Hong-Eng Koh, Global Chief Public Services Industry Scientist,
Enterprise Business Group, Huawei Technologies Co Ltd
As a thought leader with decades of experience in the public services industry, especially in public safety, Mr. Koh leads a global team of industry experts to support this major business segment of Huawei. His team engages top public services agencies globally to help them with their digital transformation efforts and strategic ICT design to better serve the citizens, visitors and businesses. This team, comprising few former government officials from around the world, also advises the product and solution teams to develop state-of-the-art ICT solutions. In addition to offering pre-sales consultancy to customers and supporting internal solutions development, this team is also helping with partners’ development, internal training, and industry marketing.
Mr. Koh is a well sought-after speaker internationally and is well regarded in evangelizing collaborative eGovernment in the age of the sharing economy, including the principle of “It takes a Network to Fight a Network” in countering crime, terrorism and disaster. In 2014, he created the “Social-Enabled Policing” concept: policing in the age of social networking and crowd-sourcing. In 2016, Mr. Koh authored the paper, “The Road to Collaborative Public Safety”; it’s the concept of Public Safety in the age of Digital Transformation. In 2018, he created the 7A framework in identifying use cases for AI adoption in safe and smart city.
Before Huawei, Mr. Koh spent almost 16 years in Oracle, including Sun Microsystems which was acquired by Oracle. During this period, he held various public services business lead roles, including as the Oracle’s Global Lead for Public Safety. Mr. Koh and his team contributed to the success of many major government projects globally, such as citizens registry/ID; ePassport; eGovernment (G2C, G2B, G2B); border control system; command, control, and communications (C3) system; traffic incident management system; national disaster warning system; video surveillance system; automated fingerprint identification system; criminal records system; investigation/case management system; court case management system; and prisons management system. Before Sun Microsystems, Mr. Koh was in the systems integration business for a few years and was involved in various mega government infrastructure and applications projects, including government-wide networking and messaging projects, and globally acknowledged Singapore’s eGovernment projects.
Mr. Koh started his career with the Singapore Police Force (SPF) after graduating under an SPF scholarship. He held various appointments including senior investigation officer, head of crime prevention and community policing, police spokesman, and divisional head of operations. His last appointment was as head of the Computer Systems Division, where he led the implementation of various police operational and administrative systems including SPF’s first internet project, investigation management system, automated vehicle screening system, casualty information system, C3 system, and criminal intelligence system. During his years of service in SPF, he received various awards including the Commissioner’s Commendation and High Commendation, Good Service Medal, Long Service Medal, and Good Conduct Medal.
Outside his work in Huawei, Mr. Koh is a Vice President of the Society for the Policing of Cyberspace (POLCYB), an international nonprofit society that promotes global partnerships with international criminal justice and corporate agencies to combat and prevent cyberspace crimes. He is also on the expert panel of the Geneva based Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. From 2014-2016, Mr. Koh was a visiting researcher at the China Public Security University. In 2014, Mr. Koh was voted by the USA based Security.World as the world’s top 12 market influencers in physical security and video surveillance. Mr. Koh graduated from the National University of Singapore with an Honors Degree in Mathematics. He obtained his MBA with Distinction from the University of Leeds (UK) and a Specialist Diploma in eCommerce from the Nanyang Polytechnic (Singapore). He lives in Singapore with his wife and two children