Singpass: Singapore’s Digital Identity System
With a user base of more than 4.2 million and providing access to over 1,700 services, Singpass is one of the most pervasively adopted national digital identity systems in the world.
In this Wired interview Dominic Chan, Director National Digital Identity, shares an overview of building Singapore’s digital identity system.
Their ‘Singpass‘ identity app provides a ‘MyInfo’ service for users to receive data from government services and ‘Verify’, for organizations to check customers’ details without scanning or photocopying any physical documents.
These are key to their efficient digital government services. As they describe here MyInfo is a ‘tell-us-once’ service that auto-fills selected personal details for online forms, minimising the need for users to repeatedly provide and verify the same information when transacting with Government agencies online.
Singpass has a user base of more than 4.2 million users and provides convenient and secure access to over 1,700 services by more than 460 government and private sector organisations. It facilitates about 300 million personal and corporate transactions every year and serves approximately 97% of Singapore Citizens and Permanent Residents aged 15 and above, making it one of the most pervasively adopted national digital identity systems in the world.
A critical, complimentary component is the APEX Cloud, a full-fledged API management solution that allows developers, product teams, agencies and, businesses to manage APIs across various stages – from registration to publication to retirement. The Singpass API Developer and Partner Portal offers a sandbox environment for developers and businesses to quickly prototype digital innovations, and they can use MyInfo to access available digital services to do so.
This World Bank case study provides an excellent analysis of the program, with a link to a highly detailed case study, and they provide ongoing updates via a Medium blog.
