Smart Nation meets Wise Nation

Yishan Lam
Aug 9, 2017 · 3 min read

Spreading ‘one people, one nation’ across a greater distance

It being our 52nd National Day today, I got up and after a bit of gratuitous phone-checking, remembered I needed to go to the storeroom, fish out the flag I saved from LKY’s final sendoff — that rainy day in March, and give it some time in the sun.

As I was tying each end, I was thinking about what my aspirations would be for country moving forward, given the recent snafus we seem to find ourselves tangled up in — ideally, democratic and maturing processes working themselves out; just don’t unravel our hard-won advantages pls tks.

And I remembered a piece I had in the pipeline, wanting to unpack this theme of “Smart Nation meets Wise Nation” even as we charge full speed ahead in digital transformations across various sectors — what apart from the technical progress, Smart Nation ought mean for us at a human level, as a society with a distinctive complexion, philosophical legacy and operating context in this part of the world.

So over the breakfast table (with leftover birthday cake and chai) I scribbled a few thought starters for what I think Wise Nation would entail. This quick scribble surfaced a handy acronym, ‘ACCORD’, which whilst it may not sound very Singaporean, the latinate roots speak to being of one heart, so, ok can. Working backwards from the last letter, a first position stab:

A wise nation speeds up development in accordance with express values in
D is for Decision-making principles
R is for Redistributive effects
O is for Optimal stopping
C is for Connection
C is for Confidence
A is for Agility (or Adapt, less jargony)

Decision-making principles
A wise nation optimizes for total humanistic over narrowly-defined near term economic outcomes in wielding and articulating the trade-offs

Redistributive effects
A wise nation creams off the top of the growth and trickles it across to the bottom; operates by a power law yet grows as a total inclusive system

Optimal-stopping
A wise nation can calibrate its fast and its slow, its run-faster-than-everyone-else and its time-to-be-still, doesn’t throw good money (resource) after bad

Connection
A wise nation is able to emotionally enrol its constituents, facilitates two-or-more-way dialogue, knows that ‘comms’ is relational, is seasoned in practice

Confidence
A wise nation knows itself, has a good estimation of its place in the world (is therefore more effectively able to badass above its weight when needed)

Agility
A wise nation is not so wrapped up in its ideas that it loses its connection to reality to external forces and internal dynamics, is conditioned to adapt

[…]

With all the moving parts of nationhood from year 52 and beyond, we’ll need smarts in accordance with wisdom, gained via collective experience and instrumental failures, which come from being foolish (what I feel mostly these days.)

I’d like to contest these definitions and find examples for them next. How do these look at the level of physical infrastructure? In the public service? In investment behaviour, funding, procurement? For now, happy Majulah day.

A cord.

Becoming a Learning Machine

Supervising my own learning

Yishan Lam

Written by

Public sector junkie; believer, citizen, designer

Becoming a Learning Machine

Supervising my own learning

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