Takeaways from Stack 2022 Developer Conference, Singapore, 15 Nov (Part 1 of 2)

Taking time to learn, reflect and re-imagine

Stack 2022 Developer Conference {GovTech}

STACK Developer Conference 2022, Singapore’s largest government-led developers conference, is back in a hybrid format this year, organized by the Government Technology Agency of Singapore (GovTech).

STACK 2022 provides a platform for innovators and techies to convene and share knowledge about the latest tech trends, products, and best practices in digital government, with over 70 tech experts scheduled to speak. In keeping with GovTech’s commitment to driving Singapore’s Smart Nation initiative and digital government transformation, the event will act as a “bridge” between the government, industry players, and the tech community in order to co-create a tech-enabled future.

It was held from November 14 to 16, 2022, with the theme “Design Your Future.” and was graced by Minister Josephine Teo (Minister for Communications and Information, and Minister-in-charge of Smart Nation and Cybersecurity) as the Guest of Honour. In addition, Dr Janil Puthucheary (Senior Minister of State at Ministry of Communications and Information and Minister-in-charge of GovTech), was the guest speaker who opened the conference on the second day.

After two years (no thanks, COVID) of mostly online and on-demand interactions, I just had to attend this physical conference to reconnect to the industry, meet new people and learn new skills! Sharing some of my key takeaways below from the notes (will link to the slides if/when the materials are made public) I took to reflect upon in future too.

Opening Address by Mrs Josephine Teo (Minister for Communications and Information, and Minister-in-charge of Smart Nation and Cybersecurity)

Minister shared 3 insights needed to further drive Singapore’s Smart Nation initiative and digital government transformation efforts.

1. Creating Products that serve citizens and businesses and delivers tangible benefits. This speaks to the heart of Product Management — we really need to build Products that solves real world problems and captures value.
2. Being inclusive, where Products/initiatives cater to all demographics. A critical skill needed is Design to ensure the right experience across demographics. An example highlighted was the online redemption of CDC vouchers, where the UX is such that it mimics the denomination of the Singapore notes to make the experience similar to real world (to cater for the less digital savvy population). Furthermore, Singapore aims to conform to global accessibility standards by 2030.
3. Maintaining trust of citizens e.g. White Hat program, bug bounty, Scam shield. I have to agree, especially in this day and age where speed of delivery and profitability frequently means we deprioritize or tradeoff for security. That is why DevSecOps is such an important framework for businesses and governments.

Embracing a Brave New World of Technology — A Government Journey by Mr Chan Cheow Hoe (Government Chief Digital Technology Officer and Deputy Chief Executive, GovTech)

Not many new takeaways, but that’s probably most of the insights remain relevant today.

1. It is difficult to progress from the growth stage to the scale, or 10x phase. We need to shift our focus from building Products to Platforms and, eventually, Ecosystems.
2. The public Cloud is the window to tapping into Ecosystems. However, we must be aware of the risks and expressly accept them. Furthermore, leveraging on the abstractions provided by the Cloud providers requires deep capabilities, especially when things go wrong.
3. Leveraging on SaaS is desirable but non-trivial. We will still require deep Product capabilities and engineering expertise for last mile integrations.
4. Lastly, a slogan (with a nice ring to it) that is being espoused, “Grow more makers and have less checkers. Develop more experts and have less operators. Cultivate more doers and have less managers”.

Why SaaS and PaaS are Perfect for Government — Almost Every Time! by Mr Paul Tatum (Executive Vice President, Solution Engineering for Global Public Sector, Salesforce)

1. Leveraging on SaaS is a key enabler for speed, innovation, agility, simplicity, security, capabilities.
2. There is unlikely to be a SaaS that supports one’s specific use-case. This is simply due to the fact that creating bespoked solutions for a small population is probably not profitable. Instead, we ought to consider SaaS as a set of building blocks that might help us create solutions to our problems. Such building blocks include the Database, Logic flow, Engagement, Integration, Analytics, and Security. When I heard this, it sounded like some blurring of lines between SaaS solutions and Low-code/No-code solutions. We could see further consolidation and convergence in the years ahead.

Extending the AWS Cloud Outside of Public Regions by Mr Anthony Liguori (Vice President & Distinguished Engineer, Amazon Web Services)

1. There is a shift from software-based to hardware-based virtualisation technologies, i.e. AWS nitro cards, nitro security chips, nitro hypervisor. This is largely due to the inability for further scaling and performance improvements with software-based approaches. Big tech will continue to dominate the Cloud industry, and other fields that require high performance. Such specialised hardware is unlikely to be produced by smaller industry companies with fewer resources and capabilities. Even if successful, big tech is probably ready to make the acquisition…

Delivering Trust in a Data Driven World by Dr Rebecca Parsons (Chief Technology Officer, Thoughtworks)

1. Trust requires transparency, security, accessibility & availability
2. On the Policy front, we need to establish expectations and communicate intent (which implicity communicates the values of the organisation). In a business setting, it’s about balancing profitability and fairness/discrimination, but governments have to provide universal access.
3. On the Tech front, systems are the external representation of such policies and have the propensity to deeply impact trust.
4. Some of the key technological Enablers to deliver trust include zero-trust architecture, privacy-aware, decentralized identity, automated analysers and scanners, explainable AI (even more pertinent for the medical industry), data set analysis, open-source software and data.

The Heart of Data and AI by Dr Tok Wee Hyong (Senior Director, Cloud and AI, Microsoft)

1. Solutions should be reframed with People at the centre, and with better articulation of the outcomes that the AI solution brings about.
2. Be curious about the data (where is the data, how does the data look like). He also shared that typically, when the answer required is “how much”, it’s a regression problem, and for “what category”, it’s a classification problem.
3. Establishing baselines are critical!

Cloud Services for Digital Medicine Framework by Dr Ng Kian Bee (Co-Director, gAmes for HeaLth InnoVations CentrE (ALIVE))

1. Digital medicine is focused on using technology as tools for assessment and intervention to improve human health i.e. without pills and intrusive procedures. Examples include the use of apps to help one sleep better or navigate around/improve ADHD-related symptoms.
2. Verify— check that the Prodcut is built correctly.
   Validate — check that the Product actually solves the problem.

Retooling Government Developer Experience by Mr Kevin Ng (Director, CODEX, GovTech)

1. Lifecycle/Framework to think about the of retooling of Government developers
   a) Emerging — start small, fail fast, try a bunch, target internal development teams
   b) Consolidating — solve actual problems, target in-house development teams, direct handholding support
   c) Mandating — introduce standard templates, standardise tools, provide training and production support, move towards self-service
   d) Sunsetting — migration, ruthless shutdowns
2. A one-stop resource hub for Government Digital Products and Services — Singapore Government Developer Portal

More with LeSS — Scaling Agile at Ministry of Manpower (MOM) by Mr Kelvin Soh (Senior Delivery Manager, GovTech) and Mr Will Lin Zhixun (Senior Delivery Manager, GovTech)

1. Context: Workpass Integrated System (WINS) with ~250 staff across 17 teams.
2. Many different methodologies to scale the use of Agile across large teams— scrum of scrums, SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework), LeSS (Large Scale Scrum). MOM chose LeSS to scale Agile as simply as possible.
3. Started with Component teams that pulled from the Backlog and delivered components. It was very successful for smaller teams. However, when the number of teams and team sizes grew, they faced many new significant challenges such as increased waste from handoffs, siloed perspective of the whole product, heavy interdependencies.
4. Shifted from Component to Feature teams, where Feature teams were responsible for building complete, end-to-end, customer-centric deliverable. This led to significant reduction of waste from handoffs, simplified planning, empowerment to the Feature teams, and increased learning and knowledge sharing. It’s unclear and was not further elaborated on how learning and knowledge sharing was improved with LeSS.

Changed Responsibilities in Modern Software Development Environments by Mr Martin Knobloch (Global AppSec Strategist, Micro Focus)

1. Useful article shared by Martin

Differentiating Agility, CI/CD, and DevOps

- Agile focuses on processes highlighting change while accelerating delivery.

- CI/CD focuses on software-defined life cycles highlighting tools that emphasize automation.

- DevOps focuses on culture highlighting roles that emphasize responsiveness.

Our Values Shape Our Product (Pre-recorded) by Mr Sytse ‘Sid’ Sijbrandij (Co-founder and CEO, GitLab Inc. )

1. To operationalise and instill values, it’s important that leaders role-model these values, have the values documented (e.g. handbooks, guides), reinforce the values in key processes such as promotion, hiring, management of underperformers.
2. GitLab established TeamOps and have made it free to the public.

Mix of hits and misses throughout the first day. But that’s a wrap for Day 1. Keep a look out for the next post for Day 2 takeaways!

Edit (11 D 2022): Part 2 has been completed!