Food without cold chain requirements could spend hours at bacteria-breeding temperatures – not because of negligence, but because safe limits had never been clearly defined. Pipes with no material standards could leach contaminants into water that meets every other measure of cleanliness. Electronics with no security benchmarks could connect to your home network and leave it vulnerable to hackers.
None of these failures would announce themselves. They would simply happen, until someone got sick or affected.
Singapore has spent 60 years building safeguards against such incidents. What began as a practical necessity has grown into a system of standards that now reaches into almost every corner of daily and commercial life, quietly governing everything from how bunker fuel is measured at the world’s largest bunkering port to how AI must be governed in the workplace.
Choy Sauw Kook, director-general for quality and excellence at Enterprise Singapore (EnterpriseSG) says: “Standards are one of Singapore’s most underrated business tools. They are an invisible force that keeps much of our economy and daily lives running smoothly.”
This standards infrastructure is overseen by EnterpriseSG through the industry-led Singapore Standards Council, which brings together industry, government and academia to identify and develop new standards as well as keep standards current as industries evolve. Its work spans health and safety, digitalisation, sustainability and resilience, now turning its attention to more complex areas such as AI, carbon and the green economy.
Source : https://www.straitstimes.com/why-standards-matter-in-singapore
