I refer to the Government Technology Agency's (GovTech) letter (One mobile phone number can be tied to multiple SingPass accounts, July 9).

I am very concerned with the approach taken or being considered by GovTech.

Some years back, when the OneKey token was implemented as a two-factor authentication method, the stakeholders faced many challenges trying to convince the public, especially non-tech-savvy seniors, to adopt the technology.

Over time, the use of the OneKey token became a familiar routine for these seniors. The move to phase out the tokens will be disruptive.

What GovTech needs to recognise is that even with the use of the OneKey token, non-tech-savvy seniors find just logging in to a government website to be a very challenging task.

To successfully log in, a user must accurately key in his username, password and the one-time password generated by the OneKey token. If anything is keyed in wrongly, he has to redo the process.

Many seniors had to go through the process many times just to build up their confidence in the new technological environment.

I appreciate GovTech's actions and intent, which is to continue to strengthen Singapore's technological capabilities to safeguard users against cyber attacks.

Singapore needs to keep up with the rapid changes in the digital world, but GovTech must also consider that there is a portion of the population who may not be able to catch up with the speed of technological change.

So a different approach is needed to keep users secure without requiring them to discard a technology that took them a long time to become familiar with and asking them to learn something new.

Lim Tong Wah

Source: https://www.straitstimes.com/forum/forum-not-easy-for-seniors-to-learn-how-to-use-new-tech