Closing Remarks by Minister Lawrence Wong at HDB Cool Ideas Hack

Jun 26, 2016

A very good afternoon to all of you and I’m very happy to join you this afternoon for the HDB Cool Ideas Hack.

This is the first time we are having such a hackathon in HDB. And I’m very glad that we have such enthusiastic response from all of you. So many people coming together to contribute ideas to make for a better HDB living. 

The hackathon may be a new event for HDB but the underlying motivation or objective, which is one of citizen engagement and participation, is not new. That objective of partnering with our people and getting more citizen ownership of ground-up projects is something that we have been doing for a long time. And in fact, it has been something which HDB has been doing since we built our first HDB flat, way back, more than 50 years ago. So all the way from then, before IT and before all these apps came about, and the reason why we have done it is very simple. 

It is because we know that this sense of having a home, this sense of home ownership, is not just based on a nice building or a nice infrastructure. That’s important, but a sense of home and community is really about people. It’s about community bonds, it’s about our neighbours, it’s about owning the community and that sense of ownership and participation in that community. That’s what makes the place more than just a HDB flat, more than just a building, but a real home to all of us.

And that sense of community has been in Singapore for a long time. When we had kampongs, the sense of gotong royong, the sense of mutual help was very strong. When we move into HDB, we continue to want to have that sense of community spirit and kampong spirit.

And that’s why we’ve been always thinking about ways, besides upgrading the building and infrastructure, we have always been looking at ways in which we can also strengthen our community bonds, our neighbourhood, neighbourly ties, and also make sure that HDB living is clean, green, sustainable. And this has been a long process, as I’ve said. We are always looking at ways to improve, to make it better.

So this year, in fact, we also continued with this emphasis. Earlier this year, we had a series of SGfuture dialogue sessions, a series of engagement sessions, where we reached out to many Singaporeans on how Singaporeans can play a bigger role in having a more liveable environment in our HDB estates and in our own community.

Through the SGfuture dialogue, we engaged about 1,500 participants and we received lots of feedback. It was a huge exercise but a very meaningful one because many people came forward and everyone contributed ideas and suggestions; different ways in which we can make our public spaces more vibrant, how we can tap on IT for better living and how we can have community-based solutions to help us lead more sustainable lifestyles.

Having finished or wrapped up our SGfuture engagement sessions, we are now looking to translate ideas into action. Because it’s one thing to have ideas, but I think it’s also important to make sure that the ideas are translated into reality. And that’s what a HDB hackathon like this is about as well. It another platform for which we can crowdsource ideas but importantly, make sure that all the good ideas that you have, the apps that you have developed can be translated into actual solutions and make things better for our HDB residents and for all of us.

So I’m very glad, just now as I was talking to some of you, that there were so many of you contributing from such a broad range of backgrounds and ages. I think our youngest participant is a group of students who are 15 years old. I don’t know the age of the oldest participant but it’s okay because we are all young at heart. Young and old, we have participants coming together and just talking to some of you just now, I think over the last three days all of you have had wonderful interactions with one another. Some coming together to form groups for the first time, and there are many interesting ideas, particularly around how we can use apps, use technology to connect people together.

So it was really quite fascinating to hear the ideas that you had. And I think it’s particularly useful because for many of you who have grown up in an internet age, using social media is the way to go and all of you are very used to using social media or apps to get to know one another and to interact with one another.

And that’s why recently even when we have new HDB flats being launched, before the flat is ready, there’s already a Facebook page for that particular group of homebuyers who have purchased a new flat. They already set up their own Facebook page. Sometimes, it’s a private page because they don’t want HDB officers to come in and find out what they are talking about. Sometimes, it’s an open page. Sometimes, they require you to verify your identity but there are already many of these things starting out and I’m sure of you who are slightly older or who already have had the experience of buying a HDB flat, you would know this is already happening. Groups are already forming organically, on their own, using social media, using Facebook.

So I think many of the ideas that you have will tap on this organic growth, this organic evolution of how social networks are being created. And if they are successful, I’m sure there’ll be a lot of take-up. I think many young people like yourselves, new homebuyers will take to such social apps very readily. And hopefully, this will become a new way in which we can strengthen our community bonds and make HDB living even more vibrant and even more exciting.

From all the proposals that we have today, I think we have three categories – Start-up, Open and Student categories, the judges have met, you’ve made your pitch to all the judges. I understand they had a very difficult time differentiating between the winners. I’m sure they did. But they have already decided. I don’t know who the winners are, they would announce it later. I think they have selected nine winning ideas, and after that the winning teams will have the opportunity to test-bed these ideas in our HDB estates. 

Because, like I said, we are truly serious about wanting to move beyond just a hackathon, but actually see your apps, your ideas translate into real solutions on the ground. So the winning ideas, we will give you the opportunity to test-bed your ideas in the HDB estates. HDB officers will work with you to further refine and develop your ideas into actual applications to make sure that they are applicable and they can be rolled out in our HDB estates. 

So if you have a winning app, for all you know, the next HDB launch, at the next BTO estate when we have a welcome party, we can introduce it, get residents to download the app and start using it. So, this will be real, this is live. This will be live, it will be introduced, and beyond one estate, if it catches on, it can go on to many many more estates. And who knows, the potential is limitless. You can potentially create many more of these apps, which would take off and can actually be used on the ground.

And in addition to the prize money, the winning teams can apply for HDB’s Cool Ideas Fund. HDB has a Cool Ideas Fund, which is intended to fund and provide financing for ideas that you have. So the winning teams will also have the opportunity to apply for this fund and then you can translate your winning ideas into prototypes for test-bedding in our HDB estates. HDB will match dollar for dollar the amount put in by the winning teams, up to $10,000. So we are committed to this, and if you have a winning idea, the potential is there for us to take this into actual implementation.

If you are not one of the nine teams that are going to win today, please do not be discouraged, because there will be many other opportunities for you to continue to refine, improve your ideas and your apps. There are many other hackathons, whether by HDB or by other Government agencies, or by other corporate organisations as well. So please don’t be discouraged. Continue to finetune, improve your idea and who knows, something may happen later on. I encourage all of you, whether you are a winning team, or even if you may not be one of the nine winning entries, please continue to keep up the energy, keep up the passion and the enthusiasm and continue this process of coming up with good ideas, good solutions that will make for better HDB living.

In conclusion, as we wrap up our hackathon, I would just like to thank all of you once again for your enthusiastic participation. We really appreciate all your effort coming down, spending three days with us and making this happen. I want to also thank our event partners. We have IBM and Mircosoft who are here. We have Innovator SG, also helping to come together and partner us in mentoring our participants during the hackathon.

And finally, I think these three days have really given us many new insights, many examples of how our community can come together and come up with good ideas that will enhance our daily HDB living. And I’m very heartened and encouraged to see the inspiration behind many of your ideas. It’s really quite inspiring, whether it’s ideas to connect with one another, to provide better social services or to promote volunteering or to have car-sharing – wonderful ideas which I think can really change the character and the tone of our society and make us better citizens and also better participants in the community. So I hope all of us will continue to do our part to create better homes and better lives for one another because together, we can build a cleaner, greener, and more endearing home for all Singaporeans to share and take pride in.

On that note, I thank you once again and I wish you all the very best with the competition results.