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There is a live chat option to continue the virtual conversation with a real person as well, and Ask Jamie is available on the popular messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger, Skype, and Telegram.
The Geospatial Specialist Office, a team of scientists that works with various government agencies to deliver location-based services using Geographic Information Technology, performed the last presentation.
The presenters explained in detail how important it is to develop a standard, in order to accurately represent the city in 3D, with metadata attached to each object and location. In my opinion, this is the future of IoT, where each sensor and connected object will be accurately and visually monitored. A few days later we were invited to a Virtual Singapore presentation in the Dassault System office in Singapore.
The User Experience and Behavioral Insights team showed us how they use an eye-tracking based software to improve the User Experience of the digital services developed at the Hive.
MyInfo is a practical application that allows citizens to provide their information only once to the Government instead of doing it every time they interact with a public digital service. See below how it looks like in the gallery.
We got a demo of the Business Grants Portal that gives access to aggregated and complex property information, in a compelling way. See below how it looks like in the gallery.
The Data Science team presented us their work and showcased a few uses cases. One use case aims to understand which topics are debated the most by the citizens; another tries to decipher the key factors which impact the economy.
Can you provide a brief overview of your background before becoming Singapore’s CIO?
I started out in the private sector, mainly working with financial institutions such as Citibank and Barclays as well as consulting firms like EY on a large-scale IT systems, and now have over two decades of experience in overseeing organization-wide IT development. I joined the Singapore government in April 2014.
Can you explain what the GovTech Hive is?
The Hive – occupying two levels – houses GovTech’s Government Digital Services (GDS) unit, which is a multidisciplinary and diverse group of software developers, data scientists, geospatial engineers, UI/UX designers and Internet of Things engineers.
What is the primary goal of the GovTech Hive?
Our primary goal is to develop and refine Singapore’s digital government services by first building the internal digital capabilities within the government in fields such as data science, software development, and IoT engineering, etc.
What are The Hive’s top achievements regarding the improvement of the efficiency of government services?
The Hive focuses on innovative whole-of-government platforms that transform the government’s interactions with citizens and businesses. A recent example would be the Business Grants Portal, a one-stop platform for businesses to tap into the various government grants available. It is based on a user-centric design, cutting out all the usual “friction” associated with dealing with the government.
I’m also proud of some of the apps we’ve deployed, including myResponder, which alerts volunteers to nearby emergency cases reported to the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF). It takes a different approach to emergency response, beyond just deploying more ambulances. We’ve also guided government agencies to think deeply about their issues and pain points, before deciding if an app is even the solution. The key is to fundamentally reevaluate the existing operating model and data, technology and design to solve significant problems. This has definitely led to greater efficiency and impact through a host of digital services.
What services is The Hive working to improve in the next two years?
We are exploring new ways to enhance the delivery of digital government services so they anticipate citizens’ needs at key moments in their lives, such as childbirth, children starting school, buying a home, etc. The Government Digital Services unit is also working with other government agencies and GovTech units to build digital platforms that support Singapore’s Smart Nation mission.
Filed in Cellphones >Featured >General >Medical >Transportation >Web. Read more about App, Asia, Location-based, Mobile and Singapore.
Connectivity is the linchpin to Amsterdam’s success in the data center sector, which in part has been aided by macro factors such as location, language and government regulation.
Michael van den Assem is Managing Director of Interxion.
As one of the oldest cities in the industrial world, Amsterdam has a rich history when it comes to business and commerce. From as far back as the 1600s, the capital city of the Netherlands has been a thriving international business hub. Dutch merchants established trade routes to bring back various exotic goods from Asia, which were then distributed more broadly throughout the rest of Europe.
Today, Amsterdam plays a very similar role in the digital economy. A solid foundation of connectivity has helped the city to draw investment from international companies and develop one of the world’s largest digital hubs. But how and why did a city as small as Amsterdam transform into not only a thriving digital hub, but also the world’s data center king?
Located within hours of Paris, London and Frankfurt, and home to the oldest stock exchange in the world, Amsterdam has been at the forefront of global finance and trade for centuries. In 1988, the Netherlands was the second country in the world to connect to the Internet. Almost 30 years later, the country still sees itself as a leader in digital matters.
Connectivity is the linchpin to Amsterdam’s success in the data center sector, which in part has been aided by macro factors such as location, language and government regulation. The naturally cool climate and abundance of sustainable power sources means it’s also one of the most cost effective locations for running large IT operations.
Aside from the obviously favorable geographic location of its capital city, its English speaking workforce has helped the Netherlands to win more business in the connectivity space. About 90 percent of the Dutch are fluent in English, meaning businesses aren’t required to invest in local market speakers or translation costs which can be expensive and add another layer of administration.
The Dutch government is also very open to multinational businesses moving to Amsterdam and has introduced some very favorable tax breaks for businesses looking to locate there. From a data center point of view, the network and infrastructure that is in place is incredibly robust. There have been huge investments in cabling and connectivity as a result, meaning businesses can connect with the far corners of Europe and beyond with surprisingly low latency, all from Amsterdam.
Today, Amsterdam is highly connected both by fiber optic networks and undersea cables that connect to the eastern seaboard of the United States, London, and other major cities across the Atlantic. Home to the Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX), one of the largest Internet exchanges in the world with over 800 members, Amsterdam is one of the most connected cities in the EU. This breadth of connectivity has in turn attracted bandwidth hungry industries from all over the world to deploy IT infrastructure in the city.
One example of a connectivity-dependent industry thriving in Amsterdam is the ad-tech space. For supply side platforms, such as Rubicon Project, optimized, high speed connectivity to partners is key, especially in the case of programmatic trading and real-time bidding. Because physical proximity of IT infrastructure allows more time for processor-intensive real-time data lookup as well as decision-making processes, it is advantageous for the value chain to locate in a single data center campus or even building.
The ad-tech example is not an isolated incident. With the explosion of the digital economy, other communities of interest are forming inside data center colocation facilities, such as Interxion’s, so enterprises can take advantage of low cost connections to suppliers and partners. Amsterdam is home to one of Europe’s largest cloud communities, which is currently fueling the digital economy. Cloud and connectivity converge within the data center, making Amsterdam well placed for success.
Motivated by the dense connectivity of the AMS-IX, over 170 international ICT providers have chosen Amsterdam for their European HQ, creating the perfect environment for digitally focused businesses in which to house their IT. In fact, Amsterdam’s Science Park business park, home of the AMS-IX, houses over 150 networks and is capable of reaching 80 percent of European customers within 50 m/s. With one quarter of the country’s GDP already dependent on data centers, connectivity and cloud providers, the appeal of these sectors is what brings many global businesses to Amsterdam in the first place.
The digital economy shows no signs of slowing down; and as a result, the investment and demand for data centers is growing at a record high pace, with 20 percent of foreign investments in the Netherlands being driven by digital activities. This means Amsterdam can only become more prominent than it already is in the digital world. At Interxion, our Amsterdam campus houses 9 data centers in Schiphol Rijk and Amsterdam Science Park. This hub is a natural gateway into the rest of Europe, putting the city at the very heart of the digital revolution.
Editor's Note: This story first appeared on The Caddie Network.
Life on the PGA Tour is pretty sweet.
Those who make their living on the Tour—as players and caddies—are chasing the sun most weeks, traveling from one vacation destination after another, after another.
And that isn’t to say life on the Tour is a vacation. It’s not. Their offices are usually just a lot cooler than yours.
But on Saturday, January 13, 2018, life on the PGA Tour was briefly harrowing for those who were in Honolulu—paradise—for the Sony Open in Hawaii.
The push alert was issued shortly after 8 a.m., so not many were at Waialae Country Club for the third round just yet.
Within 10 minutes, it was known the alarm was nothing more than a big mistake. But that timeframe depended on how connected you were. For many on the island, it was between 30-60 minutes after the message before they knew for sure that it was a false alarm.
Regardless of the timeframe, every second had to feel like an eternity under the circumstances.
With the anniversary of that week here, we asked 10 caddies to give us their firsthand account of what those uncertain moments were like.
Scroll through to read their stories . . .
That was an interesting weekend to say the least. Funny thing about my experience though . . . I slept through it!
I had my phone on a charger across the room at my hotel in Waikiki. We had a later tee time, so I knew I wouldn’t need an alarm. New Guy (Ryan Rue) was in the bathroom doing his business when it came over and never said anything.
I know Patton was freaking out and had a weird morning with all that going on. My experience was that of blissful unawareness. We hit our first tee shot OB right on Saturday but played the rest of the round in 8 under. We got that out of our system and he was able to refocus on the golf.
More from The Caddie Network: Eric Larson was a successful tour caddie before—and after—spending 11 years in prison.
At 8:08 a.m. on Saturday, January 13, 2018, a text came across my phone that wasn’t quite the same as the others I had ever received. We’ve all seen the amber alerts and severe weather alerts pop up from time to time, so it was no surprise to receive an emergency alert from an agency that isn’t on your favorites list. However, this one struck a different chord.
Hmmmm . . . OK. Before I could even comprehend what I had just read, my phone rings. It's my two roommates that week whose players had both missed the cut. They had decided the night before to rent a car and drive up to the North Shore at sunrise to check out the high surf. Lucky bastards were on the safest part of the island, cruising on the beach, almost mocking me at what I was going to do. What are friends for if you can't make fun of each other when a missile is coming anyway?
We were all in agreement that it was probably nothing, but there was no way anyone without direct knowledge of the mishit button didn’t at least have the slightest inkling that it could be real. Even if it was 1-in-a-hundred real, that would still be enough to get the panic juices flowing. If I told you that skydiving had a 1-in-a-hundred chance of having your parachute not open, I'm pretty sure you wouldn’t go. Or maybe you would, but that's an entirely different situation altogether.
So, with a quick scramble to find some drawers and my wallet, I head down the elevator to the lobby to see what else I could learn. Morning exercise complete, coffee and a light breakfast ingested, I was on the next step of my morning ritual . . . I’ll spare you the details, but what was going to be a lovely, peaceful event on the friendly confines of my home-field for the week took an eventful turn when the elevator doors opened on the ground floor.
I was not ready for what I was about to encounter.
Screaming kids, parents crying, guests yelling at the staff for the bomb-shelter entrance, to which I could hear, “there is no bomb-shelter ma'am."
Complete pandemonium, and all I'm thinking about is, "Where is the bathroom?"
After a brief search around the crowded, panic-stricken lobby, I found a back hallway with a men's room, finally, thank goodness.
Crap, literally. I turned around and jetted towards the neighboring Hyatt lobby. Whether I was to going to find a toilet or not, I needed to get out of this mess at the very least. A couple hundred feet away I found the exact same scene. This is so crazy, I thought to myself. I kept telling myself that it was probably a mistake, but why was everyone else so panicked?
Every minute that passed without someone giving the all-clear seemed to make it all the more real. Every few seconds, I was looking up at the sky over my shoulder to see if something was en route, Independence Day-style. Let's be honest: the world isn’t at its most peaceful state and North Korea is within range from where I'm standing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
My hopes of a successful bathroom mission were quickly extinguished when I found the Hyatt men's room filled with 20 or so men standing around shoulder to shoulder. Either they shared my same affliction, or they were seeking shelter. Either way, that wasn’t where I was going to hang out for my final few minutes on this planet. At this point, it had been 20 minutes or so from the initial text and a thought crossed my mind as I stepped back onto the city street: what if my parents found out that I had received this text and I had 30 minutes to call and say goodbye and I didn’t?
That would be hard to fathom, I imagined. Perhaps they figured I was mid-morning ritual, they know me all too well after all, which could be excusable, but I just couldn’t take that chance, what with phones red-flagged these days.
So I dialed my Mom for what could’ve been my last conversation with her. Not trying to be overly dramatic here, but there was definitely a small chance this was actually going down.
Trump and his big mouth, “Little rocket man!"
Damnit, like Dennis Rodman really smoothed that over.
“Oh, your father and I are just driving down to the beach, how’s it going over there? Ready for a big weekend?” “Yeah, about that . . . I just received a really weird text. It's probably nothing, but I thought you should know just in case it isn’t" — all said in my smoothest, most calming manner possible.
I walked about a block towards the beach before my phone rang. It was my buddy Andy on the North Shore, probably calling to tell me how peaceful it is up there.
As quickly as relief could come over me, it passed right on by as I took notice of the time: 8:42.
I was supposed to be in a shuttle to the course for our third round at 9. So I hustled back up to my high-rise room for that quick stint in the loo I had been dreaming of and a rinse and on my way. The gears had shifted so quickly from a potential nightmare to a normal day at the office that the rest of the day was a blur. It felt surreal to be out on the course, an hour later, as if nothing had ever happened. A perfect blue sky, birds chirping, a light ocean breeze and all was back to normal on the PGA Tour.
Lots of tough guys at the course that day, claiming no chance that it was real and how they couldn’t believe anyone would believe that for a second. Maybe I understand percentages a bit better than they do, or maybe I just feel like I have a few more things that I'd like to contribute to the world before I meet my maker. Either way, I'm glad it was a false alarm and not afraid to admit that I thought there was at least a chance that it was real.
My boss happened to catch fire the next day and post a final-round 62 that found us in a playoff with the eventual champion. Funny how quickly the world can change. One minute you're scrambling around town trying to find the best view for the beginning of WWIII and the next you’re on national TV trying to help your man hoist a trophy.
My wife and I were having breakfast at our favorite cafe in Waikiki when we received the alert of an incoming missile.
And we continued to eat.
There was a veteran sitting at the counter that turned around and told us it had to be a false alarm. After texting a military man that we met on the airplane, he confirmed the false alarm and we finished breakfast.
Initially, the weirdest thing about the alert was I was sitting in busy coffee shop off the main drag of Waikiki with Brian Reed (Kyle Stanley), Matthew Tritton (Luke List) and player, Michael Thompson. The coffee spot was super busy, given the time of morning and all at once, in unison, everybody’s phone buzzed or beeped the familiar iPhone text sound.
We had an outside table, so not only could I see all the coffee shop patrons checking their phones at the same time, but also the busy foot traffic walking by.
My phone was face down on the table and I never bothered to pick it up, even though mine buzzed, too. Brian checked his phone and read the message out loud to us all and I distinctly remember calling “bullsh--.” He read it again and that’s when I picked up my phone to read the same alert.
Looking around, I could see some worried faces.
What do I remember most about the Hawaiian Missile Crisis? We made the cut!
However, my roommate Lance and I were both calm (just like you’d like to be on the back nine on Sunday). Thought about North Korea. Thought about Pearl Harbor and World War II. Thought about my girlfriend and family back home. But something didn’t seem quite right.
I remembered a volunteer earlier in the week telling us about how the government had been testing the air raid sirens a lot over the last few weeks and months after them not working for years. Cleaning out the cobwebs. Well, we didn’t hear any sirens and outside it looked like a perfectly normal January, Waikiki day—85 and sunny. Hmmm.
I remember the hotel alarms going off and them making an announcement, but not really knowing what to do or where to go. We didn’t practice this one in school. Was the entire island just going to blow up, or was it going to be more random? I checked in with the pro to see if he was still expecting me to be waiting for him outside the locker room even though we could possibly be getting bombed.
However, it appeared we were still both concerned about missing our tee time with so many FedEx Cup points on the line. Thankfully, the PGA Tour sent us a text that the third round was delayed. Solid call. Turned on the TV. Nothing. Packed my backpack with some insulin, a few snacks, change of clothes, and water— should be good to go to survive. Haha. Thought about calling my girlfriend, but I didn’t want her to panic, and although I was trying to be proactive, my instinct was still that there was nothing to worry about. I certainly heard about it from her later!
Eventually, the local news was covering the story but didn’t have much to say. I also remember there being some sort of time component involved, like, “30 minutes to detonation.” And then, like a passing Nebraska tornado, it was over, with no physical damage. We got the all clear and Lance and I were thankful and could kind of laugh about it.
I remember hearing later that another caddie made a shirt that said, “I survived the 2018 Hawaiian Missile Crisis” or something and getting a lot of compliments on the street (Editor’s note: More on that coming up below).
It was certainly a day those who were there will never forget.
“We’ve had a good run, I guess,” he said.
I figured it was a false alarm, so I didn’t alert my family because I didn’t want them to worry. I tweeted the screenshot of the alert out, so I had a few friends text me about it. But overall, we stayed pretty calm. After all, there wasn’t really anything we could do.
After about 30 minutes or so, they came back and officially said it was a false alarm, so we got up and walked out to breakfast. When our waitress came over, I congratulated her on surviving the missile threat and she laughed. And that’s when my wheels got turning.
I remember it well. Webber was at Starbucks at the mall when the alert went out. I hadn’t seen it. He called and told me people were panicking at the mall and the Starbucks closed the doors. I turned on the local news stations immediately at the hotel.
The stations were all reporting that it wasn’t a test and that the strike was imminent, within the next five minutes. I was pretty calm. I called Michelle and told her I loved her just in case. I packed a backpack of snacks and money in case. I put on jeans and shoes and walked out to the balcony to see if I could see the missiles. I had time to think that the man wasn’t this stupid and that he’d probably explode them in the ocean and cause a small tsunami, so I stayed up high in the hotel.
When I didn’t see anything like that, I started thinking maybe it was a hoax. A few minutes later, the next emergency text came through that said some idiot had dropped his lunch on the wrong button or something.
The chat on the range that afternoon was amazing. I heard Billy Hurley (a Navy veteran), who was staying downtown, actually ran to his car in his hotel parking garage, got in, picked up a caddie he saw as he was pulling out, and started driving to the other side of the mountain away from the fallout. I was 200 yards from the other side of the mountain and wasn’t smart enough to do that.
Probably half the people on the range that afternoon said they knew it couldn’t be real and most just went back to sleep. The other half, like me, thought our tickets might get punched that day.
I remember the false alarm vividly.
I was sitting on the veranda of my hotel enjoying breakfast with my wife. Towards the end of our meal, everyone's phone was going off in a sound that reminded me of those Amber-alert sounds.
I jokingly said to my wife, "Let me guess, there's a bomb on the way."
She looks up in horror and says, "How do you know that!?"
It was my first reaction because of the North Korea threat for the past few years. I immediately jump up from the table and go to the front desk to use their landline. I call 911 and get a busy signal. I then go into fight or flight mentality. I start to remember some underground areas and grab my wife's hand and head down the escalator to street level. She’s Face-Timing our two daughters back in Texas, while trying to hold back the tears telling them how much we love them.
As we reach the street level, I take us to the spot I had remembered from all the years of being in Waikiki. Two other couples see us and follow us as I tell them to come as we try to take cover. I knew that the PGA Tour has direct contact with Department of Homeland Security, and called Ryan Palmer to see if he had heard anything.
We make it underground and there are about four employees and the head of security is in this location. I talk to the building security and ask about the air raid sirens. None were going off after about 10 minutes had passed from the threat text. This is when things didn't add up.
I heard from Ryan about 5 minutes later and he said the Tour was informed this was a false alarm. I relayed the message to the employees and two other couples that followed us. My wife and I headed back to the hotel and everyone was standing around the lobby in shock. I saw two girls from Australia and told them the news and they both hugged me while shedding tears. A few other guests asked where we had gone, in case of another possible threat.
After calming the nerves of the guests, with the early news, everyone tried to get back to normal Saturday activities in Waikiki. It wasn't until 5-15 minutes that "official word" was finally sent to everyone. This was certainly a morning that I will never forget and thank God it was a hoax.
I don’t quite remember the time when the alert hit. I was sitting in my room with my roommate, Mike, watching TV and talking on the phone with a friend about the upcoming NFL playoff games on Saturday morning.