22/07/2025
One of the great myths about Singapore, the “Smart Nation”, is that we prize data openness and transparency. Far from it. Part of the reason public discourse is crippled is that there isn’t enough freedom of information—say, on inequality, or ethnic breakdowns in universities or prisons. The long-standing suspicion is that politically inconvenient or possibly incendiary data is best kept under lock and key.
Neo Hui Yuan, a PhD candidate at Cornell University and first-time Jom writer, makes a strong argument for why more open data would benefit all parties in Singapore, including the ruling party and policymakers. Her essay opens with the remarkable, and ultimately doomed, six-year quest by Shannon Ang, NTU professor, to obtain basic data from CPF’s Retirement and Health Study.
“Like Kafka’s opaque proceedings, data access in Singapore can sometimes also seem like a black box to outsiders. While the front-end instructions and platforms for data application are clear, transparent, and institutionalised, the back-end processes of decision-making are often obscured.”
Hui Yuan’s research at Cornell examines information and data control in authoritarian regimes. Much of her research has been in Malaysia, whose experience is similar to ours. “The more an issue speaks to the narratives that underpin Malaysia’s socio-political equilibrium—say corruption, cost of living, and racial and religious divides—the harder it is to locate relevant data. But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. In fact, my conversations with various data stakeholders and bureaucrats in Malaysia were filled with optimism—data is becoming more accessible and transparent in the country, due in large part to the joint efforts between civil society and the bureaucracy.”
Two states, Penang and Selangor, have already implemented their versions of a freedom of information act (FOIA). To make it a reality here, Hui Yuan says that “civil society needs to come together to champion for data transparency as an encompassing cause.”
Read the essay now: https://www.jom.media/a-turn-towards-transparency-the-case-for-more-open-data-in-singapore/
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A shift to an open-by-default data governance structure would foster the more participatory society the PAP claims to want
