Kok Ping Soon Talks about Digital Government in a Changing World

Creating a Digital Government in a Changing World

KOK PING SOON

Senior Member, SCS Chief Executive, GovTech Earliest Tech Experience: Sony Walkman Currently Reading: How the World Really Works by Vaclav Smil Currently Watching: For All Mankind App You Can’t Live Without: WhatsApp Pet Topic of the Moment: How to build an agile organisation Favourite Way to Relax: Brisk walking, cooking for family

The Digital Government Blueprint (DGB), launched in 2018, was an ambitious plan to harness technology and digitalise the Singapore government. Five years on and through a pandemic – the DGB is nearing its delivery milestone in 2023. What does it mean to push the boundaries of a digital government in an ever-shifting and postpandemic world? The IT Society sits down with Kok Ping Soon, Chief Executive of GovTech, to find out more.

Q: Question, PS: Ping Soon

Q: Post-pandemic, what are some of the biggest digital trends?

PS: COVID-19 has accelerated the pace of digitalisation. Pre-pandemic, many organisations saw remote work as an impossibility – which was proved otherwise during the circuit breaker. The use of digital collaboration tools has also skyrocketed. Our workforce and even seniors are now experts in doing video calls and telemedicine is now prevalent. Even in hawker centres – the last bastion of cash payment – the use of digital payments have increased significantly. These trends will likely continue postpandemic and it is necessary for us to lock in these digitalisation gains.

Q: How is GovTech and the public service leveraging this?

PS: We are repurposing the digital solutions developed during COVID-19 for wider usage. For example, Postman, which is built on the Twilio platform to enable the government to send nationwide COVID-19 updates through the Gov.sg WhatsApp channel, has now been expanded to support email, SMS and Telegram. The MaskGoWhere site that’s built on AWS, is now repurposed into a GoWhere stack that has spun off many other GoWhere sites to help citizens gain access to government services. For example, we recently worked with the Ministry of Social and Family Development to launch SupportGoWhere, enabling Singaporeans to easily locate available social grants and assistance.

More than ever, agencies today recognise that technology is integral to the way they develop policies and design operations. We are building on this momentum with a third round of engaging our agencies to develop their Ministry Family Digitalisation Plan. Agencies are now thinking deeper. It is no longer just about coming up with another application or system, but asking themselves how business processes can be changed to integrate technology into what they do.

Q: What are some possible setbacks?

PS: One would be the recent spate of scam incidents – which decreased people’s confidence in using online services. While it’s partly about user education, we cannot always pass the buck to the users. Is there more that service providers can do to prevent this? Both users and service providers have shared responsibility to increase the confidence and trust in digital services. Another is accessibility. There will be segments of the population that cannot fully participate because the services designed do not cater to their existing lifestyles. This has to be addressed and taken care of so no one is left behind.

Tech proficiency can be a limiting factor when it comes to imagining possible solutions. While we don’t need everyone to learn coding, people need to have a certain appreciation for what tech offers. Techies won’t know what the banking sector is like or how our healthcare system works, much less the problems that need solving in these sectors. We need the people in healthcare to suggest ways to solve problems with tech. That’s why we are elevating technology literacy across the public service, so that we can better understand and realise the potential of technology.

Q: With the DGB nearing the end of its five-year timeline, what’s next for GovTech?

PS: Well, it’s almost time to submit the report card. The good thing is, we have already achieved some of the KPIs and are on the cusp of achieving the rest. We are now kickstarting the process of thinking about the next bound for Smart Nation and Digital Government.

The current DGB is anchored on two core principles – digital to the core and serve with heart. But we need to look beyond that. Take digital to the core. It’s no longer just digital technologies that are available to the government; there’s Internet of Things, robotics, 5G and many more possibilities. How might we move beyond digital to embrace the broader suite of technology available – and drive transformation to the core. Same goes for serve with heart. It cannot start and end with service delivery, and has to be embedded right from the beginning in policy design. It is only then that we can offer services that are integrated, citizen-centric and more anticipatory.

These are some of the core tenets that we want to push the boundary in the next few years. That said, I don’t think it’s something GovTech alone can develop. So we are taking a consultative approach from the ground-up, whether it’s through engagement with stakeholders like SCS or our Tech Kakis ambassadors. I look forward to co-creating and discovering this next bound for GovTech and digital government together – so watch this space.

“COVID-19 has shown that we need to be more agile in the way we organise government – not least because the challenges we face today are complex and multidisciplinary. We showed how quickly we can mount diverse tech-ops teams to solve burning problems during the pandemic. Now, we need to hardwire the right processes and structures so that the government as a whole can be more agile in the way we respond on an ongoing basis.”

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