Metro

The corporations on our annual list of the world's 500 largest companies combined to generate $41.7 trillion in revenue over the past year.

Fortune Global 500

The European edition of the Fortune 500, ranking companies by revenue.

Fortune 500 Europe

The corporations on our annual list posted aggregate revenues of $41 trillion for the second year in a row.

The corporations on our annual list of the world’s largest companies delivered a record $41 trillion in aggregate revenues.

The first-ever European edition of the Fortune 500, ranking companies by revenue. 

F500 Europe Ver.di Labor Union Calls Up More Strike From Retailer Stores In Rheydt

Metro ranks 115 with $32.2 billion in revenue (up 8.8%). The Germany-headquartered food and grocery wholesaler has 86,910 employees and made a loss of $361 million.

Aggregate sales hit $37.8 trillion last year—an increase of 19%, the highest annual growth rate in the list’s history.

Total revenue for the world’s biggest companies fell 4.8% to $31.7 trillion this year—the first decline in half a decade.

This year's Fortune Global 500 generated $33.3 trillion in revenues and $2.1 trillion in profits.

G500-2020-294-Metro

This year's Fortune Global 500 generated $27.7 trillion in revenues and $1.5 trillion in profits.

This year's Fortune Global 500 generated $27.6 trillion in revenues and $1.5 trillion in profits.

The world's 500 largest companies generated $31.2 trillion in revenues and $1.7 trillion in profits in 2014. Together, this year's Fortune Global 500 employ 65 million people worldwide and are represented by 36 countries.

Global business is back. After limping through a worldwide financial crisis and economic slowdown, the 500 largest companies ranked by revenues shattered all sorts of performance records in 2013: They racked up combined revenues of $31.1 trillion, up 2.5% from 2012, and profits soared 27% to nearly $2 trillion. China’s 95 companies (up from 89 last year) posted $5.8 trillion in revenues. The U.S. has four fewer companies on the list than last year but remains (for now) the country leader, with 128 corporations on the list—including No. 1 Wal-Mart Stores—reporting $8.6 trillion in revenues. 

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Metro (MTTWF): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Millennials’ love affair with pet chickens is big business for a $30 billion retail chain—‘In America, the new companion animal is the chicken’

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January 6, 2022 marks the first anniversary of the insurrection at the Capitol

Biden reflects on insurrection: Trump “created and spread a web of lies”

Politics

Biden reflects on January 6 insurrection


Biden reflects on insurrection: Trump “created and spread a web of lies”


one year ago today in this sacred place, democracy was attacked simply attack the will of the people was under salt. The constitution, our constitution based the gravest of threats outnumbered in the face of the brutal attack, the capitol police, the D. C. Metropolitan Police Department, the National Guard, Another brave law enforcement officials saved the rule of law for the first time in our history, president had not just lost an election. He tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power as a violent mob breached the capitol but they failed. They failed on this day of remembrance. We must make sure that such attack never never happened. We saw with our own eyes, riders, menace these halls, threatening the life of the speaker of the house, literally erecting gallows to hang the Vice President of the United States of America. What did we not see? We didn't see a former president who had just rallied the mob to attack. Sitting in the private dining room off the oval office in the white house watching it all on television and doing nothing for hours. This place for assault lives at risk the nation's capital under siege. My fellow americans in life, there is truth and tragically there are lives lies conceived and spread for profit and power. We must be absolutely clear about what is true and what is a lie and here's the truth. The former President of the United States of America has created and spread a web of lies About the 2020 election. He's done so because he values power over principle because he sees his own interest is more important than his country's interests and America's interests. And because his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our constitution, he can't accept he lost. Even though that's what 93 United States senators, his own attorney general, his own vice president, governors and state officials in every battleground state have all said he lost. That's what 81 million of you did as you voted for a new way forward. So let's speak plainly about what happened in 2020, even before the first ballot was cast, the former president was preemptively sowing doubt about the election results. That's right. He built his lie over months. Wasn't based on any facts. He was just looking for an excuse, a pretext to cover for the truth. He's not just a former president, he's a defeated former president, defeated by a margin of over seven million of your votes in a full and free and fair election.

The Metrodora Institute will be devoted to advancing women’s health equity, with a focus on treating people with “complex neuroimmune disorders."

Instacart CEO Fidji Simo is launching a women's health startup

Features

Instacart's CEO is launching a women's health startup

at facebook, you've spoken about working despite a miscarriage, dealing with endometriosis, um high risk pregnancy that made you do your job while you were on bed rest for several months. And recently you've been vocal about another somewhat under recognized disorder that affects women that you're suffering from called pot. I look at the trends of autoimmune diseases and it's 15 million people in the US75% of the patients are women. It's on the rise massively. And I do believe that uh you know, if we don't address, it's going to end up impacting women in their Korea. It was very interesting to realize how poorly set up the medical system was to take care of women with this condition. And I was lucky to have excellent doctors. And so when we started talking with my doctors about how we would really solve the problem, meaning give better care to women with this condition and advanced research so that we could find a cure because most of these conditions really don't have any cures. Uh, and very limited understanding of even how the disease is work. Um His doctors started to talk about the fact that, you know, we could create a completely new model of health care. And so I decided to partner with them and the result is uh some method or actually make and receptions and it's going to be a clinic in Utah where all of the different specialties of medicine from neurology, gastroenterology, cardiology to immunology will be under one roof to take care of the whole patient and not look at patients as a sum of body parts, but look at them as the whole body and a whole person and really place the patient at the center of the care, which is something that sadly, you know, doesn't happen into into regular medical system because many times women are not trusted, many times women have to bring their husband along with them in medical appointments too, that the doctors will take them seriously. And so we want to create a clinic while they will be taken seriously. And then we also want to create a research institute attached to that where we can have all of the patients of the clinic participate in life changing research on his condition so that we can finally understand why women's immune systems are behaving so differently from men. Uh and this is something that we're like decades behind because so much of the research has been done on male bodies and not women. So much of the research has completely ignored the role of hormones. And so I'm telling incredibly passionate about really bringing together all of my background in technology and all of my contacts and biotechnologies with all of the expenses of micro founders in in medicine and science, to really crack the code on on what's happening with all of these new Orleans

There's a reason we pick precedent to come as our first guests cuz we knew we would not be late. She has to get to the state dinner cuz she has to manage the security of a President, a Queen the entire families of both. So we are gonna be on time Cressida. Thank you. Luckily we've done the makeup sir. There you go right. She just has to. She just literally has to head over. So here's my question for you since the makeup is done, and what is that state banquet gonna look like tonight because I think a lot of people are wondering, How fun is that party gonna be? [ LAUGH ] Well, I don't know exactly. All I know is it will be Glittering. It will be on a large scale. It will be very exciting. The people at Buckingham Palace have the amazing ability to be both obviously very formal in some ways and very informal and make the humblest and the person who may think that the most important person in the room. Feel really, really special and welcome. So I'm sure it will be great fun. It'll be fascinating to hear the speeches, cuz I'm sure that we will get some really interesting insights into the tone of both. But it'll be a great night and. I'm the commissioner of Metropolitan Police. We adore protecting visiting heads of state whoever they may be. It's extraordinary to have a state visit and then want one on this sort of scale. We've done that before, we'll do them in the future, but it's a great time for London. How different is it going to be, because I know you and the mayor had to take a lot of heat in the last, if you were here during the extinction rebellion. protest. There was a lot of heat that you had to take. How much preparation is different this time around for a state visit? I know you do so many of these. You've done a lot with U. S. administrations before and how easy is it gonna be for all of us to travel tomorrow back to here? [ LAUGH ] So when we take our role really seriously on the one hand to keep safe the visiting head of state and their entourage and everybody connected with it and of course our own role family and on the other hand in Liberal community like ours, to ensure that if people wish to protest lawfully, they can do so without crime and do so socially. So, we do those both things, and it's just not about this two days, The heads of state are meeting up the heads of state down in Portsmouth and again, my protection of this will be with them. We always put an enormous amount of preparation into every visiting head of state visit. And we work really closely with our counterparts, in this case, from the United States. We have a really long established relationship with them, as you say, and we will be pretty firm if protesters are intending to try to protest in a way, which is unlawful and very, very firm if anybody wants to do anything which might in any way in danger, the security of the business, obviously. So we've done a lot of preparation. I'm very confident I've got great people. I'm sure it'll go well. Well I know I wanna come to all of you for questions in just a minute because I love getting you involved in these conversations right off the top of the bat. But to set the record straight, there's a lot of talk about how many officers are going to be out there protecting the president at the time of Brexit uncertainty, budget cuts, blah, blah, blah, How many offices, what's the budget looking like, can you set the record straight from what we're hearing. So I am not gonna give any details cuz we don't, we tend to add it all of our [ UNKNOWN ] to it but all I can say if she's read things like 10000 offices, that's completely wrong. [ UNKNOWN ] Miles above what we will be having. And actually this particular visit, in terms of the number of protests and the complexity of the protests, at least as they have been made known to us, is very much less than last year's. So I think the stretch on us and we work really closely with other police forces on UK policing. Is this year, less than last time, the president of the United States visited us. Well here's where the conversation gets interesting. I know we introduced Cressida as the first female Met Commissioner, lots and lots of other firsts that you keep getting labeled with. And I remember reading somewhere that people call you the first female Met Commissioner or the first openly gay Commissioner. Is probably the most boring thing about you. What is the most interesting? [ LAUGH ] Goodness [ BLANK_AUDIO ] I think is anything very interesting about me. I love my job. I started work on patrol, not many, you know hundreds of meters away from here as a beat constable and that's what we do and at heart I'm a beat Conservancy. I'm now leading an organization of 40, 000 people with lots lots of national and indeed some international responsibilities but at heart I'm a police officer and I've had a wonderful time doing it. Well, let's get some questions if you have any cuz we have so many questions about security, national security, terrorism, knife crime, we have our mic handlers right there. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Hi. Alan Murray. Sorry to take the first question. I'm demographically unqualified for this. [ LAUGH ] But I'm curious because in the United States, there's gonna be a lot of talk about technology in the next couple of days in the United States. We've had these voices pick up San Francisco first saying the facial recognition should not Be used in law enforcement in the city, I'm curious what your view on that is? Yeah so I think that's fascinating and important. I mean London is for those who've been here relatively and frequently, it's a very safe city we need to keep it a safe city into the future. And London's wealth I guess depends to a large extent on being a place that you know not least foreign investors want to come and be And put their money and and live. And we, as we go forward in my view need to make the best use of modern technologies, but obviously in a way which is acceptable to the public because we have to balance individual people's Security within the individual people of communities failing about their privacy. And in the death rates that is quite a complicated conversation but it needs to be had. [ LAUGH ] And I actually believe that live facial recognition technology properly overseen, properly thought about, properly [ UNKNOWN ] is something that our public would probably expect us to be doing. You're sitting in a city that probably has a greater density of CCTV, much loved by the public than almost any city in the world. And used by the police to protect people as it's happening all over London at the moment and also to do investigations if a crime does occur. And live facial recognition I think could be very useful. What's a debate we're not having? So in so many ways, the bad guys are adopting the newest technologies very fast. Hostile states of course adopting new technologies very fast. And in law enforcement in this country some adoption of new technologies and of course we're talking to for example our colleagues in New York and other American cities a lot about technologist but what there isn't enough of his public discourse about what is acceptable and what isn't some what people would want because It needs to be a political decision informed by what the public want, not a decision made by what you might call a secure [ UNKNOWN ] I've got an interesting safety. Of course as assistant I've got an interesting liberty and privacy as well, absolutely. But the balance needs to be talked about and there needs to be leadership around these issues I'm trying to Gear people up a bit in this country but I think we need to talk about it and not unfortunately in the very binary way that it is often talked about. Cuz this is nuanced and difficult. Does that worry you? That there are comparisons to a nanny state, a police state when we start talking about technology and the use of facial recognition and people throw up other countries as examples? Where's the wrong word? I think it's important that we have always you know, in a in a in a place like this, you know the back of our minds a proper fear of what might be described a police state. You know nobody in this city wants to live or work or visit a place in which You know data is used to control the citizen any more than we want to. You know your visiting or living in a city right now that still has a primarily unarmed police service that prides itself on policing by consent and upholding people's human rights. So we in all their forms. So we absolutely don't want to sort of. Go by mistake or without thinking about it, down a road which actually intrudes n a way that seems like people are being watched in a way they don't want to be watched. Or controlled in a way that's inappropriate. In the The norm or ethically. Finding that [ UNKNOWN ] is quite hard in one word. I'm sure some of you wrestling within the way, because people have different with the disruption of new technologies. People have quite different views about leprosy, and who are to be able to intrude in what way. That's quite hard getting the consensus. But I think, to cut to your question again sir. If a terrorist is walking down the street out here, most of the public in London would have thought that probably we were always using technology that ought to be able to get that person stopped. And if that included life facial recognition, they probably think for the most serious crimes it ought to be being used. We're miles from that, by the way. But unfortunately, when you watch the Bourne Supremacy or Bourne or any of those things, it's full of it. And we can't just put our heads in the sand we are risk on one hand being really, really, really left behind, or on the other hand, intruding in a way that subsequently It results in a great public enquiry and loss of competence in their police service which is the most fundamental thing in this country. People need to trust their police and believe they are people of integrity. And you being working on that to quite an extent when it comes to recruitent and all of these other issues, the question here is night crime comes up if you live in London, protest, domestic terrorism. You talked about foreign influence to cyber crime, organized crime. When we head in to Brexit you've also been pretty vocal about how we may be on the back foot so when you combine technology Brexit potential down the road. How do you see the next couple of months and your leadership, playing out, when you look at how you have to tackle all of the issues that you're facing as a [ INAUDIBLE ] commissioner Couple of months. Well, we're hoping. [ LAUGH ] She gives me a couple of months, that's good. I'm hoping to carry on for a few more years, but not. No, a couple of months until Brexit or until we decide what we're doing with it. I see, so specifically about that. Well, we are the metropolitan police, we have Scotland Yard, we're a well brand. We're proud of what we do and we're very well known on the streets of London and We need to maintain a sense amongst our citizens and our visitors, that this is a place where people know what they're doing, they're getting on the job that present, they're out there, they're supporting and protecting people, and preventing crime and they kinda investigating on what we can't. And. Actually, the B work doesn't affect that very much at all. That's just what we need to be doing. We are working really closely with the government. We're working really closely with other colleagues in European states similar roles to mine to make sure that whatever the framework after we can make the most of it. But absolutely, it is the case that if we were to come out without any sort of deal Then there ill be an awful lot of work to do to be able to replicate these current systems that we have access to. For example, automatically or the European arrest warrant which is very powerful. Replacing that for example by traditionally slower, more expensive, more difficult. We would have a steep mountain to climb. But I don't want people to think that in saying that I am saying you know its a very gloomy picture although you know London is usually at risk if its simply that there have to be alot more investment and we have to work really hard too. Lets get another question from the room. Can we get a mike handler. Any perfect, thank you. Thank you. I'm living in Johannesburg and I work across Africa, where policing is quite intellectual. Could you introduce yourself .>> Sorry, Sheila day before I work with Standard Bank and I work across sub Saharan Africa, not even in Johannesburg. And policing is quite immature. Often there is excessive use of force. Now, throughout your career you must have seen the Metropolitan police mature. Do you have any advice or any lessons learned in terms of Reforming the police and building capacity. Thank you. I've seen it change hugely here in 36 years as you say. I don't know how much the parallels although, but I would say It's very, important that as far as possible you recruit and develop good people. Good people of good values, who are broadly, if possible, incorruptible, and you can protect them from corruption. Secondly, it's incredibly important that the outside world looks in and comes in to policing as much as possible. So we are highly accountable. We're highly transparent and We have people looking out our work, our tactics, our strategies, our policies, our practice all day long and reflecting back to us. But also talking to the public about whether that's good or bad or indifferent. We've increased that transparency by the, I haven't got one on but all my front liner officers have. Body worn cameras. And have had for about three years which they love to use because it they say it protects them from complaints. It gives them good evidence. So increasing accountability, increasing good governance and increasing in my view, transparency raises standards. It's tough, but it's very important. And increasing diversity is just fundamental. Being a police service that people will have trust in a police service that's going to be effective in the modern world must be very, very diverse in all its forms in my view, which is why we've been going on and on about 100 years of women and we're already probably have more women and more rights, more roles and more levels than any other police service. I think But we want many more but it's not just that sought of diversity of cause because you know, here you are in the most diverse city on the planet and we have to have the confidence of the public in all of our, most of us communities that are, people have to feel this their place not an invading force, this is their place that they can trust and they are well with not a constant work in progress. Got a little bit of work on the way actually. [ LAUGH ] Well, we have a little work to do here as well. [ LAUGH ] Thank you very much to all of our guests here. Thank you. Goodbye. [ APPLAUSE ] Thank you, it was a pleasure. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

MPW London 2019: A Conversation with Cressida Dick

Leadership

Cressida Dick, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, talks with Fortune's Maithreyi Seetharaman about advances in security technology, and how London police prepared for President Trump's visit.

Jacqueline and I have a pretty similar background in policy and economics and it's interesting that she took on a role that took her into technology and also for this push towards a Smart Nation. That's pretty much where our similarities end, because she went into government, I went into journalism. She is a Star Wars fan, I'm a Trekkie. You know where this conversation goes. So I'm gonna kick it off by asking a simple question. That I know that probably everyone wants to understand. And I'm going to bring up a slide that you sent across for us. It's an economy and in a position where The world is challenging. There are lots of uncertainties. Economic growth across the board for Singapore is still strong, but there are risks to the downside. When you look at the way you're looking at design and technology and implementation going down the road How are you looking at all of these scenarios that are playing out? Thank you very much [ UNKNOWN ]. I really thank the organizers for sort of adding a little bit of a different kind of element to this conference beyond what you see as design for products. Or even design for services, and that is design for policy, design for strategy, and design for technology in a public policy context. I think, and that's the reason why I put up these slides, and I think that for a lot of countries and governments, it takes a long time to make a shift. It takes a long time to think about how to design for the future. The first picture that we have on the left, Houston, we have a problem, is something that was tweeted recently by astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. And this was what basically happened to them after they came back from the moon. It's a customs declaration form. So basically they came back to Earth, went to Hawaii, and they said, well, you've come back to America [ LAUGH ]. Is there anything you'd like to declare? And it kinda indicates, in many ways, how a lot of governments do tend to not be in time for the future. And one of the roles of the Saint Paul government is also to look at what are the black swans, what are the unexpected, see around the corner events that might help to enable us to deal with challenges and take advantage of opportunities. Thins like SARS in 2003 would be an example of that. And also to actually telescope into the future to take a look at what's happening not just now but to 10 years down the road 20 years down the road and across the hall of the Singapore government, foresight has become an important part of how we achieve design those strategies. So I'm going to try and pull up the second slide and I think that brings up the issue of looking at how you see the future. When you design these and you're looking at the building scenarios, which are quite unpredictable. Let's put it frankly. How many years out do you plan, and how do you look at these elements to make sure that the city Continues to function no matter what uncertainty [ UNKNOWN ] at it. It's not an easy job, and I think it takes an entire public service to be able to achieve that in unison and in alignment. What I can say is that in the process of trying to design a city, or an economy or Kind of the future of how we think that a little island can progress. It's helpful to think of it in terms of foresight, hindsight and insight. The foresight work that is done both by my office as well as by foresight units throughout the whole of government, look at things like national scenarios. They look at emerging strategic issues like For example, AI ethics or human augmentation, or big geopolitical shifts but they also look back into the past. What worked, what didn't work. How that can inform better. How we design in future from things that might not have succeeded in the past. And then finally kinda getting that insight together and pushing that into any form of national strategy. I think that's an interesting point, right? So when you look at designing and the foresight, what hasn't worked in the past that you think you've- [ LAUGH ] Actually been able to address or are still wanting to address? I think that what we need to do is to constantly look at not just a lot about policies are quiet successful, that's how we got to, I suppose, sort of where we are today but in the sits of that are also possible. Things that we need to look at that are not so suitable for the future. I'll give you an example of an announcement that was made yesterday by our education minister. We had a policy that was actually pretty successful in achieving what it wanted to achieve for 40 years, and the policy was known as streaming. That is to put students into different you know streams according to their ability to learn and like how fast they learned. 40 years later, we found that that certainly achieved what it was supposed to do, which was to reduce attrition rates by having people learn at the right speed for them. Unfortunately, it was causing issues with social mixing, and with morale and motivation for students who were put in some of the streams. So a decision was taken to actually move to something called subject- based banding, which was a far more personalized education approach. Where people could sort of take classes at different levels. And that's an interesting approach to designing a policy that works for today and tomorrow. And you mentioned looking past as well. And that brings up a critical point that the silver economy in this country is going to triple in size. You're looking at a pioneer generation that has to be taken care of. It's a crisis that we have to deal with in Europe as well, to quite an extent. How do you design around it and how much of a role does technology end up playing within that space? Wanna bring that slide up- That's really interesting, I think one of the examples, we wanted to actually give policy design was actually one of the ways in which we were addressing what was essentially a very fast aging population in Singapore. And also needing to acknowledge the contributions of a group of Singaporeans who had been there When we had just achieved independence, they were around 16 years and above at the time of achieving independence at 1965. These were the people who were first national service men, our first soldiers, the bedrock of our manufacturing industry when we first started. They were the first. At everything and because they were the first they also didn't have the opportunity to get the kind of education that their children later have. They didn't have the opportunity to get the kind of incomes that their children later had. As a result, in terms of their retirements and social security and also their healthcare needs, they were one step behind. They were far less in a position to take care of themselves. So the question was how do you design something particularly to meet the needs of these users? Then you have to ask yourself who really are the users? In this case the users were the pioneer generation themselves and their own particular situation. Also, their children who basically thought they had to pay for the health care needs of their parents And this was causing them a lot of stress. And generally, the needs of society, to know that we are actually acknowledging contributions. How do you design for that age group, when it comes to implementing a smart solution for them? That's not easy. I know you have great examples in Estonia and in other countries in that region. What did you do so different that hadn't been done elsewhere, and do you think it's a complete success, or do you think that it's an iteration, it's evolving? So I think for the Pioneer Generation Package, it was mainly a financial package, to give them healthcare assurance. The innovation there was also how we reached out to the seniors, So we realized that you know, for them, an entirely digital kind of interface was not gonna work we're not gonna send to their smartphones and at that says, these are your benefits. So we actually sent out what we call Silva generation ambassadors, or then pilot generation and messages. We actually use the young old to reach out to the older, old. And so you know these would be people in their fifties for example. And they actually went out house to house to tell them about the benefits that they would receive. But the young old would get ipads and other devices to be able to record and to get a full understanding of what that household would receive and to take down all their concerns. And then all of that would be fed back into a database. So it was actually an interesting kind of mixture of mediums. The face to face, the high touch, then there was the high tech. Then there was the data intensity. And then finally there was a media push. That again was designed for this group. And that was in dialect, Cantonese, [ UNKNOWN ]. And that was a really big shift, because before that, the use of dialects in Singapore had been discouraged for many, many years, cuz we wanted everyone to speak, say, Mandarin. And some majority Chinese population. So, in this case we said the user is the most important to design for us. So, the [ INAUDIBLE ] materials were all these dialect videos and things like that. That human element seems to be very much part of smart city planning in many ways. Another example that you highlighted was something that became a bit of a YouTube sensation. It's a landfill that doesn't look anything like a landfill. Tell us how that idea came about and how exactly you thought about putting this together and for it to become now a tourist destination. Yeah, I think that's really speaks to, if you are in public policy, what is design to you? It is about solution seeking. It's fundamentally looking at a problem, defining it, finding a solution, and designing that solution to meet the needs. And in this case You know, we've had typical landfills for a long time in Singapore in the 70s 80s these were you know, what we had only sometime in the 80s that we decide that soup was a really small island. We don't have space for landfills and we started to build what we call Waste incineration plants. So we would take the all that waste. And we would burn it. Yeah. And in the process of burning the waste, the amount of waste that you have shrinks by 90 %, which is a good thing. At the same time you create energy for a country that doesn't have many other energy sources. So it was great. We changed waste to energy. Then we had less waste, and we had to put it somewhere. And at that time we had these a few islands there and something called Pulau Semakau, about 5km south from the coast of Singapore. And a decision was taken to actually convert this, put a non permeable membrane around it and marine clay. And to put all the ways, all the ashes into this place, into this sort of [ UNKNOWN ] you can see in the before picture, and by doing so we would create a new [ UNKNOWN ]. So that's great because Singapore need a land, Singapore need electricity, Singapore did not need more waste. And in the end it actually works out quite well in terms of creating sort of new space. What was the biggest hurdle in that one to get everyone to look at that design and say that works? Because sometimes getting people who are not thinkers in terms of creatively looking at that and saying that's an option What was the biggest hurdle there, you think? I think that, like for any of these new projects, feasibility would have to be something that you think about. And I think that the ambitions that you have initially can, it's okay for those ambitions to be more limited. So Marco does a lot more things now than it was envisioned at first, which was just to be a landfill for ash. It actually is a marine sanctuary, it's got bird life, people picnic there. We have a baramundi farm that grows fish fry on Samakau now as well. And exports it internationally. None of these things were envisaged, when the idea first came, it had one purpose. So it's all about designing the solution that sort of aligns all the needs together. And then after that, once it gets going it takes on a life of it's own. And that brings policy into implementation as well and that's something that you did with the National Identity Scheme as well. Talk us through the technology that goes into doing something like that and then tying it back to ensuring that there's growth in the nation. When you're aiming for a smart nation. So this is an interesting project, because I would say that not many countries have indentities, or digital identities, want to do actually a little bit more with them. A basis sort of for communcations and comerse and interactive transations and andy digital economy is identitiy. The ability to verify and authenticate that it is you and it is your purchase and it's your opinion and its your transaction. And so the National Digital Identity Project's kind of interesting, because it creates a unique digital identity for every Singaporean. So that's a design element in itself. But we wanted to design it in a way that would form a platform for businesses as well as the government to rely on it to make transactions. So to do that you had to make it secure, so to stop PKI. We had to make it usable, so it's actually not biometric. And it had to be a secure platform that, you know, using APIs private enterprises could then onboard so at the moment at my understanding is that Scott about a 107 government services using this and in doing so it means no more forms filling. The citizens do not have to fill out forms anymore. That's cut down 80 % of transaction time. But it also has 120 private sector services that ride on this including almost all the banks. Property houses, insurance And it's used by a lot of other organizations for verification and knowing their customer. Do you sometimes feel that maybe you're at a disadvantage where some of this is so controlled by the government that private sector might feel slightly pushed out. And then convincing citizens to share their data is always an issue, especially if it's in the hands of government. Trust comes into it. We've talked a lot about trust and design. Where do you think that bridge can be made and that challenge can be addressed? Because you're facing that now. Yeah, so actually, trust is a huge thing if you design anything. For you know so especially financial context or government context. In Singapore I would say that I think the trust in government is a bit higher than there are a few other countries that have in the world trust and the I think there was some, there Surveys that we had that showed that actually citizens expect that we had all the data already. And so why were we asking again and again since you already know? Okay so that was the first step. Then we knew that the private sector actually didn't have all of this data so we weren't crowding anyone else out. There was no way anyone else was gonna collect it [ LAUGH ] To the extent that we were. And in fact, we would have been accused of hoarding the data if we had just not done anything about it to make it an open platform. So what we do was to say, look, if you're a citizen and you want to set up a credit card, and you don't want to have to tell your bank all about yourself, write up a form. And you just use the national digital identity, you click, then the bank just says Are you okay that I use the national digital identity, my info, to access the things I need to access to be able to give you a credit card? You have to say okay. The power is in the hand of the citizen. They have to say okay, and then the rest happens. Well, I know we're running out of time, so in a quick ten second Is there anything that you see as a question that you constantly ask yourself? Why do we do it that way? Why do we change things the way we do it? Is there an example of that? Well, there's just one example, and I did have a slide on this one. Well, you have ten seconds. For many years, we used This interesting thing called Car Parking Coupons, the little paper coupons. For those of you who are not from Singapore, those are the things in the bottom left. Actually, this is already an advancement, many countries have meters which actually form a large chunk of street furniture These car parking meters. But we had these coupons which were also a bit troublesome in terms of enforcement. In terms of having to buy them and leaving the little stubs everywhere. And we converted that into an app that basically looked at wherever you were and then allowed you to pay wherever you were or for whomever you wanted. For as long as you wanted, and then to get a refund if you came back early. And that was incredibly simple, I think to actually do, but the designer limits were very strong. For example, we decided to put it on the public cloud, and but to do that we had to say the key design element was that we had to say, we did not care Who you paid for. your identity was irrelevant to us. You chose to pay for any car in the street and once you chose to pay for like once a design decision is taken. Then you can pay for any car industry you can make this thing cheap. You can make this thing easy to access. You can put it on the public Cloud. And the rest, it follows. I think that's what I've always found. When we talk about smart cities. Sometimes the most ingenious things are the simplest things that we ask the question, why do we do it like that? Jaqueline, thank you very much for your time, and please give her a round of applause for all that she's trying to do. [ APPLAUSE ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Brainstorm Design 2019: Designing Singapore: Strategy, Policy, and Technology

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