Design thinking in Singapore’s public agencies

From agency efficiency to citizen experiences

In 2008, the application of design thinking in the Government of Singapore, started without much fanfare, when a group of public officers from the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) undertook several projects under a business process review exercise.

One of their projects, the redesign of an employment pass service centre, served as a major catalyst for other government agencies in Singapore to adopt a citizen-centred design thinking approach.

Up until then, ‘design thinking’ was largely unknown to the Singapore public service. The term had been popularised by IDEO several years earlier, and had gained traction in the private sector, but the public service was yet to see the potential for its direct application.

The idea of delighting one’s customers and providing a good experience would have seemed far fetched, as the focus in our public service at the time was to provide services that were fast, fuss-free, and efficient.

Paradigm shift: from efficiency to experience

Not long after the new Employment Pass Service Centre had launched, it became host to learning journeys for many curious public sector leaders. The visits allowed leaders to see first-hand how it was possible to redesign a service (and the underlying processes and touch points) with a citizen-centred approach, starting with human needs and focussing on reducing friction and pain points.

The centre sparked a paradigm shift for many officers — it showed it was possible to find a better balance between maximising the efficiency of a service, and delivering a better service experience to citizens.

My team from the ps21 (Public Service for the 21st century) Office of the Public Service Division took notice. We embarked on a year-long exploration of design thinking, which included training sessions, self-study, and visits to other countries to see how it had been applied in other governments. Units like the UK’s Nesta and Denmark’s MindLab proved influential in shaping our thoughts, and inspired us to go ahead and create our own pilot design thinking lab.

In our lab, we experimented by applying design thinking to a variety of policy topics, including social assistance, housing, career planning, and community ownership. Most of our success came when we could influence the design of actual services and touch points. At the policy level, results were often mixed due to the complexity of the issues, and that decision makers relied more heavily on quantitative data, statistics and surveys when rethinking their policy approach.

From agency-centric to citizen-centric

Our larger public service started to rally around the need to move from being organised around issues and organisational boundaries, to a future where agencies were organised around the way a citizen might experience an issue. As is often the case with successful large-scale change, it helped greatly that such issues were discussed by our top leadership, including our Prime Minister himself. In response, we saw a number of agencies attempt to create better experiences for citizens by reorganising their services and touch points to provide seamless ‘one-stop’ experiences for citizens.

One example was the creation of the Municipal Service Office and a OneService App. This was the first time an app of this scale was created. It cuts across boundaries, is designed with citizen’s needs in mind, and makes it easy to provide feedback and track one’s cases. Another major initiative resulted in a physical one-stop centre where several public agencies were housed, not just in the same building, but co-located in the same office space, so a citizen could complete several service transactions in just one visit.

The future is digital

Today, aided by a high digital penetration of mobile devices and smart devices and driven by Singapore’s ambition to be a Smart Nation, our public agencies are undergoing a digital transformation, guided by a Digital Government Blueprint. The plan includes concepts like being ‘Digital to the core’, and pushing agencies to be more agile and citizen-centric in how we conceptualise, design and develop new digital services for citizens and businesses. Our public service is also hiring more designers and engineers, and paying more attention to design research, user journeys, screen flows and the importance of good UI/UX.

A new agency, the Government Technology Agency of Singapore, or simply Govtech — was created to be the main implementation arm for many of our Smart Nation initiatives. The majority of our staff is working on-site in the individual agencies, which allows Govtech to benefit from economies of scale and build core expertise. This maintains a close connection with agencies and teams are close to the operational issues they face on a daily basis.

One key enabler for us is the creation of a Government Tech Stack, a platform with software and infrastructure components that are reusable, interoperable and scalable. This reduces the time and costs to build digital services, while also enabling better data sharing and data collection across agencies.

Designing intuitive, inclusive service journeys

An early success to come from this push is the Moments of Life app that presents information and access to services in a way that makes sense from a citizen’s point of view. It delivers a seamless service experience, despite the actual process cutting across several agencies.

As we forge ahead to create digital services that delight citizens, we know that not everyone will have ready access to a smart device, nor be comfortable in handling one. To address this, we have started programs around digital inclusiveness and digital literacy, overseen in part by a Digital Readiness Programme Office.

As a Singaporean and an officer at Govtech, I look forward to seeing future digital government services that are convenient, intuitive, inclusive and well-designed from the citizen’s point of view.

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Leon Voon is a design lead in the Government Technology Agency of Singapore (Govtech). He has served in the Singapore public service for over 10 years.