The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) has launched the inaugural Data Discovery Challenge, aiming to raise businesses and consumers' understanding and use of data.
Through the competition, it seeks to raise awareness on the benefits of making available private datasets, which when pooled with other datasets, is able to uncover new insights and values, bringing the data to better use and helping enterprises to create new products and services.
It is also the first challenge to utilize a federated dataset discovery mechanism (named the Federated Dataset Registry or FDSR) that seeks to provide a coherent method to dataset discovery in the private sector.
The FDSR was launched as part of the Data-as-a-Service pilot last October to support the development of a Data Marketplace where both public and private sectors data can be shared or used for commerce.
“Singapore is on its way to be the world’s first Smart Nation. We well understand the importance of finding new ways to effectively use data to deal with challenges of healthcare, transport and energy, to name just three areas,” said IDA executive deputy chairman, Steve Leonard.
Participants of the challenge stand to win not just the top prize of S$5,000 in cash, but also opportunities for the promising teams to work with partners post-challenge to take their ideas further.
Partners such as SingTel Group Enterprises and data providers like DFRC Pte Ltd, DP Information Network Pte Ltd and Elixir Technology Pte Ltd, will work with promising teams to explore collaboration in bringing their ideas to potential commercialization.