Sterling work

Before he became the youngest ever Permanent Secretary in the Public Service in 1972, Mr Ngiam Tong Dow showed he was made of the right stuff.

Dr Goh Keng Swee, then the Finance Minister, asked Ngiam, who was in the Admin Service, to write a paper on whether the United States would continue to peg its currency to gold (the peg was US$35 to one ounce of gold).

"After studying gold output and gold reserves, I told Dr Goh that if I were the American President, faced as he was with a recession and slow growth, I would find the burden of upholding the value of his dollar in gold too much of a strait-jacket."

Based on Ngiam's paper, Singapore decided to buy gold.

"In 1968, we went to the World Bank meeting. The South Africans were there and we invited the South African finance minister to our hotel room. He came and said: 'Before we talk, we must switch on the TV very loud.' Right in the heart of Washington!"

Under the cover of the television, a deal was struck to purchase 100 tons at US$40 per ounce, since there was an embargo on South Africa. The premium of US$5 was agreed on to fix the price.

In keeping with the hush-hush nature of the deal, the South African dispensed with formal documents of identity, tearing a US1 bill in half and giving one half to the Singaporeans.

A few months later, Ngiam and Wee Cho Yaw went to a bank in Switzerland, produced their half note, and paid for their gold.

"As the price of gold has stayed above US$300 an ounce since then," noted Mr Ngiam, "our first purchase of gold was probably the best investment the Government Investment Corporation (GIC) has ever made."

Dr Zoo

Dr Ong Swee Lay, the medical doctor who became Chairman of the Public Utilities Board (PUB) showed that he could not only make the transition from medicine to water and electrical supplies, he could even segue into tourism.

PUB was in charge of all aspects of the water supply. Dr Ong wished that the public would have access to the catchment forests, and he was concerned that Singaporeans were losing touch with nature.

In January 1968, he asked his chief water engineer, Khong Kit Soon, what he thought of creating a zoo in what was then the Seletar catchment forest.

The engineer was flabbergasted. It was "a project that no water engineer looking after a drinking-water supply would want to take on. I looked up all the textbooks I could to see if there were any precedents. There were none."

So Singapore had to set the precedent, and did so by constructing a stormwater drain that encircled the zoo, protecting the reservoir water from animal pollution. A sewerage plant inside the zoo processed the waste, and then pumped it well beyond the catchment area.

Dr Ong got the government to cough up the initial development budget of $9 million, and the zoo opened in 1973. It has since then become one of Singapore's top attractions.

Dr Ong, who became the first Executive Chairman of the Singapore Zoo and kept the post until his death in 1995, was also the driving force behind the development of that other tourist favourite, the Night Safari, which opened in 1994.

Taking the right tag

When Dr Christopher Chia joined the National Library Board (NLB) as its founding CEO, he discovered a world of mostly old books and a tedious loan system. The collection had an average age of 11 years per book, and borrowers still had to line up to get their books stamped. Waiting time during peak hours could be an hour, most of it spent standing in a queue.

Dr Chia set ambitious goals, aiming for annual book loans of 30 million in 2003, which is more than double from 14.3 million in 1995. Total number of visitors was targeted at 18 million in 2003, from five million in 1995.

Of course, achieving those lofty aims may be a problem, given the library's "brick and mortar" processes. Waiting time, already at one hour during peak periods, would soar. Hiring more people was no solution, either. "We calculated that we would need 48 people behind the counter at peak hours to give customers a five-minute queue," said Dr Chia. And how would the additional staff be utilised during off-peak times?

With no commercial solution available, NLB decided to adapt RFID (radio frequency identification) tags, which had been touted as the next big thing in logistics, but had not yet realised its potential. They worked with ST LogiTrack, which had worked with RFID for two years. "We had a need, they had the technology," explained Dr Chia.

The Electronic Library Management System (ELMS), patented to ST LogiTrack and NLB in 2000, resulted.

All public library books have an RFID tag, and borrowing is a DIY affair at kiosks, where the books are scanned by a device which captures the loan and updates the borrower's account. Books are returned by dropping them through chutes, which capture the return and update the user's account.

Libraries in Australia, New Zealand and South Korea have since adopted similar technology, which NLB pioneered.

Bird fever

Mr Woon Wah Siang, Jurong Town Corporation (JTC)'s first Chairman, had a reputation for making things happen. Dr Goh Keng Swee is reported to have said that if you were to ask Mr Woon to send a man to the moon, he would say "yes" straight away.

However, while erecting scores of community centres in double-quick time; draining the swamps of Jurong to create an industrial site; and building a golf course on Sentosa might be par for the course, populating an aviary was a whole new kettle of... birds?

It started in 1967, when the then-Minister of Defence Goh Keng Swee went for a World Bank meeting in Rio de Janeiro, where he saw a free-flight aviary. The following year, he shared his vision of creating a similar aviary at the inaugural meeting of the JTC.

Mr Woon knew he could build the park itself, but the poser was acquiring birds to fill it. He decided to depend on the goodwill of ambassadors and foreign dignitaries. He later recalled: "I attended every National Day cocktail party just to ask for birds."

Mr Woon got his feathered friends and in January 1971, the park opened with 7,000 birds, mostly smaller ones.