 Hello, and a very warm welcome to the DW World Economic Forum debate coming to you from Plom Pen, the capital of Cambodia. Despite its difficult history, Cambodia has made rapid economic progress in the past few decades. In fact, its growth rate right now is over 7 percent. Cambodia is one of 10 nations which is part of the Southeast Asian Nations Association or ASEAN. ASEAN is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Fifty years when much has been achieved and there are many reasons to celebrate. But looking ahead for the next half a century, what can this region do? How can it use technology, digitalisation and innovation to bring more prosperity to more people? The fourth industrial revolution in ASEAN, that is going to be the focus of our discussion today. It's my great pleasure to welcome and introduce our panelists now, starting with Naveen Menon. He's the president of ASEAN Cisco Systems. He has huge experience in issues of technology, telecom and digitalisation, having worked with many leading companies in this region. And he's also the world economic forum's knowledge advisor on many issues that we'll be raising in our discussion today. Janil Putucherry is a senior minister of state from Singapore. He has several portfolios including education, the Ministry of Communication and Information. He's also the minister in charge of the Government Technology Agency, GOVTECH, which is responsible for the Smart Nation Initiative. And before he got involved in politics, I think Janil was a doctor who worked closely with children in intensive care units. Then we have Caroline Clark. She's the CEO of ASEAN Pacific for Royal Philips. She was the force behind the company's personal health solutions programme. The company aims to be a leader in health technology innovation in the region. Also from the health sector, but a very different perspective, we have Gregory Daier. He's based in Vietnam. He is the CEO of Medical Technology and Transfer Service, that's M-T-T-S. He describes himself as a financial analyst by trade, a biomedical engineer by experience and a social entrepreneur by passion. This year he was dominated as a social entrepreneur for the World Economic Forum. And finally we have a minister, Dr. Pichit Doronkawarot. He's minister for Digital Economy and Society in Thailand. He's also the director of the ASEAN Coordination Centre and advisor to the President. And you also head the Innovation Policy Centre. And before this, you have done many other things including you were a lecturer in physics. Ladies and gentlemen, please give the panel a warm welcome. Naveen, let me start with you. There's been a lot of discussion on the Fourth Industrial Revolution since Professor Klaus Schwab wrote his book of the same name. How do you understand the Fourth Industrial Revolution and its relevance to ASEAN? Well, I love the term the Fourth Industrial Revolution. But what I think it really stands for is the coming together of multiple exponential technologies. So you see exponential tech in the field of nanotechnology or in medical research or in space exploration or in machine learning, robotics. When you have all of these technologies rising in terms of their development on an exponential pace, powered by analytics and powered by big data, you really are starting to see some significant shifts in society. And these shifts in society are triggering us to rethink some of the core beliefs that we have held until now, as in questions around where our job is going to go in the future. Are they the skills that we're learning right now relevant anymore? Are we going to be safe in tomorrow's world when we're living with robots? Are we, how are we going to deal with aging? Are we going to live to 140 years old? These are all kind of definitions that are blurring. And so the Fourth Industrial Revolution in that sense is a tremendous opportunity. Now, our belief is that for ASEAN it can create a potential $1 trillion of an incremental GDP for this region alone. And that is through the enablement and the deployment of connectivity infrastructure but also the creation of new jobs and innovation and mobile worker productivity. So there's a huge potential out there but clearly a lot of things to be done to ensure that we are safe and secure in capturing the benefits as well. Minister Pichit, we held a huge opportunity for ASEAN. You were appointed by your Prime Minister as a Minister for that, so that you could use the digital economy to improve the competitiveness of the country, to improve innovation, bring more innovation in the country. What are the key areas you're focusing on? What are your key priorities in Thailand to reap the benefits of what is being described as the Fourth Industrial Revolution? First of all, the Fourth Industrial Revolution to me, I see it as opportunity for ASEAN region. I see opportunity because it's like turning a new chapter and using whatever, nanotechnology, biotechnology, digital technology and it's opportunities for all, not only for any individual countries. As for Thailand, I think we are turning a new page as well through the policy of Thailand 4.0, coincidentally. We can use any number. But anyway, I think for digital technology, we are talking about digital inclusion, providing more opportunities for the poor, for the rural economy, for the communities, apart from the major central players who can take care of themselves. So in Thailand today, we are talking about equipping villages. For this year alone, we are going to install broadband network for a high-speed broadband for 24,700 villages. And by the end of next year, we are going to install broadband for all villages in Thailand. And this is inclusive, about 75,000 villages. Together with that superhighway, we are going to install e-commerce platforms so that villages for the first time can get into or engage themselves to e-marketplace, e-payment, e-logistics for the first time. Something that normally takes years before they can get into these kind of activities. We are also using this digital highway to improve their quality of life through digital health, telemedicine. And particularly in Thailand, the healthcare system has been quite good. And we have installed a system so that each and every village already has existing, the village health volunteers. So think about when you equip these people with digital technology, they can do a better job. So a very broad and ambitious program is what you are trying to introduce in Thailand. Let's now turn to Singapore, Minister Janil. Now Singapore always tops all the kind of rankings that you have on digital technology in many other regions. And your other ASEAN neighbours says, but Singapore, it's a nation state, it's just a small geographical region, it's easy for them. Is that it? Is that why you're the leader in technology? Well, we are small. And if that was the secret to our success, it would be easy to do. I'm not sure that it is. I think part of it is a decision that we took around the time of independence. We're young, only two years older than ASEAN, 52 years old this year. And we committed to being open. And we have been for the length of our status as an independent nation. We've been open to trade, we've been open to people, one-third of our labour force are not Singaporean. And we've been open to ideas, we've been open to the flow of finance and services, which has meant that we've been extremely exposed to the winds of globalisation. And so we've regularly had to consider restructuring our economy, restructuring our priorities. Land being a very good example of the zero-sum game that we're playing in Singapore because we are extremely small. And every set of industries that we attract in means another industry that we can't. Now, as a result, we've had to grapple with some of the current pressures and ideas around globalisation associated with the Industrial Revolution, whether it's the fourth or not. And so I don't know if that's the reason why we've done well so far. We've done all those things as a matter of survival, but it seems to have worked out very well. We've been very prepared to disrupt ourselves, either from an industrial-based point of view, an economic diversification point of view, but we've got to do the same again. And recently we've been through an exercise to consider how our next bound of economic restructuring will look like, centred around many of the technologies and ideas that we're talking about in the fourth Industrial Revolution. And we're very clear that that restructuring has to involve not just the private sector economy, but also how we do government, how we do regulations, how we govern and how we control and diversify the public-private relationships that we have. So lots of things going on. I'd be happy to talk about some of those things as well, but I don't know that I've answered your question because if I could, I suspect I would be in a very different position. I don't know what the secret source is. Being small helps, but I don't think being small is sufficient. Otherwise it would be very easy to do. Thank you. Turning to you, Karolina, you're working on technology which is directly having an impact on the lives of people, and that's in the health sector. Tell us a little bit about what you're doing and what impact has it had? Yes, I mean, we're seeing changes in the world and in the region with aging populations, increasing chronic diseases, restricted healthcare resources. And as a healthcare technology company, we do believe that innovation and technology can really help really bring the world to a much healthier and sustainable place. Now, when it comes to the fourth industrial revolution, in particular for us, digitalization, we see as having a significant impact in healthcare and allowing and enabling much better outcomes and lower costs. And we see three probably key trends. One is the personalization of health. The second one is really innovation and care pathways. And the third one really is inclusive health. And you can see in the area of prevention or chronic disease management how digitalization, connected devices, wearables, the smartphone can really empower people to understand more about their own health and be able to manage that health. Through telehealth, we can move health away from the hospital bed and into the home, allowing people to recover faster after an incident with their family, reducing emergency admissions because they're monitored remotely. So digital touches are very many components of the health continuum and to other extent in terms of working with medical professionals and clinicians on big data, on artificial intelligence, combining data and genomics to be much more precise around the person's data and being able to personalize and first time write the diagnosis and the treatment. So digitalization also for scale. And I think in the region, you see many countries with many challenges and opportunities. And you see some also areas with very remote communities. So inclusive health is critical and being able to bring care to, for example, maternal health in Indonesia where we're working with digital programs to monitor risk factors and being able to scale that across Indonesia. So it touches very many different elements to enable scale and health for all. Let me draw in a Gregory at this point. Gregory, you're also working in the health sector, but you're working in a very challenging environment and with one of the most vulnerable sections of the population, neonatal's newborn babies. Now you are offering them high tech solutions in a very low cost environment. Tell us about your work and the challenges that you're facing. All right. So the name of our company describes we transfer the technology from high tech solutions, make them available, widespread in low resource settings. There's still a lot of people, we're talking about fourth industrial revolution, but there's still a lot of people barely out of first industrial revolution. No access to electricity or limited access to electricity, not mentioned our other things. So what we're trying to do is to bring those latest developments, utilizing the advancement in technology, like spaceship materials that are utilizing our devices that can be disinfected and reused again and again, bring them, take the advancement, take the use of LED lights, for example, and utilize them in the medical equipment and introduce them to those who cannot afford them. And thanks to the reducing the cost and make them more durable, long lasting and easy to use, we are able to deliver them all over the ASEAN region and also East and West Africa. And thanks to that, the clinicians can provide a world-class quality of care at very reasonable costs. And I think what I'm trying to say here is that this is very specific example of healthcare, but there's a good lesson also for everybody here that if we... Isn't that the lesson being? Exclusion, avoid the exclusion, use the technology. If we don't start doing that now, if we're not gonna allow those who are on the bottom of the pyramid to benefit from this forth and this revolution, the advancement, we're gonna be looking at social unrest and a lot of issues that we already start looking at in other parts of the world. So I think it's extremely important to act now and help companies like ours doing that. And just one more, many people ask me why other companies don't do that? Like big, big players in the market, why they could do that easily? And the problem is that there's no much profit. It's not really lucrative market if to deal with bottom of the pyramid. So social enterprise like ours, trying to close that gap and that very low profitability we develop the technologies using the latest one, introducing them to the bottom. And I think that's a very important job. Thank you, Gregory. Now all of you have talked about inclusiveness in your comments, your initial comments that it's really important that technology is used an inclusive way. And yet as we're hearing from Gregory who works actually in a very low cost environment, it is not easy to close the gap between cutting edge technology and the kind of services you're offering people who need it at that level. Returning to you, Navi. Now we also, let's first talk a little bit about the opportunities that the fourth industrial revolution has to offer. Infrastructure is one key element that one needs to be able to reap the dividends of a digital revolution. What is key, one of the key elements there do you think which Azi needs to focus on? Yeah, so there are, they would say the broadly there are five areas where we need to focus on. One is like you said infrastructure, but infrastructure has many components to it. Connectivity now requires routers, switches but also requires base stations and fiber and passive infrastructure. Secondly, it requires applications. And so the applications need to be tailored to ensure inclusiveness so that they're hitting the full strata of the population and not just large corporates or smaller companies or what you're talking about Gregory is the bottom of the pyramid which is less than $5 a day which is a very, very large proportion of Azian population. So the applications need to be delivered as well. So there's a kind of a situation around infrastructures that you need to look at the application side as well. The third area is that you need to make sure that there is security and that many people do not try technology because they're afraid of what it is likely gonna cause to them or their family. They're afraid that maybe their personal data will be compromised or maybe they're living in situations where their personal life is at threat potentially if they reveal information about their own personal identity. So there's a lot of layers to it and what we need to do is to really look at how we can enable corporations and governments can work together to enable the greater cause that we're talking about here. That would mean digitizing industries. So enabling banks to be more productive to ensure we're hitting. There are still a lot of people in Azian that do not have bank accounts and so there's an opportunity for digitization to reach those customers. There is, Azian has a tradition of an ID system that is more powerful than in, for example, in Europe or in North America where you use passports as your primary means of identification. Now a single digital ID, taking the traditional ID and digitizing that can actually provide access to a broad variety of public services. And now those public services can then be more efficiently allocated so that they are hitting the ones that need it the most. And then finally, there is definitely a aspect on education. So a lot of rural communities, marginalized communities, need to be given access to education. And education is costly to deliver if it's done in the model that we know of right now, which is a single teacher, a single student. If it is done in a more transformative way, it can actually reach a wider group of people. So actually, you've laid out a roadmap for how we can use the Fourth Industrial Revolution. But it is a pretty long-term roadmap that you've outlined, having the infrastructure, having the education, getting the community involved. But what Singapore seems to have managed to do, Minister Putucherry, is to involve people and put people at the center through your initiative like GovTech. Tell us how do you involve the people so that they take up and they take to technology? Well, I think getting that inclusion right is a central part of how we want to do this. The impact on all the things that we've talked about is pervasive in society, and it's going to be increasingly going to become a limiting step for that inclusion into productive economy, into opportunities for going forward. So we have to take a very aggressive approach at making sure that the whole of our society moves together, and we do very much want to do that. And the layers of inclusion are not just about the socioeconomic pyramid, as it were, but also around things like language. And if you talk about the digital economy and how much of it requires English language or European language to access, and we have a significant proportion of our population that was Mandarin educated and didn't do English as a first language. If you talk about job opportunities and the need for fundamental math skills in order to retrain as a 40-year-old, and you take our 40, 50, 60-year-old citizens currently, and the type of experience they had at high school and didn't perhaps have the type of math skills that would allow them to work for Naveen in re-skilling at this time of their lives. So that inclusion has many dimensions. But I think to start off with that that is a very clear role for government in this equation, that you say part of a big role of government is to do the inclusion part and to drive that and getting the processes and structures right, so that even as we talk about the role of government versus private sector in infrastructure, what is our operating model, what is our business model, and what is our investment model, it has to then have that approach where it takes everybody along. Similarly for education, I think that's a big role for government to play in this space. And I think apart from the fundamentals in terms of inclusion, there is also the role of education as an enabler for the types of disruption that you were worried about, job loss, the ability for people to re-skill and upskill and pivot. And again, we have to get the structures and business models and operating models right so that there is really very good reasons for the private sector to get involved in education of adults, to provide the opportunities for our citizens and to provide the labour force that they need in order to flourish. So I think there's a series of layers there, but it all comes round to that idea that the role of government then is to bring everybody along in that space together. Talking about the role of government, Minister Pichett, now you talked about expanding broadband and internet to the rural communities as well. You also talked about industry 4.0, which is a German concept about automation of industry. A lot of people, especially in Asia, are worried that this automation and smart factories would lead to disruptions in the labour market. How do you respond to those concerns? What are you doing to ensure that people feel included and not excluded from digitalisation? Well, automation will come and we cannot resist it because it's beneficial for the industry for cut costs, for improve their performance and so on. So the other side of it is how we can get prepared so that unemployment would not be in the end a social problem that's difficult to solve because automation can replace thousands of people. So for the government, we are thinking that we need to work collaboratively with the private sector in resolving this. Upgrading the skill retraining is easy to say, but how? Exactly, tell me how. And to the level of quantity and the quality that they can move with us to the fourth industrial revolution. So I think we have to go down to education and learning. We think that today education is a little bit far behind and they need to rethink their educational strategies so that pupils today can get into the so-called 21st century skills rather than just a classroom type of learning. And by 21st century skill, we are talking about teamwork. We now see a lot of co-working space all over the place. This is teamwork and productive teamwork also. We talk about ability to learn because every young people are now learned through the internet. And to get to know how to learn through the internet is going to be very important because you have a lot of overwhelming information all around. We talk about the fact that today's classroom, especially the teachers, need to be changed, especially the role of less teaching, more facilitation. How? And I think we need to be very innovative in doing this. Deploying digital for learning, we have MOOC, the massive online courses, but how to be more effective so that students really can learn. And in the end, it's not only the government's role, even it's not only the Ministry of Education alone. They cannot tackle because it's so diverse and it has to be reached out. In Thailand now, we have even the young people who are organizing Teach for Thailand program. Yeah, let me draw in Caroline here. It's not just the government's role to teach people. What role can the private sector play in being part of the training and retraining of populations to meet the challenges of the Fourth Industrial Revolution? Yeah, I think it has to be a completely joint ecosystem, public, private, linking to the consumer, the patient. All of us will play a role in educating, moving forward, and also designing the solutions together as well because I think there is no one solution fits all. This is about creating the right for solution for a particular population group. So all of us need to do that together. In fact, Arsene's one of, it has a demographic dividend which would translate very well into a digital dividend. Let me draw in Gregory again because Gregory, you worked at the grassroots levels and one of your big fears is what you mentioned, exclusion. When you listen from the policy perspective and from the private sector, how reassured do you feel that people get it, that education and training is the fundamental to reap the benefits of the changes we are seeing? Yes, it is definitely fundamental. I can see that every day during my work, when I travel and talk to clinicians in the rural clinics all over the region and I think, you know, I've seen in my life so much misery and probably more than I wish, but I remain optimistic. And the reason is we have tools to solve problems. We just need to figure out how to use those tools. And I'm listening to panelists. I also think that there's a good potential for cooperation and we just need to figure out the pathways how to get there. I just want to give one more example from our activities, how the so-called bottom of the pyramid can leapfrog to the next level. And using our technologies, we introduce the independence of sources. So the infrastructures we know today, it doesn't have to be the same infrastructure that is necessary for new technologies. So independence from the grid, electricity, we can make it solar. Why we don't have to run the grid all over the countries? We can use the independence of sources like in hospital setting, you have to have oxygen, air and vacuum. This also can be generated locally. So the lower costs are integrated with the machines. So those are the practical examples of solutions that can work and do work. We provide them this way. And I think we're cutting down the cost of transportation, delivering that and each machine being independent. So I said it's a lot of work, but I'm remaining optimistic. And I think that the panel like that helps a lot to communicate as well. Navin, how would you respond to what Gregory is saying? Because you talked about just the value of digitalization and how many trillion years dollars it'll bring to the economy. But at the bottom line, technology is about empowering people. And when you listen to stories of the level that he is talking, how do you respond to his concerns? Well, I feel he's being very polite, frankly. I think industry can do a lot more. And we can and we should. And we are in a tremendous source. And we are at a meeting now with a lot of industry leaders. And we have a tremendous responsibility. And the question is, which business leader will take it as their personal pride and personal mandate to kind of drive change? And that's what we all have to ask ourselves, look ourselves in the eye and go, are we really going to do it or not? So let me take education. It comes down to something very simple. The quality of a children's performance at school comes down to the singular relationship between that student and his teacher. Now, how can you enable that magic that happens between a teacher and a pupil through technology if that is what you need to do to scale? I'm not saying that that's what should be done, but if you're asking me, how can we make education more effective and allow it to be catering to the masses when we need technology, then the question we should be asking ourselves is, how do we create that magic at scale? So there are lots of ways in which it can be done. I'm not saying there's a single answer, but we should all work on that rather than I hear about MOOCs. MOOCs are a very good start in terms of getting the many groups of the society involved in taking care of their own learning, frankly. Like you can sign up and register for courses and do distance learning, but it doesn't solve the relationship between the teacher and the pupil. The only thing that solves the relationship between the teacher and pupil is if somehow the teacher could magically appear in front of you, either through a hologram or something, and can teach lots of people. And that same teacher could teach 10 other kids or 50 other kids individually in other countries. Now, that's not happening in the near future, but what is happening in the near future is video. You have video technology that can actually mimic real life as far as possible. And I've seen it firsthand now in the industry that I work in. It is phenomenal. I mean, it really does enable that conversation to happen. So if someone whispers in the classroom, you can pick it up and you can have a real conversation rather than having to speak at very loud tones and waiting to be heard. So we have to solve that relationship between the single teacher and their student, and then we can enable educational outcomes to transform. And of course, the biggest sort of challenge is that the digital dividend should not be a digital divide. For example, we talk about digital natives, we talk about digital immigrants, and the fear is, of course, there might be now digital refugees if they can't keep up with technology. So how do you create that magic that Naveen is talking about, Minister Putucherry? What is required? What is the catalyst that is required to capture the imagination of not people living in big cities who are very technosabby, who use technology for social media and other conveniences, but actually to be aware of life? Well, some of its opportunity, that if they have the infrastructure that's there and the connectivity that's there, the economic opportunity that this provides is going to drive them in this direction. And I think we can deal with many of the friction points, whether it's language, whether it's the availability, the intercontinuitability of real cash to e-payment solutions, the availability of terminals, those are all points of friction that can be rolled out through infrastructure plans and so forth. But the availability of services that every citizen might have use of and are willing to use, I mean, that's going to be what draws people in. And I think education has a role to play here because the provision of that connectivity to schools, I think is going to be vital, that you want that generation to grow up with a certain expectation of access to services, a certain expectation of access to knowledge. And you want the generation to grow up and arrive at 15 or 16 and to be a fully enabled self-directed learner to go and find all this information online. And that will drive the pressure on us all to provide all those services to the adults as well. So I'm quite hopeful. Frankly speaking, the demographic dividend that we will have in ASEAN over the next couple of decades is coming about at a time when we've never had better access to knowledge from around the world. And if we can solve these connectivity and infrastructure issues, we will be able to provide a kind of education to the kids coming through that demographic dividend that no other generation has had before in such a location as ASEAN with our diversity and on such a scale that this demographic dividend is providing. So we have an opportunity, the window of opportunity is there. I believe the will is there and both from the public sector as well as the private sector. And I think we can address many of these challenges and problems in a very positive way. The will is there, the opportunity is there, but there are also risks and there's also fear of exclusion. Minister Prichett, tell us again about in Thailand that you said you expanded broadband to villages, but there still remains a big gap between what people in cities have, what people in the countryside have. There's a big divide in terms of access. How does one overcome this lack of access and the lack of infrastructure? Is more regulation needed? How does one broaden access to opportunity? I think infrastructure-wise, we don't have to worry too much about digital divide. Actually, in terms of infrastructure, would you agree with that? I mean, because it becomes digital bridge once you install it. Once you install it, but... But more importantly, how you create values. And even though I come from the digital ministry, I still think that human touch is still very important. And I think that people to people is still something that we need to consider and value. For example, all these villages that we are gonna install this wonderful technology, we also have a plan so that we'll create values, especially for villages or villages to generate more income through this network, through e-commerce and so on. It is my high hope that I can bring back the young people who normally migrate from their rural areas to big cities back to their homeland. And we will have better family structures. We have more warmth in the village itself. So I think we are killing many birds at one time. And at the same time, once they can see and test it that digital can bring economic value, then you can start pouring in e-learning because they are now willing to learn and not the reverse. I think to do it on the supply side kind of mechanism has not been working so well. So we need to be very psychologically efficient in what people will or will not learn in this digital age. Just to build on Minister's point, this issue of the supply and the digital divide that you're trying to allude to in terms of access and just to talk about access. When it comes to connectivity and bandwidth, I mean, the history, the short history of this technology has demonstrated that there really is supply-induced demand here. And you don't have to worry about that investment in connectivity and bandwidth because it will get used up. And quite separate from the products and the content where you've got to let the market drive that and there's a whole diversification that needs to happen. But the bandwidth and connectivity, the provision of that supply drives demand, which means that there isn't such a fear about the investments required in order to provide that access. So it will happen. I mean, the rate limiting steps than other, the budgetary constraints and the availability to deploy, but there is no lack of will because we know that the demand will be there. So I think I'm very hopeful that we will cross that. So I was gonna say, I agree with what you're saying, but the debate of access is not one of haves and have nots. It's one of, yes, I have broadband in the village, but it is 256 kbps. And with 256 kbps, when you start to look at how many people in the villages have 512 or one meg or one gig, it falls off very quickly. So there are parts of the population that will never get access to rich services. That's one thing. The second layer is how many do have access to cutting-edge devices that enable them to do interesting things? So I'm wearing a health tracker. How many of them are taking control of their health in way? I mean, this is not everything. I know this is just a consumer device, but it's helping me think about my health in a certain way. How many people have access to that versus access to they don't? The last layer is the layer of applications. So the applications may exist, but the network connectivity may not enable you to use that application. Or the application may not be relevant for someone in a village because of the language issues you mentioned. We have a tremendous number of languages in ASEAN, and to cater for that also leaves people being excluded because they have the application, but they can't use it because maybe they're blind or maybe they speak a different language. So it's not a haves or have-nots argument. It is, again, a stratification to this. Gregory, do you agree? So the question of haves and have-nots in terms of technology, you're working in environments where people often can't use that technology because there's no electricity. So it is, do you share the view that actually ASEAN is very well connected technologically? Well, I think there are spots that are very well connected, and I know there are spots that are not connected at all, for sure. There's such a big diverse region, and we're talking about Singapore versus Laos or Myanmar. It's really a really different story when you get there. Well, I think they're always going to be rich and poor in the world. So we're not going to solve that problem, but we can do something that the technology and connectivity can allow the poor to make their life easier and utilize it in order to help generate additional income. However, we also have to remember, like we were saying that this is not all about ordering Uber online or having Facebook account, maybe do shopping with Amazon. This is not about that. Those people really probably don't know about it. They do, they don't care, because maybe if they're lifetime, they're not going to have access to that. So they really need to allow those people to use the technology, the way that it's going to be useful for them and also create the jobs closer to their homes, which is a great idea. And because there are going to be a lot of jobs lost around the bigger centers. So this is really, I'm not an expert on that. I'm just speaking for myself now, but this is the way I see it. And I think there's great potential there, and that's a lot of things to do. And we have to figure out not only the connectivity, it's going to be a magic stick that solve everything. It's going to be just a tool to get them to do something else. Can I also add, it's around designing the solution that's right for that particular country and environment. I mean, we have communities and designing community clinics in Africa, for example, with very limited power, which we've been able to connect and do ultrasound. In Indonesia, we talked about the mobile obstetrics, the mom program, which is around maternity health. And that is mobile ultrasound as well, and digital programs with a partner, with a Telcom partner in Korea, and sorry, in Indonesia to enable connectivity. So you're designing and creating these different solutions that's right for a particular community. And that way, I think we can be more inclusive. It's not just, you know, expensive solutions we're talking about here. Can I just add one more thing? Because in order to have these services take off, you know, as first layer connectivity, second layer, you know, hardware, third layer, maybe applications, in order for the applications to take off, assuming you have the hardware and the connectivity in place, you know, businesses, and I speak from the corporate standpoint, actually this could apply to governments as well, that, you know, you have a massive threat of cybersecurity that is hitting the world overall, you know, across the world. You know, the data that I've seen has shown that 39%, that's two in five organizations, have halted mission critical deployment of their services because of the cyber attack. Now if that happens, then what happens is the businesses start to hold back on their investments, because consumers start to, you know, maybe feel a bit wary about the service, and you know, you start to get into a climate of fear. And so dealing with that is pretty significant, and the scale of it is unprecedented. We have about 20 billion threats that we are facing every single day. So which is why you raised the issue of cybersecurity being a very critical element in the situation. Do you agree with that, Minister Pichard? You also mentioned cybersecurity as being very important. Well I think we even have to link cybersecurity to basic education, so that every citizen understands the positive and negative side of digital economy. And we know too well today that it penetrates into our individual life through the social networking and so on. So to have basic literacy of cybersecurity is quite important. Now at the other level, to have system whereby the critical infrastructure would not be affected is also very critical, because our banking system, our human records, hospital records are all so important to us, the privacy issue and so on. So this is something that ASEAN members can work together very well. Let me also add in terms of bandwidth, I think it's something that ASEAN members can leap from. For the first time, it's unlike nano technology or carbon fiber, it's very difficult. But with political determination, all ASEAN countries can leapfrog to fiber optics, can leapfrog to submarine cables to satellite signals, so that we can have greater bandwidth. It's easier than other technologies. And once we have that, then we can do a number of things and initiatives so that the have nots can start having some innovation to do. Not only the capital city, because of the bandwidth. You see, so from the policy perspective, I'm hearing from you that the will is there, very much there. From the corporate side, I'm hearing that the opportunities are there, very much there and a lot of revenue to be made. But from the ground level, I'm still worried about access. Because unless you have access to this technology, the digital revolution means nothing. When you talk about, it's good for the bottom line, it's good for our GDP, the matter on the streets is, but what does it mean for me, right? So I'll put the final question to you, John. And how do you see this problem of access in ASEAN as a region, which is very diverse and very different, and the levels of development are very different before I throw people in the audience to ask you a question. Well, no, I think we've circled around this. I mean, I think there's several layers to this. And we've talked about the bandwidth and the connectivity. We've talked about the application layer. But if we take it from the other perspective of the citizen and the individual in the ground, and how you get people on board, I think there are a number of things. We will have the obvious pressure of the desire to access services, the desire to access education. But I think we can, certainly if I take the example of Singapore, we feel we need to intervene on one level of providing trust. And that's something that we've alluded to. And the other is in terms of providing education. Now if I take the second part first, in education, infusion of all these skills into the basic education for primary school and secondary school, I mean, that is taken as red. And that's something that we all recognize we have to do and we have to do it better. But we can do more around the people who are older. And we are doing quite a lot to educate the elderly in order to access digital services. We are taking people who don't speak English and teaching them how to access the basic government services, how to manage their finances, manage their health portfolio, manage their interactions with public services, making very deliberate steps to bring them on board. Now in order to do that, there has to be a high level of trust in the process. And we have to have the non-digital native trust the digital process in order for them to be willing to access these services and come on board. And so that then gives an opportunity for the layer that government has to intervene on, whether it's electronic, secure, authenticated, non-repudiateable identification system, which is what we're gonna build in Singapore and allow the private sector to layer above and below that or very heavy concentration on the cyber security aspects and identify critical infrastructure but provide that level of trust in the digital process to help people come on board. And this is where Singapore has done particularly well to build that trust through GovTech and similar initiatives. Well, indeed. So GovTech's fairly new. So I mean, we're only just getting going and we've restructured parts of our public sector. And GovTech is now essentially a little core of engineers that we have at the heart of our public sector service coders and computer science and cyber security specialists. But their remit is twofold over simplification. One is to build those products that the market will not but do so in a way that allows our private sector to come in in a very heavy way. And we really want to be very clear not to overbuild and over develop where the private sector can do so. But we do have to do some of that. But the second is to look at policy and where policy is the impediment to the kind of disruption and innovation that we're talking about. We've restructured part of our public sector in order to enable this, bringing together a variety of ministries. But our signature approach is the regulatory sandboxes that we're trying to develop. We want to give businesses the clarity to be able to develop new operating models and new business models. And the design principle is that our current regulatory stance and our current legislative approach is not good enough. And perhaps we'll never catch up with the speed of innovation and disruption that business can provide. So if we accept that, we need the structures to make that live so that our regulatory approach is always updated but that businesses have the clarity to be able to get going. So we're taking the regulatory sandbox approach. We've developed one around Fintech. Our monetary authority has developed a regulatory sandbox around Fintech. We've had a physical sandbox for autonomous vehicles in our one north district. And we're going to do more around data exchanges. But the fundamental design principle is number one, regulations and laws could well be the impediment to progress. How do you then design a structure to continually reduce those impediments but keep laws in place and regulations in place to serve the people well for the purposes of inclusion? So that's the approach that we're taking. We're not satisfied that we are as, having solved all the problems as you'd like to describe, but that's how we see ourselves going forward. Thank you, that's very interesting. And I think also a role model in many ways for other artsy nations to look at. May I now invite members of the audience to pose their questions. If you'd like to raise your hand. Somebody will come with you, with a mic towards you. If you identify yourself and identify the person who you want to address your questions. There's a gentleman there, right there. And can others raise their hand so the mic can be prepared for you to come? There's a gentleman here. And on the back, anyone here? Okay, we have two questions coming up. Yeah. Thank you, good afternoon. And thank you for this household. It just goes to show that like it or not, this revolution is for real. First a small comment. I have young children at home and the speed at which they've adapted to technology is suggestive of how the rest of the world is going to. So this is a no-brainer from an adaptability point of view. My concerns are following. And let's leave Singapore out of the picture because it's an island that does wonderful things. Really wonderful things. That said, my concern really is our governments really geared to adapting this not just from an acceptability point of view. And I'll give you a classic example. There are still countries around the world that ban Uber just because it impacts the taxi drivers. This is a reality like it or not. This is what's going to happen. Number one, number two, cyber security. And as we adapt to cyber-rhythm, cyber security, is our police force adapt capable of solving cyber crimes? They're still good at probably catching real robbers, but this is going to be real. And this is going to be of a degree of severity which none of us have accepted as yet. So my concern is our governments really keeping pace with this change in reality. And that's the comment that I'd like to get. Okay, so since you've explored Singapore, we're not going to put that question to Minister Puducherry. We'll put that question to Dr. Pichet from Thailand. I'll speak for you. In Thailand, we are coping with the Uber problem as well. It has not been resolved, but it's the sandbox approach that Minister has suggested. But it is our hope that if we are successful in the near term through this regulatory sandbox exercise, we'll be able to improve the service of the old taxi regime. And then the whole taxi business would be better than before. And this would be a very good exercise because then we will go into the Airbnb, the drone, whatever in the future. It's coming, it's coming. But we are getting prepared, even though it's so fast. But the government alone cannot answer that. We will have to work with the startups, we will have to work with the entrepreneurs and with the concerned parties. And using this kind of model that in the end we'll have a unified approach so that the whole business will be improved rather than just trying to keep a balance between innovation and the existing legal infrastructure. Thank you. You have a question if you identify yourself. It's fantastic stuff as the last question excluded Singapore, I'll go straight to Singapore. And I wanted to address a particular disconnect. I mean this is all fantastic stuff but when I look at the productivity numbers in the advanced world, they've been not just labor productivity but total factor productivity which captures innovation and technology is been heading down for years. Singapore in particular, you have zero productivity growth or if not negative productivity growth. So for all the education and all the stuff we just heard, how do you explain this disconnect? Yeah, no, it's something of significant concern and I don't have a pithy trite explanation. I wish I could, we'd solve a lot of problems if I could condense it to a little tweet but we do have to address it head on. We are examining every aspect of our economy following on our recent restructuring we have these 23 industry transformation maps looking specifically at how we can try to unpick that coupling, I mean whatever gains we've had has been as a result of labor force growth and that labor force growth isn't gonna happen anymore. And so if we're going to have a significant amount of economic growth it has to be as a result of productivity improvements. Now whether that comes as a result of some restructuring or the use of some cross cutting technology enablers I mean I wish it would be as simple as that. We're examining the problem with some degree of concern but with a whole lot of enthusiasm because we have to solve it. It is the only thing that's gonna be able to give our nascent economies and nascent industries that edge to survive in the extent of disruption that's coming as a result of what we've talked about. So I don't have a nice need answer for you. I wish I did but it's something that we're trying to solve very hard. Right, any other questions? There's a gentleman at the back. Okay, we have a gentleman there and then we have a gentleman at the back there and then this lady. Okay. Hello, fantastic session. My question is to Singapore again. And this is you wearing your hat as a minister of education. We heard about the fourth industrial revolution and I think it's no brainer to say that in about 15, 20 years jobs which exist today will not exist. Taxi drivers, call center executives. So as a minister of education how do you think about this and how do you prepare young kids today who are going to school for this scenario? How are you changing the curriculum and what's the mindset change in education? No, it's a very good question and something that we are quite exercised about. If we had a singular program or a single set of interventions now, the fear would be that it would be worthless and wrong two or three years from now as the next wave of disruption and innovation comes along. We have to have a process where in the adult space there is both the incentive as well as the ability for people to retrain and reskill and there are huge challenges ministers talked about and we are fully aware of that but there is no other choice because whatever choice we make now about reskilling it's gonna get disrupted again fairly soon. So you need some resilience in that adult space too and we have a national movement that we're calling Skills Future. I talk about it at a great length at some other forum don't worry I won't do that now but if you then track back and ask yourself what kind of 16 year old do you want to be able to access that type of adult space where jobs are fluid, skills are disrupted and lifelong learning has to be there as a matter of survival then that informs what you will do in the sub 16 space and I would condense it down to a handful of things I want that 16 year old to have come through our formal education space with the fundamentals in place because as the uncertainty in the adult space increases the importance of the fundamentals around numeracy the understanding of quantitative reasoning computational thinking, a deep literacy skills that those generic skills then you layer on top the relationship skills that minister talked about in terms of team building and project management and relationship building that needs to be all in place get the fundamentals right and then particularly in our society get the values right I want that 16 year old to have a very deep sense of what the cultural values that her education had and how that relates to society around him because that's gonna affect how they deal with disruption and the grit and resilience downstream and thirdly and I would stop there is that 16 year old needs to be a self-directed learner and have the confidence to be a self-directed learner so that disruption in the adult space informs the kind of kid we want at 16 and we then have to design our education system from six to 16 for those 10 years to prime that person for that type of world In fact, I'm more worried about the older people who will be excluded from the digital revolution but that's my view we'll take the next two questions together because we're running short of time if you want to start and then this lady here and then we'll get final comments from our panelists Thank you, I'm Timothy Ma from Hong Kong I want to address the critical success factor about fourth industry revolution is my section but the point is that when we are talking about aging people will actually will be our silver economy dominant but the point is that at the age of 60 or above they didn't have a credit card they can never done any payment e-marketing, e-sus-sus-sus so I'm addressing to all the banking industry here we might issue debit card for elderly population because I have asked some credit card company in Hong Kong why don't you issue credit card to them? They said because they pay money punctually and the bank cannot enjoy the interest so I'm really ridiculous to provoke them can our banking industry issue a debit card to our silver population that will be dominating our upcoming economy Thank you Thank you very much for that comment and this lady here if we can bring a microphone here It is estimated that there are tens of millions of people with disability in the ASEAN region and I believe that we can make an argument that people with disability are totally primed to take advantage of the fourth industrial revolution and be included because they make excellent online workers so may I ask from a social enterprise perspective Mr. Dyer and maybe from a public sector perspective our ministers to address the issue how we include people with disability so they become more productive and more integrated in the fourth industrial revolution Thank you Thank you very much for that comment and that is the final comment we're able to take now If you want to Gregory answer briefly the question about disability and I know it's a part of your portfolio as well to deal with people with disabilities if you briefly answer that and then maybe on people the ageing population whoever would like to answer that how do you deal with people who are excluded who become what I see as digital refugees in this rapidly changing world Okay, first to you Gregory So just briefly I think the technology brings amazing opportunities not only to make online workers but also to solve the problems for mobility itself and I'm involved in the project that addressing those issues So just to be brief I don't want to elaborate on that but I think we have opportunities on both ends we can bring those people to workplaces we don't have to build a wall and just exclude ourselves and stay in the future of our world I'm not a big fan of that at all So I think technology opens a lot of opportunities for disabled people here Right, thank you very much and anyone would you... I can answer it only elderly I mean we see with an ageing population we see many people with multi chronic diseases and I think the critical aspect is you bring them digital solutions that are easy to use and bring real benefits for them So we've done work also in Singapore in Australia and very other countries to really help people manage their own conditions where they have chronic disease being able to understand their health and educate them and what it means some of these vital signs and what they need to do about it and we find the adoption of the technology is not an issue at all because it improves their lives it makes a huge difference and empowering them to look after their own health so educating them making it very simple and easy to use are critical aspects Thank you, I think at this point I'll ask the panelists to give me 30 seconds each on your key takeaway from this panel discussion starting with you, Naveen The clocks on The clocks on No, I think the fourth industrial revolution presents tremendous opportunities there's roughly, for ASEAN roughly a trillion dollars of incremental GDP however to achieve that we do need to address two very important issues one is we need to address cybersecurity in particular and cybersecurity is not a defensive measure it is a measure that is designed to enable growth secondly we need to fix education systems and education systems K-12 but also higher education and lifelong education as some of the panelists have mentioned these two enablers could really help drive massive value creation for ASEAN by 2025 Thank you, what about you, Minister Bhutu? I think the fourth industrial revolution has come it's not only the role of the government but we have to work together the government, private sector, civil society and I think especially providing opportunities for young generation it will be addressing also the disadvantage the have-nots also digital technology can help the blind can help the deaf as well as create jobs for those who have been counted out in the old days so we'll do more Right, what about you, Minister Bhutu-Cherry? As Minister said, the revolution's here already and we have to decide whether we're going to embrace it or take a protectionist and mitigation stance and I think it has to be embracing because we haven't seen the playing out of the extent of transformation I mean, once everybody has a smartphone in their pocket once everybody is online the extent just those two things we'll do is going to be huge and you add to that all the other things that we've talked about the transformation to our society is going to be quite significant so we have to embrace some of that uncertainty and build public processes and education system and partnerships to deal with that uncertainty going forward so that we can embrace whatever revolution and transformation happens What about you, Greg? Well, the change is so quick that it's difficult to keep up really I have a hard time with that myself and I think we all feel it I think not everybody wants to be part of those changes some people prefer to live old style and we were younger before and we like it and I think some people want to stay where we were However, we should, as everybody said here that we should give an opportunity and equal opportunity for everybody who want to be part of that to be included and I think this is my takeaway from here And the final word for the woman I think the woman must have the last word Caroline I think in the region we see constrained resources we absolutely need new models of healthcare and digitisation has to be a key component of that to enable much more personalisation of health a shift from the hospital into the home to really be able to scale health to bring it to remote regions and these new models we need to work on together Thank you I think from all that we've heard today technology and innovation has a hugely transformative impact on society but I'll end with what Klaus Schwab said he talked about the whole narrative of globalisation changing the one who coined this word the fourth industrial revolution he said technology must empower people and not dehumanise and divide them On that note, I thank all of you here this was the DW World Economic Forum debate coming to you from Phnom Penh I thank all of you in the arena who've been part of this conversation I thank our viewers wherever you might be watching this debate and above all I thank our wonderful panellists for all the insights and the ideas that you've shared with us this afternoon Thank you very much Thank you Thank you