IDA appoints new Deputy Chairman, Managing Director

SINGAPORE - The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) has appointed Mr Steve Leonard as its executive Deputy Chairman and Ms Jacqueline Poh as Managing Director.

They will officially assume their new appointments on June 10, 2013. Current IDA CEO, Mr Ronnie Tay, will return to the Administrative Service for another posting in the Public Service.

Mr Steve Leonard is an industry veteran with more than 28 years of international experience working in global technology firms. He will focus primarily on industry promotion and development in his role. This includes strategic planning and development of manpower for the infocomm sector, infrastructure development, spearheading the transformation of innovative start-ups and local enterprises, and overseeing various national cross-sectoral programmes.

Mr Leonard, who has been serving on the IDA Board of Directors since 2009, was President of EMC Asia Pacific and Japan for more than six years, and previously served as the senior leader for Symantec software in Asia. He was also a senior executive of EDS Corporation in both Asia and Europe.

He said: "I have been a long term resident of Singapore, and I have seen how important technology is here. I am keen to help move Singapore forward with the many exciting national initiatives IDA is championing, such as the ones in smart cities and big data."

Ms Jacqueline Poh will be seconded from the Administrative Service to take up the new position at IDA. Ms Poh was previously the Divisional Director, Workplace Policy and Strategy Division at the Ministry of Manpower (MOM).Prior to MOM, Ms Poh served in other ministries including the Ministry of Finance where she oversaw issues relating to social and security, and taxation related matters.

On the new management appointments, IDA Chairman, Ms Yong Ying-I said: "The appointments of an executive Deputy Chairman and a Managing Director at IDA, who bring strong private sector and public sector experiences with them, will enable IDA to more strongly drive impactful transformation across a broad range of sectors and issues affecting our economy, society and government."

Mr Tay has helmed IDA since November 2007 and under his leadership, Singapore has successfully deployed the Next Gen Nationwide Broadband Network to 95 per cent of homes as well as businesses, with more than 250,000 fibre broadband subscribers. According to IDA, the $46 million Infocomm Industry Productivity Roadmap was launched in 2011 and benefitted more than 70 companies and 6,700 infocomm professionals to date.

The IDA also credited Mr Tay with the success of the Infocomm@SME programme. In a statement, a spokesperson said: "More than 5,000 SMEs have benefitted from the iSprint grant scheme to use infocomm to enhance business productivity. In addition, various sectoral transformation programmes for education, healthcare, finance, logistics and transport were implemented, and the eGov2015 masterplan was launched in 2011."

During Mr Tay's tenure, IDA worked with the Ministry of Communications and Information to introduce the Personal Data Protection Act. IDA also worked to review the spectrum allocation frameworks for mobile broadband services such as that for 4G, and introduced various consumer protection measures such as enhancing 3G Quality of Service standards.

New initiatives such as the Smart Cities Pilots & Trials Programme and New Ways of Work which included the setting up of Smart Work Centres have been introduced. Leveraging on emerging technologies and trends such as business analytics and Big Data, IDA also encouraged the development of innovative services through CFCs for mobile positioning and analytics services, and harnessing data for value creation.

ljessica@sph.com.sg