that purchases products directly from smallholder farmers. The sustainability of the production is one of the main worries, though.
Since many smallholder farmers are still unfamiliar with climate change protocols and new production techniques, Farm Konek’s primary initiatives include capacity building, inventory management, and reporting systems.
OneStore.ph, an e-commerce platform that assists MSMEs in marketing their products online, is another technological platform that DOST has launched. By establishing a borderless market, the platform enables MSMEs to reach a larger audience with their products, so indirectly increasing employment creation and addressing the issue of food insecurity in the nation.
Unexpectedly, OneSTore.ph’s operations were stepped up because of the epidemic, which hampered people’s freedom of travel. OneSTore walk-in transactions were reduced because of the shutdown, but on the plus side, more people were using the e-commerce platform, which led to an increase in sales.
In response to this encouraging trend, DOST introduced OneSTore City, an android delivery software that was created and designed to give customers a better and easier shopping experience. The effort can increase local farmers’ sales as the software was established as a same-day delivery app for fresh and important agricultural items.
Meanwhile, one of the industries in the nation that is plagued by several problems is agriculture. This includes the dearth of equipment suitable for the agricultural conditions in the region. The Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) created a four-in-one rice combine harvester to address these urgent issues, which might reduce the post-harvest losses of Filipino farmers from 4.5% to 2.2%.
The funding was supplied by the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Resources Research and Development under the Department of Science and Technology (DOST-PCAARRD). This locally made Combine Harvester makes the best use of hand tractors, which are a popular piece of farming equipment among rice farmers in the Philippines. It is simple to mount and demount from the hand tractor unit.
This rice combine harvester could support the nation’s effort to achieve food security by addressing the shortage of agricultural manpower, providing our farmers with higher incomes, increasing productivity, and more.
The reaping, cleaning, threshing, and bagging processes are already combined by this locally made and built rice harvester. It might offer ideal answers to the issues hampering the nation’s rice production, namely the dearth of tools and equipment suitable for the regional agricultural environment.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) of the United States is advancing the development of 5G technology to enable the U.S. government and operators of critical infrastructure to always communicate securely and in all locations.
With a US$ 12 million investment from the Department of Defense Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (DOD OUSD R&E), NSF has chosen 16 multidisciplinary teams to work on the research project tagged as “Track G: Securely Operating Through 5G Infrastructure” under the Convergence Accelerator programme 2022 cohort.
“5G wireless networks are crucial components of the modern communication system and a key aspect of how we operate. We must have viable solutions to support the military and federal government’s missions,” says Amanda Toman, Acting Principal Director for 5G at DOD OUSD R&E.
The Department is thrilled to collaborate with NSF and its Convergence Accelerator to hasten the development of 5G technologies for its systems as well as those of its friends and partners, she continued.
Track G expands on the DOD’s 5G Initiative, which intends to identify and mitigate 5G risks; educate 5G standards and policies through rigorous research; to support technology development to improve 5G communications for the US military and federal government.
Each team will spend the following nine months developing their initial idea into a proof of concept, identifying new team members and collaborators, and participating in the unique Convergence Accelerator innovation programme.
Human-centred design basics, team science, use-inspired research, early-stage prototyping, communications, storytelling, and pitching are all part of the innovative curriculum.
The teams will participate in a formal Phase 2 proposal and pitch at the end of Phase 1. The oral pitch and formal proposal will be used to select teams for Phase 2 which is a 24-month solution development and sustainability phase.
The NSF Convergence Accelerator is focused on addressing some of the most difficult national and societal concerns, to have a beneficial societal and economic impact.
The methodology and basics of the programme will be expanded to solve this national security challenge and support the DOD’s 5G goal.
The primary purpose of the Convergence Accelerator’s Track G: Securely Operating Through 5G Infrastructure is to pursue enhancements to end devices and augmentations to 5G infrastructure, allowing military, government, and critical infrastructure operators to work through public 5G networks while meeting safety and resilience requirements.
The NSF Convergence Accelerator, which debuted in 2019, leverages basic research and discovery to expedite ideas toward societal impact. The initiative provides funding to teams that solve societal problems through convergence research and innovation.
To maximise its impact, the Accelerator groups teams into cohorts, allowing them to synergize their work through assisted collaboration.
Meanwhile, four new Engineering Research Centres will open with an expenditure of $104 million over five years, according to NSF. The centres’ transformation of technology will have an impact on urban planning, manufacturing, agriculture, and health.
The ability of NSF Engineering Research Centres to bring together interdisciplinary academic teams in convergent research to find cutting-edge solutions to difficult societal challenges is one of its strengths. The centres expand their level of innovation and translate practical, long-lasting solutions thanks to their distinctive testbeds and business partners.
The NSF Engineering Research Center Program, which was established in 1985, has provided funding for 79 centres over a period of up to 10 years. The centres form alliances with academic institutions, governmental organisations, and representatives of the private sector to promote inclusiveness and creativity in both existing and developing engineering research.
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