banner-image-A girl sits by the ArtScience Museum lily pond, enjoying the Singapore skyline

Year on year, cities around the world vie for a place on livable city lists, those clickable soft power rankings that create a bit of chatter once a year.

A Manifesto for Loving Your Everyday

banner-image-HDB flat through the view of a tiled wall

Thinking about buying a new home? Congratulations! It is an exciting life milestone. It’s also a big decision with many factors.

Planning for your dream home in 1, 2, 3

banner-image-Two volunteers are teaching a senior smartphone functionality at a roadshow

Safe distancing measures and restrictions on social gatherings have disrupted all our lives, with the elderly feeling the most displaced.

#lifehacksg: A purposeful digital life for seniors

When Pokémon GO was all the rage in Singapore, Eve Tay was anxiously walking around Singapore to catch them all. Little did she know, several Pokémon hunting trips with her colleague

From raising Pokémon to raising a baby

Beneath the corporate suit, Chien Koh Wei is the superhero dad dearly loved by his family. Seeing how his first child Eve, who now is 5 years old, constantly wants to be around him, it is clear that Koh Wei has been doing a great job as a dad and is striving to be a role model for his daughters

Super-dad goes the extra mile

For 30-year-old Nurul Atiqah Zulkifli, being the mother of two and a wife to a Singapore Civil Defence Force first responder is not an easy feat. Just after her second child came along, she made the hard choice to leave her job to be a full-time homemaker

Keep calm and be a mom

Since she was in secondary school, Cheryl Choo developed an interest in helping others. “I do voluntary work because I think that if you can, you should give back to the society,” she believes

A gift that keeps on giving

Image from hive.tech.gov.sg Here in the Government Digital Services (GDS), we build great digital product by transforming the way how products are build in the Government. Here we practice agile, design thinking, DevSecOps and etc in building wide range of products for the Government. Very often, we hear comments in the industry, it is widely known that such change require tremendous support across the entire organisation and you can already imagine how challenging we are looking at, across Whole-Of-Government (WOG). It is commonly known that the Government culture is diametrical distinct from private sector and especially on the infamous red tapes, we can never blindly follow industry theory and expect a positive outcome. We execute, practice and tailor them to ensure the outcome of transformation are practically fit for the other parts of Government to be replicated with minor variations. Out of the 12 agile principles, one of them stood out as most important but extremely challenging which is to build a self-organising team. Something that is seemingly easy but super challenging in our context. To understand why we need to walk the history. Glimpse of a past According to this article, DBS bank started outsourcing many of their IT / IS back in 2003 and significantly started the IT outsourcing revolution. With consideration on multiple aspects (eg: economic, development and workforce) the Government also jump into the outsourcing bandwagon. Running outsourcing model for close to 20 years, naturally the expertise acquired are around the needs of outsourcing approach. We became very proficient in telling people what we want in great specific details forming part of the agreement in the form of requirements specification. We also developed the culture on driving based on agreed timelines therefore the need for project plans, frameworks and monitoring processes in attempt to control and minimise any form of project delays. It should be very clear now, the management style needed for this approach. These are just some of the many challenges and it is almost against the law of physics to make the change happen over a very short span of time. Processes, policies and compliance are established for good reason and the consideration for change cannot be just because one part of the Government wants to do agile. Cultural and management style is a lot harder to shift it is the the of question right fit rather than right management style. So what is a Superhero? So, what do we do to create self-organisation teams with all these external factors that is beyond our control? This is the time to introduce our superheroes. The cadence of running large, multiple-agile teams is already eating up precious time from the teams. Therefore we created superheroes to represent the teams in certain cadence and fronting stakeholders engagement. Most importantly, able to bring high level context back to the team with very minimal translation loss. The purpose of doing so is to protect the team’s time. On top of that, they also take up tackling of red tapes and provide high level and aspirational targets for the respective team. They create a buffer in order for the team be separated from the external factors and the space for the team to self-organise. Now, you may find our Superheroes very similar to a Scrum Master role, however we do not agree. Why? Because after completing more than 100 sprints, we had landed on a maturity state where a Scrum Master role is not needed. Actually, more accurately to say everyone in the team is a Scrum Master. Our Superheroes wear multiple hats including a Scrum Master’s. Apart from their leadership and ability to create the bubble for the team, the key differences are while they have a very specialised discipline, they are also having a level of understanding into other cross functional disciplines. They also need to be versed about Government compliance and processes to be able to tank the red tapes for the team. To be honest, this is never the an attractive role. While not anyone may fit, nor (for those eligible) may be aspired to take up it up. It means scarification to be made losing time and opportunities further deepening crafts. Therefore each rising Superhero is a true leader putting others before themselves. Surely rare, we were glad to receive one recently. How to become one? Apart from the experience, abilities and knowledge being the foundation, our Superheroes require a certain maturity level of thinking and understanding as they will be exposed to many interesting perspective and working with different people. While not everyone may become one from the onset, we have the right environment to mould our next generations of Superheroes. If you are up for the challenge, do get in touch with me! Rise of a new superhero was originally published in LifeSG on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Rise of a new superhero

As we celebrated the end of out 100th sprint, let’s take a look at what the number means with different representation. Let’s go! 4 YEARS; - Room flats comprised the largest pool at 31.6% in our HDB population. Year 2020 data from SIngStats.gov.sg 50 MONTHS; - Years of independent on 2015, we clocked our highest birth into citizenship from the past13 years. Data from population.gov.sg 100 SPRINTS; - years of service accumulated from our current team members. Members of LifeSG team 200 WEEKS; - Dollars additional GST cash vouchers and top-up Child Development Accounts, Edusave Accounts and Post-Secondary Education Accounts to in 2021. * Cha Ching* Download the LifeSG App to find out what you enjoy Image from supportgowhere.life.gov.sg 1000 WEEKDAYS; - Dollar note issuance will be discontinued from 1 jan 2021. Discontinuation of $1,000 Note Issuance to Pre-empt Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Risks 8000 HOURS; - Traineeship opportunities pledged for 2021. Image from gov.sg All figures are estimated and we promise no accuracy to the numbers. Our 100th was originally published in LifeSG on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Our 100th

Growing LifeSG Some of you may know that LifeSG was formerly known as Moments of Life, an app for new parents that aimed to transform the way people interacted with the government. With the success of Moments of Life, the next logical move was to replicate that success for more people, and in many other areas of life in Singapore. The challenge? We had to do it concurrently . From the very start, we knew that if we wanted to expand our success, we needed to do more than just expand our team. To stay agile as we scale, we also needed to reorganise and operate very differently from before. And that was how we became the first in GovTech’s Digital Design and Development (DCube) to split into multiple development squads working on a single product. As usual, if you’re the first to do something, you’ll be the first to fail. We went through the cycle of experiment > fail > learn > repeat. This cycle may sound crazy, but it’s the same process we all go through when navigating a new stage of our lives, whether it’s living together with a new spouse or caring for a newborn. In fact, we also go through the same process when we’re playing a computer game for the first time. We’ll always have to adapt and learn from what doesn’t work, then try again. If you’re a gamer, you’ll know that every game has that final boss, the one that’s most challenging to beat. In expanding LifeSG, our final boss is toxic competition. It’s when team members start seeing themselves as ‘I’ and ‘You’, instead of ‘Us’ and ‘We’. When individuals start vying for personal recognition rather than contributing to the team’s success. That’s when we know we’re in trouble. Building relationships The strategy we formulated to defeat toxic competition was to make it easy for everyone from different squads to come together, forge friendships, and develop empathy for each other. After all, we’re all part of the bigger LifeSG team. To do so, we were very mindful about two things. The first is to create an environment that’s safe for everyone to voice diverse views respectfully. There will always be occasions where we’ll have to agree to disagree, and accept the collective decision that has been made by the team. But what’s more important is that everyone in the team knows that their opinion will be heard and considered before an informed and calculated decision is made. This is known as psychological safety, and is embraced by many organisations. The second is to create opportunities for people from different squads to work with each other. We encourage people to move between different squads, to get exposed to different contexts of work, and discover how other teams organise themselves. For example, our support team is made up of representatives from different teams — and this rotates every sprint. This practice goes against the philosophy of many organisations who believe that a close-knit team is able to work more efficiently. Our perspective is different. We believe that each individual will learn and grow faster by working with many people and personalities, and this growth helps them contribute better to any team they are a part of. While it can be awkward working with new people all the time, we’ll eventually get comfortable with being uncomfortable. When that happens, we’ll always be able to contribute, no matter where we go. The night Mama gave birth to School of Rock LifeSG’s School of Rock was created as a result of the opportunities Mama saw for people to come together. Mama is one of our leads that has been through the phases of growth and has always been looking after our people, including those not under her direct care. She proposed for both our squads, ‘Back to School’ and ‘Rocket’ to come together to overcome a challenge where they temporarily renamed themselves ‘School of Rock’. Other than triggering laughs from those of us who are old enough to have watched the comedy, the name also suggested the strength of people coming together, growing each other’s knowledge (school) to overcome hard problems (rocks). More importantly, it’s a sign that our strategy works. We may not have Jack Black to rock the stage, but we do have many other superstars who are willing to experiment, fail, learn and repeat. And that’s how we roll. School of Rock in LifeSG was originally published in LifeSG on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Humans of LifeSG

From birth registration to your personalised government benefits, here are the stories of how LifeSG impacted citizens from all walks of life.

Culture @ LifeSG

How do we navigate our way to the future? Here are some of LifeSG’s guides to a flourishing life, through daily rituals and future planning, self-love and family care.

Product & Engineering

Take a peek into the latest features of LifeSG and gain insight into the work that goes behind them.