Speech by Minister Grace Fu at OneService Innovation Challenge
Sep 2, 2018
Partnering the Community to Transform OneService Digital Channels
A very good afternoon to all of you. I am delighted to join you here for the OneService Innovation Challenge 2018 organised by the Municipal Services Office (MSO).
It has been more than three years since we launched the OneService App in January 2015. The OneService App has made it easier to provide feedback on municipal issues as residents do not need to know which agency to send the feedback to. Today, there are more than 134,000 users, with more than 250,000 feedback cases submitted via the App to MSO, public agencies and Town Councils. To complement the OneService App, MSO launched the OneService Portal in September 2016 which provides aggregated neighbourhood information from different sources, such as HDB block washing and bin chute flushing schedules from Town Councils, locations of CHAS clinics, Social Services Offices, e-waste recycling points and dengue clusters and construction works in the neighbourhood.
Our Goal
Moving forward, our goal is to transform our OneService channels into a one-stop community platform to meet the diverse municipal needs of our residents. The OneService App will be more than just a feedback reporting tool. We want it to become a tool for simple transactions, to inform and engage residents through activities and events.
To achieve this goal, we will involve the community in this transformation journey and ultimately, to work together to resolve municipal issues. This will lead to greater neighbourliness and the development of a sense of belonging and identity with their “kampong”.
The OneService Innovation Challenge 2018 is organised for this purpose. We welcome members of the larger community, like yourselves, to come up with ideas and work with us to enhance our OneService products.
As part of this Challenge, we held two events. The first one was an online “Call for Ideas” competition in July 2018 to get more ideas to transform the OneService channels. We received more than 200 ideas, with the youngest contributor aged 12 years old and the oldest, 80 years old.
Ler Woon Seah, a student from Temasek Polytechnic, felt that there is no platform today where residents and their grassroots leaders could interact and communicate. He suggested a blog feature for each neighbourhood within the OneService App which could list upcoming events for residents, as well as surveys which residents could participate and share their views on improving their neighbourhood. As an incentive, he also suggested a digital badge reward system where residents could earn a badge for participation and ideation. I am glad that Woon Seah contributed this idea because it is important for residents to play a more active role in their neighbourhood and have a hand in shaping it. Woon Seah has won the Best Idea prize for the “Call for Ideas” competition. Congratulations, Woon Seah!
The second part of the OneService Innovation Challenge is where most of you have attended, which lasted two and a half days. Since Friday, we have 29 teams involving more than 100 participants taking part in the OSIC 2018 to code and design working prototypes for the OneService App. We have a very interesting mix of participants. About 40 per cent between 18 to 25 studying in university or our higher education institutes and 25 per cent below 18 in our schools. We also have people in the industry who have coding experience and it is just a wonderful mix where diversity brings a lot of different ideas and energy to the process. I am told that there are many good ideas and the teams worked very hard on their designs and gave interesting presentations to pitch their products to the judges earlier today. I saw a little bit of the clips. A very spritely 14-year-old young man doing his pitching for his ideas. This is a wonderful platform and I hope all of you have enjoyed it. I also saw how a family bonded over the two and a half days participating in the event together. It is really a community working for the community. I would like to thank everyone for their ideas over the last three days. In the coming months, we will conduct focus group discussions to gather feedback and market test the ideas. I am looking forward to seeing your prototypes incorporated into the OneService App.
Launch of New OneService App Version 4.0
To transform the OneService App into a one-stop community platform, we have redesigned it to be modular, and to keep up with the market trend for mobile applications. The new design allows MSO to add new modules easily. You have just watched the launch video for the OneService App version 4.0, with the tagline “OneService. One App. A brand new experience.” The new design aims to give users a new experience, and keep up with users’ changing requirements.
For a start, we will have the first transaction feature on digital parking in the new OneService App. It consists of two modules. First, the “Find Parking” module, currently offered in beta version, which provides useful parking information such as parking rates, operating hours of not only public carparks but also several commercial carparks. For the beta version, the module also avails information on lot availability and height clearance levels at some carparks. I am sure that this is something many drivers appreciate, looking for the nearest car park with rates provided as well. The second part would be the “Start Parking” module which is essentially the Parking.sg app, allows motorists to pay for parking at HDB and URA carparks without using parking coupons. The payment will be processed through Parking.sg.
Piloting HelpBuddy App as an Engagement Tool
In addition, we are keen to use the OneService App as an engagement tool, to bring residents together and help one another. We want to encourage active citizenry and promote neighbourliness. We are now working with the Singapore Management University (SMU) to pilot a new crowdsourcing app called HelpBuddy. Our OneService partners and residents can put up simple activities on HelpBuddy for the community to take part.
For instance, the National Heritage Board would like the public to share their memories of heritage sites in Singapore. One HelpBuddy user shared his fond memories of the old Plaza Singapura building where his family went to the Yaohan Department Store every week. It takes someone of a certain age to remember Yaohan and I do. These memories form an important part of our shared heritage that we want to preserve and share. There is also another activity where the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) seeks help from residents and the public to check if vacant State land all across Singapore is used by the community for what types of activities. Such crowdsourced data would help SLA determine how well the community uses vacant State land for their activities, and how SLA could play a facilitating role to encourage more such community-based activities to make better use of its vacant State land. I think it is very good news for many of us either thinking of organising a Frisbee game or a soccer game at the empty state land out there. This way of crowdsourcing for ideas by looking at how people actually use the land will help the decision makers decide what is the best use of the land.
We plan to introduce more activities in the pilot HelpBuddy app in the coming months, working with MCCY for neighbours to share simple tools and equipment, and for residents in need, such as our seniors, to seek voluntary medical escorts to bring them for medical check-ups at the polyclinics or hospitals. MSO is also working with the Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) and animal welfare groups – the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), Action for Singapore Dogs (ASD) and SOSD to allow dog owners whose pet dogs are missing, to seek help via the HelpBuddy app for residents to look for their missing pets. We do not have to stick little pieces of paper on the lamp posts and replace them when it gets wet. This is one good way for us to announce that we have pets missing and also people who are worried about dogs wondering around to help them in finding their owners.
What I have just shared is just a few examples of how HelpBuddy can contribute to the spirit of Singapore Cares (SG Cares), and foster a more caring and cohesive society where neighbours can count on one another in times of need. The pilot HelpBuddy app is in its beta phase. If successful, we will incorporate it as a module in the OneService App. I hope all of you will sign up for the pilot and download the app to try out the activities. We look forward to your feedback so that we can finetune it further.
In conclusion, let me thank all those who have participated in the “Call for Ideas” and OneService Innovation Challenge 2018, and also to the community and technological partners who have been so helpful along this journey. I would like to congratulate all the winners and all the participants who have spent the last three days with us. Ultimately, MSO and OneService is really about making Singapore a better place to live in and that really requires, every one of us on the ground, to help the public agencies and the service providers in improving our facilities and our services better. We can all do our part so that the solutions are better for you and that problems are solved in a more timely way. The solutions are more effective to the needs of the community and also for the community to really make this “kampong” a special one, the way you want it to be managed, the way that you want it to be run. It is for your involvement that we are extending OneService to community engagement and it is also on that objective we are encouraging the community to participate in the development of the OS App.
Thank you all for being part of this journey and have a wonderful rest of the weekend. Thank you.