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Ministry of Digital Development and Information
Parliament

Speech by MOS Jasmin Lau at the Committee of Supply Debate 2026

2 March 2026

  1. Mr Chairman,

  2. In today’s world, many businesses provide seamless, effective and reliable digital services.

  3. Singaporeans expect the same from the Government.

  4. While we have made good progress, we can do better. We must acknowledge that citizens still encounter services that are slower than they should be, forms that ask for information we already have, or systems that do not speak easily to one another.

  5. My speech is about what must change.

 Analogy: LEGO sets

  1. Let me borrow an analogy from a familiar childhood toy – LEGO sets.

  2. Now, there are a few things we can learn from LEGO sets:

    1. First, they are based on a strong understanding of their customers and how preferences change over time. Children grow. Attention spans evolve. LEGO designs have adapted accordingly.

    2. Second, modularity. Every brick is designed to connect seamlessly with another. Builders do not need to reinvent the basic structure each time. They reuse, recombine and build upwards.

    3. Third, customers can choose how simple or complex a model to build. For some, a simple DUPLO or CITY set is sufficient. And for others who want complexity, LEGO Technic or SPIKE sets offer advanced mechanical components. These are optional, but easily added on.

  3. The analogy may sound simple, but the engineering discipline behind it is not. What do these lessons look like for us, in the Public Service?

    1. We must understand our citizens continuously, not episodically. Singaporeans’ expectations evolve. Their life journeys change. A service that felt intuitive ten years ago may feel slow or fragmented today.

    2. We must design modular systems and digital components that work across agencies. When systems connect seamlessly, citizens experience government as a whole.

    3. And we must be able to provide services that meet complex needs. Our advanced shared tools such as AI platforms and coding assistants support us in building specialised components at scale. Not every problem has complex needs. But when complexity is needed, the capability must already be there. Secure, integrated and ready.

Understanding our Citizens

  1. To do all of this well, some of our habits must change.

  2. Sometimes, digital transformation becomes a collection of projects. New apps, and new pilots.

  3. Transformation is not about the number of digital projects launched. It is whether citizens find it simpler, faster and clearer to deal with the Government.

  4. This requires discipline in problem definition.

  5. It also requires discipline in experimentation. In the Public Service, caution is natural. But doing nothing, while expectations move ahead of us, is a risk.

  6. We must learn to manage that risk, not eliminate experimentation.

  7. Through initiatives like Open Government Products’ (OGP) Hack for Public Good, our officers work closely with users to understand and address real pain points.

    1. A team observed that medical social workers spent long hours writing case notes after emotionally difficult conversations.

    2. Their first instinct was to build an automated transcription and summary tool.

    3. But the tool did not fully address the users’ needs. Our social workers wanted greater control over how case notes were structured, so that important information can be retrieved easily. When the generated notes were not organised clearly, they rewrote them.

    4. So the team refined the tool into Scribe, an AI-powered tool that transcribes conversations and generates summaries according to the topics and writing style chosen by the user. Scribe is now used in over 100 social service agencies and all public healthcare institutions. On average, 36 minutes are saved on documentation per conversation.

    5. That time is not just a data point. It is time returned to care.

Modularity in Practice

  1. If LEGO connectors were redesigned every year, no one could build anything coherent. In Government, incompatible systems have the same effect.

  2. Previously, agencies often built separate systems for different needs, believing that every need was unique. While well-intentioned, this led to duplication and integration challenges. Citizens feel the fragmentation when information cannot be shared across systems.

  3. So our approach must be modular. We must provide and use common digital components like secure logins and payment processing, built on shared standards for security and resilience.

  4. Agencies should not rebuild what already exists. They should reuse, recombine and focus on what makes their missions unique.

  5. When the Health Sciences Authority (HSA) stepped up vaping enforcement last year, they needed a new system for their operations.

    1. HSA built on shared tools from GovTech and OGP, such as Ownself Gather, a case management system, and Plumber, which allows officers to automate manual tasks like tracking repeat offences.

    2. By doing this, their enhanced Vaping Information System was live in just three weeks. A system built from scratch, would have taken months.

    3. When we build faster, we enforce faster, and citizens are better protected.

Developing Capabilities for Complexity

  1. Some services need simple, reliable components, and we must resist the temptation to over-engineer.

  2. But sometimes we do need advanced tools that can help us build better services, and do so more quickly.

  3. Mr Henry Kwek asked how GovTech is embracing AI-centric IT development and encouraging its vendors to adopt such practices.

    1. We are providing common tools, such as commercial AI coding assistants that support government developers and vendors with tasks like code completion. We also have AI tools for GovTech officers to build and deploy functional prototypes without writing code.

    2. For both the Public Service and our contracted vendors, these tools are governed by standards for secure development, safe AI use, and data protection.

    3. GovTech is also piloting agentic AI coding tools internally, and plans to expand these capabilities across Government.

  4. Our shared tools also help agencies build more inclusive and user‑centric services. As Mr Sharael Taha highlighted, essential government services should be accessible by everyone, including persons with disabilities.

    1. One of our most valuable shared tools is called Oobee. It proactively detects accessibility issues on government websites and suggests fixes, like including descriptive text that can be read aloud by Assistive Technology for our visually impaired users.

    2. Oobee has scanned over 1600 websites since 2023. It has shown us how even with good intentions, we may have blind spots.

Trust

  1. The success of our services rests on a strong foundation of Trust.

  2. Singaporeans use our digital services because they trust that these are secure and that they are dealing with legitimate government officials.

  3. Government Official Impersonation Scams are a serious threat because they attack that trust directly.

  4. Mr Sharael Taha asked about our efforts to protect citizens from scams. We have already taken steps, for example by unifying SMS messages from Government under the ‘gov.sg’ sender ID.

    1. For citizens to easily identify and trust calls from the Government, OGP and the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) are developing systems for agencies to make calls with numbers that start with a common prefix. Later on, we will display a recognisable caller name.

    2. Many scammers also use local SIM cards for illicit purposes. To address this, IMDA, in consultation with the Singapore Police Force, recently implemented a limit of 10 postpaid SIM cards per person across all telcos. The Government will also apply analytics to SIM card registration data, within strict legal safeguards, to proactively detect and disrupt potential scam activities. These measures focus on identifying suspicious registration patterns.

 Skills

  1. Now, think about what it takes to go from building a beginner LEGO set – maybe a simple car, a few dozen pieces, designed for a young child – to a full LEGO SPIKE robot. It is not just more bricks. It is a different level of skill, confidence, and ambition.

  2. The builder must grow with the challenge. Our public officers must grow with the challenge.

  3. Many of our loyal and hard-working public officers have spent years building skills for their work. With the tools around them changing fast, this can feel exciting for some. For others, it feels unsettling, as if the expertise they have worked hard to develop might be overtaken before they can fully use it.

  4. Our job is not just to offer comfort, but to build capability. To give them the confidence to use a new tool and think: I can work with this. I can ask the right questions. And I can tell whether the output is good or not.

    1. We have already started digital training for our Cabinet Ministers and Senior Public Service Leaders, as Minister Chan Chun Sing mentioned earlier.

    2. Leaders set the conditions. When they understand the digital landscape, they can guide change confidently and ask their teams the right questions.

  5. For our broader Public Service, the goal is to ensure that no public officer feels powerless in a digital world.

  6. MDDI will establish the Institute of Digital Government together with the Civil Service College. The Institute will equip our public officers with Digital, Data, Design and AI skills. We will focus not just on technology, but on designing solutions that are citizen-centred and secure.

 Modernisation

  1. We also need to address the outdated systems that no longer support our needs. These are systems built early in our digitalisation journey, using technology that was prevalent at the time.

  2. Today, these systems are inflexible, expensive, and difficult to integrate. They slow down policy change and hinder our ability to share information for seamless services.

  3. We have started on this. Rebuilding our systems will take time, but we are committed to this effort, because this is foundational to our digital transformation.

    1. Every modernisation effort gives us a chance to rebuild and create faster, connected systems that can better support service delivery.

Better Services

  1. I have described what we must do, to improve our government digital services. We must understand our citizens continuously, build in a modular way, and develop capabilities for complexity. We will upgrade the skills of our public officers, and rebuild many of our outdated systems over time.

  2. If we do this well, our citizens will feel the difference.

  3. Their experience with Government will feel simpler, clearer and more human – especially at moments when citizens have little bandwidth to deal with Government.

    1. Take parents of newborns, for example. In those precious early days, what you want most is time with your baby, not multiple forms to fill.

    2. We have therefore integrated services around this life moment. Through LifeSG, parents can complete services like birth registration, apply for Baby Bonus and Shared Parental Leave, with far less paperwork. The aim is simple: fewer steps, fewer repeats, more time for families.

  4. With AI, we can go one step further.

  5. From services that respond, to services that guide.

    1. Take the SupportGoWhere portal, which consolidates government schemes across 31 agencies. Imagine trying to look for support from nearly 300 options, across different life stages and needs.

    2. Our seniors and their caregivers told us that they felt overwhelmed. Too much information. Too many pathways. And where do they even begin?

    3. So we redesigned the experience. Now, the Senior Support Recommender will ask them several questions, and then use AI to recommend them the most relevant schemes.

    4. We are still refining it, but this is the direction that we want to go: a Government that helps citizens find the information that they need, instead of making them hunt for it.

  6. Delivering better services also means that our precious human public service officers can focus their time and their resources on supporting those who truly are not able to use technology. They can be served by our officers in a more timely manner.

 Faster Services

  1. Better services must also be faster, because delays are not just administrative in nature. They do affect real lives.

    1. This matters, in healthcare.

    2. As our population ages, demand for healthcare professionals will rise. Lengthy manual registration processes to bring in nurses can become a bottleneck that delays care.

    3. And that is why we are simplifying our processes and rebuilding the Professional Registration System to streamline and automate routine checks for our healthcare professionals. We have reduced processing time for foreign nurse registrations from up to six months to 30 days.

    4. For patients and families waiting for care, this can mean earlier treatment, earlier support, and less anxiety.

  1. These examples are not exceptions to be admired. They must become more of the norm.  All of us working in Government must ask ourselves:

    1. If we are responsible for a policy, is it being delivered in the simplest way possible?

    2. If we are designing a service, ask: would I accept this experience for my own family? 

  2. Our transformation will not happen overnight, but that is the standard that we will hold ourselves to. 

Closing

  1. Mr Chairman, building digital capability is not just about chasing technology. It is about raising our standard of service.

  2. Increasingly, Singaporeans compare us to the best digital experiences in their daily lives, not just to governments elsewhere.

  3. That is the standard.

  4. And it is our responsibility to meet it.

  5. Thank you.


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