Goh Seow hiong
Executive Director, Global Policy and Government Affairs, Asia Pacific, Cisco Systems   Email: shgoh@cisco.com / shgoh@shgoh.sg

professional Experience

 

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.