Mr Pritam Singh (Aljunied): Thank you, Speaker. I thank the Senior Minister of State for the reply. Just a brief question with regard to attracting Singaporeans to some of these jobs at CSA and more broadly the wider subset of the IT industry in Singapore. We have heard in the debate yesterday about ensuring that Singapore remains cosmopolitan. And so, in brief, the question is, has it been difficult for the Government to attract Singaporeans to some of the jobs that are being offered by CSA in the past and what are the prospects going forward?
Dr Janil Puthucheary: Mr Speaker, I thank Mr Pritam Singh for his question. There are two ways to look at this, which is, what are the jobs unfilled and the gaps that are growing or r what is the attractiveness of the job to Singaporeans and local graduates? To answer the question Mr Pritam Singh is asking, this set of cybersecurity jobs, especially those within the public sector and agencies, such as the Home Team, DSTA, Cyber Security Agency, GovTech and various others, are attractive to our local cybersecurity graduates. The competition to get into these jobs is significant and the awareness of the opportunities afforded by these jobs amongst our local graduates is very high. There are a number of surveys, studies and publications both in the private sector as well as coming out of the public sector that validate this.
Nevertheless, globally, there is a dearth of talent for these types of jobs and there is a global competition for the kind of skillsets that we need to deploy in cybersecurity. That applies in Singapore, as it does around the globe.
Ministry of Communications and Information
15 October 2020
https://sprs.parl.gov.sg/search/sprs3topic?reportid=oral-answer-2312
Office of the Leader of the Opposition 