AUGUST 2006
From Academic to MP With Aplomb
Economist Ivan Png is raising public issues with some success as a member of Singapore’s Parliament.
by Anjana Motihar Chandra
When Ivan Png, PhD ’85, gets worked up about an issue, whether it is mine
safety in China’s coal industry or the misuse of identity cards in his
native Singapore, he sits down and composes his thoughts on paper. He then
mails them to a local newspaper. Sometimes he succeeds in generating a
public debate and even a change of government policy.
“There was an outpouring of public discussion on personal information
privacy after I raised the issue in a Straits Times article,” says Png,
professor of information systems and business policy at the National
University of Singapore (NUS), a leading tertiary institution in Singapore
and the Asia-Pacific region.
Despite his knack for public outspokenness, which is uncommon in Singapore,
Png landed an appointment in the country’s Parliament in January 2005.
Appointed by the president, Png says his “past contributions to discussions
of government policy” may have worked in his favor. Whatever the reason for
his nomination, he has been successful in making an impact in the House. His
criticism of the lack of protection of personal information easily available
on identity cards, called ICs, which are needed for everything from service
at government offices to applying for a credit card, has prompted the
government to work on reform legislation.
A microeconomist whose current academic research areas are pricing and
intellectual property, Png has been concerned about the potential for the
fraudulent use of ICs. His other concerns as an MP have been the regulation
of the sale of club time-shares, and “inefficient” estate duties and
business record-keeping requirements. In his 2006 budget, Singapore’s prime
minister agreed to two of Png’s ideas—a review of the Estate Duty Act and a
rationalization of many record-keeping laws into one requirement on
businesses.
“The issues I bring up are middle-class issues, for people who are not
worrying where the next meal comes from,” he says, although he also
supported a national dividend targeted to low-income households that was
authorized.
“I am outspoken on issues where I have strong views, views based on
principles in which I have no vested interest,” he says. “We should not fear
to express views which are based on principles which are valid.” Png has
raised issues outside Singapore too, notably in China, where he wrote on
power supply and the coal industry while he was a visiting professor at
Tsinghua University in 2004.
The freedom to speak his mind and chart his own course has always been
important to him and perhaps accounts for his career path, which has taken
him from law to economics to information systems, business policy, and
eventually to public affairs and even university governance.
Paul Klemperer, PhD ’87, professor of economics at Oxford University, is not
surprised at the path of Png, a close friends since their Stanford days.
“Although he was one of the very cleverest students, it was always clear
that he was not going to have a narrow academic career. He would always have
an interesting angle on anything we were studying,” Klemperer says.
At NUS, Png has been involved with policy and governance issues since
joining its faculty 10 years ago. He is “someone I have often called on to
tap his expertise and talent,” says NUS President Shih Choon Fong.
As vice provost Png rewrote the university’s statutes, cutting them from
several hundred pages to less than 100, and worked with the general counsel
to write the university’s first student privacy policy. He also assisted the
provost in establishing the promotion and tenure system. “Previously,
academic appointment and promotion at NUS were very much administrative
decisions,” Png explains. “We overhauled it to one based on peer evaluation.
We now have a much more transparent system.”
Before NUS, Png was with the UCLA Anderson School of Management and the Hong
Kong University of Science and Technology. Personal reasons brought him back
to Singapore. Family comprises wife Joy Cheng and their two sons. It was at
Stanford that Png met Cheng, whom he describes as his “most enduring legacy”
from those days.
This family man, who “spends zero time socializing” but makes it a point to
play tennis with his sons every evening, is highly disciplined with his
time. That is how he is able to fulfill his multiple responsibilities so
effectively.
Anjana Motihar Chandra is a writer based in Singapore.
