IMDA, NRF fund Digital Trust Centre with $50m investment

The centre will be used to invest in data privacy and verification of AI tech.

Over $50m worth of investment was earmarked for the Digital Trust Centre (DTC), which aimed at preserving data privacy and AI technologies, the government revealed during a conference.

In her speech at Asia Tech x Singapore, Minister for Communications and Information Josephine Teo said the centre will lead in the market’s research and development for trust technologies and support talent development.

The centre is funded by a $50m investment from the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and the National Research Foundation, which is included under the Research, Innovation, and Enterprise 2025 plan.

In order to four key areas of trust technologies, the DTC will implement the following:

• Trust Tech Research – Enable Institutes of Higher Learning and Research Institutes to pursue research excellence in Trust Technologies and drive local and international collaborations.
• Trust Tech Innovations – Encourage academia and enterprises to co-develop and mature research ideas into market-ready solutions.
• New Sandbox Environment – Enable businesses to experiment with Trust Technologies to alleviate challenges with data sharing.
• Deepen local capabilities – Nurture 100 R&D talents in digital trust. 

Aside from this, DTC will also handle Singapore’s contribution Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, a multi-stakeholder initiative that boosts international cooperation to bridge theory and practice in AI.

With this, IMDA and the International Centre of Expertise of Montreal for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence inked a memorandum of understanding for one of the world’s first cross-border collaboration on PETs. 

The deal aimed at creating solutions will be developed to show how PETs can overcome privacy and compliance challenges for organisations building novel applications that strengthen cross-organisation and cross-border data.