Singapore has launched the Digital Trust Centre (DTC) to lead Singapore’s research and development (R&D) efforts for trust technologies, and to support talent development in the space.
It will do so by embarking on the following initiatives:
- Trust tech research – Enable institutes of higher learning and research institutes to pursue research excellence in trust technologies and drive local and international collaborations.
- Trust tech innovations – Encourage academia and enterprises to co-develop and mature research ideas into market-ready solutions.
- New sandbox environment – Enable businesses to experiment with trust technologies to alleviate challenges with data sharing.
- Deepen local capabilities – Nurture 100 R&D talents in digital trust.
The DTC is funded by a $50 million investment from the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and the National Research Foundation under the Research, Innovation and Enterprise 2025 plan. It is hosted by the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Using DTC to support the development of trusted AI
Singapore also plans to step up its contributions to the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence – a multi-stakeholder initiative that fosters international cooperation to bridge the theory and practice in artificial intelligence (AI) – through the DTC.
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For instance, the DTC will support cross-border collaboration on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs), which preserve data privacy while the data is being analysed.
The collaboration is part of the Memorandum of Understanding between IMDA and the International Centre of Expertise of Montreal for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (CEIMIA).
It aims to develop solutions that will demonstrate how PETs can overcome privacy and compliance challenges for organisations building novel applications that leverage cross-organisation and cross-border data. The DTC will be the implementation partner of those solutions.
The experience gained from the collaboration is expected to guide future R&D, business adoption of PETs, and contribute to the development of international standards.
