Home Team Science and Technology Agency

The Home Team Science and Technology Agency (HTX) is a statutory board under the Ministry of Home Affairs of Singapore to develop science and technology capabilities for Home Team operations.

History
The Home Team Science and Technology Agency (HTX) was first announced on 19 February 2019 during the Budget, which was to be set up by the end of 2019. That will allow the Ministry of Home Affairs to better secure Singapore with its science and technology capabilities. The initials of the agency are known as HTX; with "X" representing its role as a "force multiplier".

The HTX was formed on 1 December 2019 and launched the following day by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, with HTX showcasing its new technologies.

Overview
The agency's mission is to "amplify, augment, and accelerate the Home Team’s advantage to secure Singapore’s future as the safest place on planet earth". It would focus on areas such as surveillance, forensics, chemicals, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosives threats, as well as robotics and unmanned systems.

Latest developments
In November 2023, HTX announced that they were developing a barrier-free gantry and self-enrolment biometrics kiosk (collectively known as the 'Next-Generation Clearance Concept') for immigration clerance at Singapore's borders. The agency estimated that the new system would reduce the immigration clearance time from about two minutes to ten seconds per passenger.

In June 2024, chief executive Chan Tsan announced that HTX would become an 'AI first' organisation and that all officers in the agency were being asked to "think AI first". He stated that a SGD 400 million budget would be allocated to HTX's projects in the forthcoming 3 years and a significant proportion of that would be used for AI research and development.

At the time, the agency had about 2,000 employees. Chan explained that the agency intended to hire and train an additional 500 persons, all of whom would be focused on AI work, in the next 3 to 5 years.