About the project

The Singapore Academy of Law’s Technology Law Development Group (TLDG, now absorbed into the Law Reform Committee) was asked by the Attorney-General’s Chambers to examine whether provisions dealing with the admissibility of computer output as evidence in the Evidence Act (Chapter 97, 1997 Revised Edition) needed to be reformed.

The TLDG published a consultation paper in September 2003, and eventually recommended adopting a non-computer-specific approach towards electronic records but providing presumptions to facilitate their admission into evidence. This would entail repealing sections 35 and 36 of the Evidence Act and replacing them with certain rules of authentication.

Project status: Completed

• The report was published in December 2004.
• The Committee’s recommendations were implemented by the Evidence (Amendment) Act 2012 (No 4 of 2012), which was passed on 14 February 2012 and came into force on 1 August 2012.
• The High Court cited the report in Alliance Management SA v Pendleton Lane P [2008] SGHC 76, [2008] 4 Singapore Law Reports (Reissue) [SLR(R)] 1 at paragraph 30.
• The report was also cited in the following works:
  • Wendy Low, “A Commentary on Amendments to the Electronic Evidence Provisions in the Singapore Evidence Act”, Singapore Law Gazette (July 2012) (archived here) at footnote 19.
  • Chen Siyuan, “Evidence and Criminal Procedure: Gradual Development towards Clarity in a Maze of Statutory Enactments” in Goh Yihan & Paul Tan (gen eds), Singapore Law: 50 Years in the Making (Singapore: Academy Publishing, 2015), 415 at page 438, paragraph 7.35, footnote 82.

Areas of law

◾ Evidence law

Click on the image above to view the report

Last updated 10 June 2019