Speech by Senior Minister of State for Transport Dr Janil Puthucheary at the Launch of the RP-LTA Rail Operations Management Lab and RP-RSA-Ensign Cyber Threat Intelligence Centre

1.     Good morning friends!

2.     Thank you for inviting me here. Thank you to Principal Yeo for speaking on behalf of the educators and students as to the intent, benefit and outcomes we are able to achieve through the partnerships that we have put in place today.

3.     We have here today representatives from the Government as well as from the industry. I don’t know if anybody from the industry is going to stand up here and explain the value they place in this sort of partnership, I think we understand it quite well. They are hoping to train the next generation of employees, workers and stakeholders, who will come into their firms and drive the industry. I think we take that as read and we understand very much the value they place on these type of partnerships.

4.     I will say a little bit about how we value the progress and development of such partnerships and collaborations from the Government. On a personal level, I really enjoyed accepting this invitation because it has a nexus with many of my portfolios – looking at cybersecurity and also looking at transport. Maybe some didn’t appreciate that it also has a nexus with my past portfolio in MOE as well, where I was very concerned about how we can make sure that education doesn’t stop at the school gates and industry comes into the school compound. This is a great example of exactly that – how do we set students up for the idea that education must be applied through industry practices, education must be applied in professional development in their career. It doesn’t stop when they leave school.

5.     One of the other overlaps with my portfolio is the work I do in the Smart Nation and Digital Government Group, where today internationally when we speak to stakeholders, partners, people who are interested in this space, the argument, the kind of transformation and disruption we are hoping to manage and take advantage of through the Smart Nation and Digital Government Group’s work, actually people accept that this is what we should do, very often the questions is: how?

6.     How will you think about gaining the right skills? How will you think about having the right relationship between the industry and academia? Again, this is a great example of what we are trying to achieve.

Nurturing Skilled Workers to Support the Rail and Cybersecurity Industries

Rail industry and RP-LTA Rail Operations Management Lab

7.     Let me say a little bit about rail. Rail is a sunrise industry, not a sunset industry.

8.     Our rail network is growing rapidly and those of you who are from LTA and from the engineering side, will know just how rapidly it is growing and what that pressure is putting on our engineering teams. We are expanding from 230km today to about 360km by 2030. New lines like the Thomson-East Coast Line, Jurong Region Line, and the Cross Island Line – all of this is being planned.

8.     We have committed under the last Land Transport Master Plan to having 8 in 10 households within a 10-minute walk of a train station. Great from a commuting point of view and citizens’ point of view, hard work from LTA and rail operators’ point of view. We have to deliver, so this rapid expansion of our rail network will come with a rapid expansion of jobs.

9.     The total workforce is 9,000 today. We are expecting that to grow to 15,000 by 2030. In number, size and scale, rail is a sunrise industry.

10.    But also, qualitatively, it is changing. It is evolving to meet the needs of our commuters. Our commuters expect smoother rides, faster rides, but also more seamless connections: how do we move from one mode of transport to the other, how do we move between different rail lines seamlessly. Reliability too – a key point of how we must engender trust in our rail system, and reliability requires the most advanced engineering techniques. This requires professionals, not just new professionals in number, from 9,000 to 15,000, but also professionals with new skillsets to take advantage of today’s technology and technologies that have only just been dreamed of and are being invented so that we can apply them to rail.

11.    This is on the backdrop of the ongoing work we have launched: The Industry Transformation Map (ITM), the skills framework for public transport.

12.    The Land Transport ITM and skills framework are pieces of the puzzle about how we move this industry forward, take advantage of technology, create new partnerships and create more opportunities moving forward.

13.    This Lab, the RP-LTA Rail Operations Management Lab, is yet another piece of this growing puzzle – this time a collaboration between educators, academia and the industry, giving students opportunities for immersive hands-on learning experience that supplements their classroom curriculum.

14.    The foundations of educations need to be there, but we need to show students in a very direct way how they take those foundations and apply them to industry practice. We also need to let them start developing relationships with people within the industry to understand what it really takes to thrive and have a fulfilling career in the industry.

15.    The Rail Lab is a great facility and opportunity but it complements and, is part of a larger puzzle. We have to do more of this type of work across the industry. The Singapore Rail Academy, set up by LTA and partners, is another example. So we need not just one instance, one idea, one facility, but a network of facilities and partnerships out there to blur the lines between education and employment, between academia and application, between the ideas and the industry, those lines have to be blurred in these partnerships with the industry. This is no less true for cybersecurity and in truth, the other nexus between the two Labs that we are launching today, is that cybersecurity is a vulnerability for the rail industry as well.

Cybersecurity industry and RP-RSA-Ensign Cyber Threat Intelligence Centre

16.    The cybersecurity for rail is important. In October 2017, the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks in Sweden targeted systems used to monitor rail traffic, caused transportation delays across the country1. Danish train operator DSB was also cyber-attacked in May 2018, preventing commuters from buying tickets through their website and ticket machines².

17.    It is a very real threat and is a good example of the kind of engineering we need to address. Cyber threat actors are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Attacks are becoming more frequent. The sophistication of the solutions and technologies, products, services and platforms that we deploy as we grow as a Smart Nation will also increase, and so the need for cybersecurity professionals.

18.    And like the rail industry, it is not just about the number; we have to anticipate the growing depth of skills, rigour of application and growing intensity. We don’t only need more cybersecurity professionals, we need better trained and more experienced cybersecurity professionals going forward. It is not going to be easy, either from the rail engineering side or the cybersecurity side, but if we can create pathways in education that excite the students, give them the opportunities, then hopefully we can attract more students into these paths.

19.    CSA has been working closely with industry partners, professional associations and Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs) hoping to strengthen Singapore’s cybersecurity role.

20.    This RP-RSA-Ensign Cyber Threat Intelligence Centre is part of a much larger puzzle of collaborations, networks and shared facilities across our country, to think of how we go from the primary school student who has just worked out from YouTube how to begin his first set of codes, all the way up to the person leaving formal education, joining the industry and asking “How can I learn more as I join your company, while leveraging on what I learnt during my training.”

21.    Students specifically in the Diploma Infocomm Security Management can use this Centre to gain exposure to a live threat monitoring platform and prepare them for the kind of work they have to do in real life. It also, I hope, will excite them about the kind of possibilities that a career in cybersecurity will offer.

22.    As Principal pointed out, it is also very important that these facilities and partnerships engage and excite you – the academic professionals. That blurring of lines between employment and education is not just for the benefit of the students. We as their mentors, their faculty, as their teachers need to make sure we are engaged as well. Giving industry professionals an opportunity to participate in education and giving education professionals an opportunity to participate in industry is key to developing this strength of partnership.

23.    So I am very glad that RPRSA and Ensign, together with the rail industry partners, have come together with RP, because ultimately, from the point of view of Government, we cannot achieve any of this on our own. We need for all partners to be part of the same drive, same message, bringing together capability for the benefit of the next generation, bringing us closer to what we have articulated as our Smart Nation goals.

Conclusion

24.    These emerging technologies and market forces that have driven us in this direction, they can be a disruption and opportunity, provided we have a sense of ambition, a highly-skilled and adaptable workforce, and are committed to stay ahead of the curve.

25.    To the students that one day will make up the ranks of our rail and cybersecurity professionals: you are our future. As you graduate and join the workforce, I hope you will commit to lifelong learning, upgrading and managing your skills, and seeking fulfilment through your professional development, not just when you are in formal education but also in work because your employers will now have access to some of the best academic and educational thinking as well, so lifelong learning becomes possible after you graduate.

26.    To all who have come together to make all this possible, thank you very much, thank you for your commitment and thank you for your engagement in this new vision going forward for the next generation of our workforce.

27.    Congratulations to Republic Polytechnic, and thank you all for the invitation to join you as well. 

¹ https://www.thelocal.se/20171012/swedish-transport-agencies-targeted-in-cyber-attack
² https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/danish-railway-ddos-attack/