Towards A Unique Identity And Greater Efficiency

From 1 January 2009, all entities such as businesses, companies and societies operating in Singapore will be able to interact with several government agencies using just one Unique Entity Number (UEN). UEN shall replace all other identification numbers issued to an entity by different government agencies. Currently an entity uses different identification numbers while interacting with different government agencies.

For a business or local company registered with the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA), the ACRA registration number will be retained as the UEN. For entities other than a local company or a business a new UEN will be issued by the government agency that registers or oversees them.  These entities will be informed, via post, of their UEN directly by the government agencies that register or oversee them. This is scheduled to be carried out from August to October 2008. All new entities which are formed from 1 January 2009 will be issued with the UEN at registration.

85% of entities, comprising 190,000 companies and 140,000 businesses, will retain their Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA) number as the UEN. This is in order to minimize the impact of UEN.  51 agencies including ACRA, the Central Provident Fund (CPF) and Singapore Customs will use UEN from 1 January 2009. Other agencies will use UEN from 1 July 2009.

UEN is an iGov2010 initiative to delight customers and connect citizens through infocomm. It is a multi-agency initiative, co-led by the Ministry of Finance and the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority, and managed by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, in partnership with other government agencies. This scheme has been introduced after much public consultation and research, the idea of UEN was first toyed in 2005  and the first public announcement was made in May 2006, at the launch of the iGov2010 government infocomm masterplan, informing the public that the government will introduce a unique identification number for all entities by 2009.

Applauding this initiative Ms. Ragini Danvantray of Rikvin Consultancy says,

“This system will make interaction with government agencies a lot simpler, easier, error free and streamlined. Singapore’s futuristic vision is to be an Integrated Government (iGov) that delights customers and connects citizens through the use of infocomm technology, in order to achieve this it is essential to streamline the backend processes to render a seamless online service to the public and enterprises, the introduction of UEN is a step forward to achieve this ambitious vision.”

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