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Goh Seow Hiong presently holds the
position of Executive Director, Global Policy and Government Affairs, Asia
Pacific, at Cisco Systems, where he plays
an advisory role to government officials and regulators across Asia Pacific
on a range of ICT-related policy issues. He was formerly Director, Software
Policy for Asia with the Business Software Alliance (BSA),
responsible for representing the views of BSA’s
member companies before governments and the marketplace in the region,
covering China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Philippines, Thailand,
Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, India and Australia.
Prior to joining BSA, Seow Hiong was in
legal practice at the Singapore
law firm of Rajah & Tann, where he regularly advises clients on
contentious and non-contentious matters on a wide range of technological
areas. His clients include international and domestic telecommunication
players, ICT companies, system integrators, hardware vendors, e-commerce
players, as well as organisations who are end-users
of technology and various government agencies. He played an instrumental role
in the firm’s emerging work in advising various foreign governments and
international organisations on policy approaches and issues on ICT
legislation and regulation. He has undertaken foreign and regional
consultancy projects such as those commissioned by the World Bank.
Seow Hiong was in the Singapore
public service for 10 years prior to joining private legal practice. He was
the Deputy Director of Infocomm Development Policy
of the Infocomm
Development Authority of Singapore (IDA). He was also the Special
Assistant to the Chief Executive Officer of IDA and supported her in
corporate matters and other pre and post merger issues in the formation of
IDA. Under Infocomm Development Policy, he headed a
division to establish strategies and approaches to ICT public policy and
development policy issues, and was responsible for formulating e-commerce
policies and legislation, removing policy barriers faced by ICT industry,
providing for consumer concerns and addressing emerging policy challenges in
the new digital economy (including managing the licensing of certification
authorities in Singapore).
He coordinated ICT policy issues at the national level and worked with other
government agencies, international organisations and foreign governments with
a goal to establish Singapore
as a trusted hub and an advanced ICT society. He regularly represented Singapore at
various international forums on e-commerce policies. He was also Singapore’s
lead negotiator for telecommunication services and electronic commerce in a
Free Trade Agreement negotiation with another country. In addition, he held
the concurrent appointment of Deputy Director for Infocomm
Security, where he headed an office responsible for the technical security
programmes at the infrastructure, government and national levels, and was
responsible for planning and protecting the critical ICT infrastructures in Singapore.
His office provided security consultancy services to both the industry and
Government. Prior to the creation of IDA in 1999, Seow Hiong led a team
responsible for the e-commerce initiatives at the then Singapore National
Computer Board (NCB), where his group cultivated the use of e-commerce to the
businesses and to the general public. He was also then the Principal Staff to
Chief Executive and Chairman of NCB.
Seow Hiong is experienced in the process
of establishing the legal and policy ICT and e-commerce frameworks in Singapore to
facilitate the development and growth of the e-commerce and ICT industries.
He was one of the key persons that drafted the Singapore Electronic
Transactions Act, its Regulations and Security Guidelines, the Evidence
(Computer Output) Regulations and the amendments to the Computer
Misuse Act. He continues to be actively involved in various
inter-Ministry working committees on the legal and policy matters relating to
ICT and e-commerce such as data protection and Internet content, and has also
spoken at events organised by various international forums such as WTO, WIPO,
OECD, ASEAN and UNESCAP on the ICT, e-commerce, intellectual property and
other developments. His current role at Cisco engages him in discussions with
various governments in the Asia Pacific region on policy and strategic
issues, covering countries including Australia,
China, Hong
Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan,
Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore,
South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand
and Vietnam.
Seow Hiong
received his Bachelor’s Degree with Honours and Distinction in General
Scholarship (equivalent of a First Class Honours) in Computer Science from
the University of California at Berkeley,
and his Master’s Degree in Computer Science from Stanford University. He also has a Bachelor’s
Degree with Honours in Law from the University
of London, and a postgraduate Diploma in Singapore Law with Merit from
the National University of Singapore.
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