The Home Affairs Ministry (MHA) is looking to hire 1,500 officers in the next year or two, mainly as uniformed frontline officers at neighbourhood police centres and land checkpoints.

Home Team officers will get the chance to work in different agencies from the ones that hired them. Within individual departments, there are also plans to widen and deepen fields of specialisation.

The ministry's efforts to recruit and retain talent are one way it is beefing itself up to meet upcoming challenges.

In the MHA's addendum to the President's Address given last Monday, Deputy Prime Minister and Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng explained that the operating landscape for Home Team officers has become more complex.

Society is now more diverse with an influx of new citizens and foreign residents, while the mindsets of today's Singaporeans have changed.

Technology has altered 'social realities' and is both a boon and a bane. Ideas can be exchanged freely in cyberspace but extremist ideologies can also be disseminated.

'The challenge for society is how we harness the good that comes with cyberspace and new technologies while dealing effectively with the bad, by remaining committed to the values and fundamentals which have made Singapore what it is today,' he said.

Mr Wong also charted some measures to help the Home Team maximise its resources and focus on its key duties.

There 'will be scope' for the outsourcing of less critical functions to the private sector. For example, the Singapore Civil Defence Force has moved to farm out part of its emergency ambulance service to private operators.

Functions 'historically parked' with Home Team agencies for 'practical convenience' will also be returned to the relevant agencies, such as noise complaints and wildlife sightings, which have little to do with police work.

Read the full story in The Sunday Times today.