Singapore

Summary
Singapore’s degree of digital dependence remains moderate and stable over time. Its overall DDI value changes minimally from 0.69 in 2010 to 0.65 in 2023, as do its performance in ICT goods and patent dependency. A sharp decrease in ICT service dependency (from 0.75 to 0.49) is offset by an increase in platform dependency (from 0.83 to 0.92). In fact, Singapore’s platform dependency even surged to 0.99 in 2012 and approximated 1.00 until 2020, before dropping again in the early 2020s. Singapore enjoys considerable bilateral independence in digital goods trade with both China and the US, as both values average only slightly above 0.30.

Policies
In its digital policies, Singapore not only attaches great importance to critical technology supply chains, but also to the link between national security and digital technologies. In 2022, it established a new branch in its Armed Forces, the “Digital and Intelligence Service” (DIS), with a mandate to safeguard sovereignty and ensure digital resilience. In the “Cybersecurity Strategy” of 2021, resilient infrastructure was named one of the three strategic pillars.