Singapore’s moves to step up competitiveness through digitalisation are commendable. Yet, our zealousness to transform the economy leaves a lot to be desired.

At hospitals, customers who want to pay immediately are being turned away, only to be prompted to pay online via SMSes later, as if using credit cards for payment is any less cashless than direct bank deductions. 

Barrier-free carparks, such as the one in Punggol Northshore, deduct parking fees without displaying the parking charge.

The initiative provides administrative convenience to the carpark operator, whose bank account is directly credited as soon as the vehicle leaves the carpark.

But the driver is clueless as to the cost of parking.

To monitor the expenditures, one has to spend extra effort digging through an app or bank statement.

With the SimplyGo initiative, commuters leave a bus or train without seeing immediately how much balance is left on their cards, and they also do not know whether there is enough value to carry on with their journey.

We must not have the impression that we have to forgo certain merits of travelling to achieve further benefits of technology.

We could have forgotten that the eventual goal of using technology is to improve public lives, and not solely to save costs for operators.

The manner by which some things have been digitised in Singapore has instead deprived the public of much of their required services.

Singapore’s institutions must move ahead with digitalisation without cutting costs at the expense of consumers by passing the workload to them or artificially trying to impress the authorities that they are functioning “digitally”, but are instead creating problems and not adding value.

Jimmy Ho Kwok Hoong