THE EARLY CHILDHOOD INDUSTRY DIGITAL PLAN
The Early Childhood Industry Digital Plan (EC IDP) is jointly developed by the Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA) and the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), in partnership with SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG) and industry partners1. It provides a structured framework to guide preschool operators in their digital transformation efforts and, specifically, the digital solutions they can adopt across three stages of growth. The IDP will be updated over time as the industry progresses and newer and more relevant technologies are introduced. Aligned to the EC Industry Transformation Map (ITM), the sector-wide EC IDP contributes to the SMEs Go Digital programme2 that aims to make going digital simple for operators.
1Association of Early Childhood and Training Services (ASSETS) and Association for Early Childhood Educators (Singapore)(AECES)
Early Childhood’s Digital Roadmap
The three-stage Digital Roadmap of the IDP charts out the digital solutions that operators in the EC industry can adopt at each stage of their growth to support their digital journey.
Stage 1
Getting Ready for the Digital Economy – Adopt and Adapt
This stage calls for operators to adopt digital solutions such as e-enrolment and adapt centre processes for more efficient processes and digital-enabled work.
Stage 2
Growing in the Digital Economy – Analyse and Automate
This stage calls for preschools to adopt digital solutions such as data analytics that can help them analyse and automate operations and educator training for more data-driven operations and digital-enabled training.
Stage 3
Leaping Ahead – Advance Capabilities
This stage identifies solutions such as smart resource management and virtual training for teachers, so that operators can advance capabilities for smart centres and innovative learning.
With the introduction of the EC IDP, preschool operators can look forward to support in the following ways:
Pre-approved solutions
To make it easy for operators to adopt digital solutions recommended in the EC IDP, ECDA and IMDA will progressively curate more pre-approved solutions that are assessed to be market-proven, cost-effective and supported by reliable vendors. More preapproved solutions will be offered, beyond the current SMART Solutions initiative. Preschool operators can save time and effort to search for solutions and benefit from the convenience of quickly adopting these pre-approved solutions.
Funding support
To encourage preschool operators to start adopting the EC IDP, ECDA has introduced the Early Childhood Digitalisation Grant (ECDG) that eligible preschool operators may apply for to defray some of the cost of adopting pre-approved digital solutions recommended in the IDP. The ECDG is part of the Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG) and will support up to 50% of the implementation cost. More information on the ECDG is provided in the following section.
IDP Resources
Infocomm Technology (ICT) vendors with ready digital solutions and would like to apply to be a technology solutions provider for EC IDP are invited to submit their solutions to be pre-approved under the programme. For more information, please visit http://www.imda.gov.sg/icmvendors.
