Speech by Minister Grace Fu at the Municipal Services Awards Ceremony
Sep 30, 2016
Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us at the second Municipal Services Awards Ceremony.
Delivering Better Municipal Services
Today, we are here to recognise your efforts in going the extra mile and your teamwork amongst agencies, to resolve municipal issues in a citizen-centric manner for our residents.
I would like to congratulate the 20 groups of officers who will receive the Municipal Services Team Awards, and the five officers who will receive Individual Awards. You have delivered quality municipal services, gone beyond the call of duty and adopted a “do-it-first” attitude in your work. For the Team Awards, you have also collaborated with other agencies to achieve effective solutions. It is note-worthy that you have been nominated not only by your supervisor or peers in your agency, but some of you have been nominated by another agency which acknowledges and appreciates your contribution.
Let me share the good work of two award recipients.
When feedback was received from a member of the public on the safety of residents crossing a makeshift staircase and wooden footbridge over major water pipelines on a steep slope, a team of three PUB officers from the Catchment & Waterways Department responded in a timely manner to ensure public safety, even though it was not PUB’s core function.
These makeshift structures were installed by residents to serve as a shortcut for easy access to the facilities at Bukit Tinggi Road from Jalan Kampong Chantek. PUB went the extra mile to construct a proper staircase with railings on the slope, as well as adjoining footpaths and a footbridge. PUB also undertook the maintenance of these structures to ensure that these amenities continue to serve the public safely.
Many of our officers have demonstrated personal commitment in resolving municipal issues. Mr Nazeer from SPF is one such example. Upon receiving a resident’s complaint on noise created by another resident staying in the unit above, Mr Nazeer roped in HDB and engaged both residents to resolve the issue.
In the course of his work, Mr Nazeer also found that the noisy resident’s wife was the sole breadwinner of the family and was facing financial difficulties. He then referred the family to the relevant agencies to seek financial assistance. Mr Nazeer has not only enabled harmonious living between the neighbours, he has created a deep impact in helping a family in need.
These are just two examples. There are many more of you at today’s award ceremony who have displayed good team work and exemplary attitude. I would like to thank everyone, for working hard and making a mark on the service standards and professionalism of our public service. Your actions have benefitted residents and made a positive impact on their daily lives.
Strengthening Existing Initiatives for Better Service Delivery and Operations
Since MSO’s set-up in 2014, MSO and our partner agencies have received over 60,000 municipal cases monthly. MSO has stepped in to handle complex cases, which may require the involvement of and coordination between several agencies.
One initiative that has improved the time taken to handle feedback is the First Responder initiative. In 2012, AVA was appointed the First Responder for animal-related issues. Since then, two other agencies have come on board; NParks took on the role as the central agency for public greenery maintenance from June 2015, and LTA assumed the First Responder role this June for connectivity-related infrastructure issues. Having a lead agency as the first point-of-contact has helped to ensure timely response to feedback. MSO will continue to work with agencies to streamline work processes to better serve our residents.
Enhancing Collaboration with Town Councils (TCs)
Municipal issues straddle government agencies and Town Councils. I said earlier this year that all 16 TCs are coming on-board to work with MSO to deliver better municipal services for residents. I am happy that we are making good progress.
Take for instance the PUB-TC Water Responder protocol. It assigns first responder roles for specified types of water issues between PUB and the TCs. Instead of having both parties send their technicians to investigate a resident’s feedback, the protocol ensures that the assigned first responder attends to the feedback and resolves it quickly. This means faster case resolution for residents and saving manpower. The protocol was first piloted last year with Holland-Bukit Panjang Town Council and Jurong-Clementi Town Council, and has since been rolled out to all TCs. More than 1,600 feedback cases have been handled under this protocol as at end July 2016, and I hope the residents are happy with the results.
Beyond water issues, MSO, together with our partner agencies and the two pilot TCs, have jointly produced an issues-based Municipal Reference Guide to better manage other municipal feedback. The guide clarifies the responsibilities of the agencies for the various municipal issues, contains information on service frameworks and offers tips on managing feedback. With this Guide, officers are able to handle and refer municipal feedback across agencies with greater accuracy and efficiency. It is also useful for training of new staff.
In fact, the two teams which worked on the PUB-Town Council Water Responder protocol and the Municipal Reference Guide are here today to receive the Municipal Services Team Awards. Let’s give them a round of applause.
Beyond clarifying operational protocols, we are also leveraging technology to strengthen our partnership with TCs. For instance, we are exploring the linking of the backend systems between TCs and MSO to automate the process of case referral. This will save time and reduce incidents of cases being dropped since the cases are no longer manually transferred and tracked. However, as each of the TCs has its own unique work processes and systems, we would need time to look into this to see how best to facilitate the linking process.
Launch of OneService Portal
Besides operational efficiency, we are improving our digital channels such as mobile apps and web portals, to improve our interface with the public by making it easier to provide feedback and to improve the response process of agencies. This is also in line with our objective to build an engaged community for a better living environment.
This afternoon, I am pleased to launch the OneService Portal - a one-stop feedback and information channel on municipal matters. The Portal is jointly developed by MSO and IDA, in partnership with our partner agencies and the Town Councils. It is a digital tool built for our residents, our agencies and Town Councils.
The OneService Portal features “My Neighbourhood” – which enables residents to define their neighbourhood and retrieve information on municipal services provided by agencies and Town Councils. It is a unique platform for MSO partner agencies to share, inform and apprise residents on the services provided and their efforts to resolve municipal issues such as neighbourhood cleanliness and vector control. Residents can now access “My Neighbourhood” feature in the Portal to find out where the Zika and Dengue clusters are. The feature - “What I can Do” suggests ways for residents to improve the quality of their living environment such as how they can prevent mosquito breeding by doing the 5-step Mozzie Wipeout at home.
A municipal case map will be published – the first in Singapore – to display cases reported by residents via the OneService App and Portal. The map will give users greater awareness and better information of the types of municipal issues in their neighbourhoods. Residents can be reassured that their cases are being attended to by the relevant agencies in a timely manner. By showing cases reported geographically on the map, we hope to reduce duplication of cases as users will know that the same issue has been reported and attended to by the agencies. Only selected case information will be displayed in order to protect confidentiality of individual users.
Together, the OneService digital channels (App and Portal) aim to create a seamless and holistic OneService experience, by using one and the same user account, allowing residents to report municipal feedback and retrieving information about their neighbourhood with flexibility. We hope to improve the user experience of communicating with government agencies on municipal issues through these efforts.
Next Steps
MSO and our partner agencies are committed to delivering good municipal services, with citizens in mind. I would like to thank the frontline and operations staff from all our partner agencies for their dedication and hard work. They have displayed great teamwork and service excellence in the delivery of municipal services.
To be future ready, MSO and our partner agencies have been working together to trial technologies that could reduce our reliance on manpower in service delivery. For example, MSO has facilitated collaboration between NParks and IDA to develop a grass height sensor with GPS tracking to check if the contractor had covered a particular site and cut the grass to the required height. We are carrying out this trial as it can potentially reduce the frequency of needing NParks officers to physically inspect the sites, resulting in productivity savings.
MSO is also looking to facilitate the cross-application and scaling of technologies across agencies. For example, SLA and IDA have recently successfully completed a Proof of Concept for the use of drones and video analytics technology to automatically detect defects on State properties and land. This and the grass height sensor, if proven successful, have the potential to be used for other agencies with land maintenance issues.
We hope to see more of these in the Public Service. I would like to encourage you to be innovative and entrepreneurial, to try new technologies, look out for things that are done outside and see how we can bring them into the Public Service, to make ourselves more productive and improve our living environment as we meet the call to build a Smart Nation.
We also look forward to more engagements and working more closely together with residents and the community, such as in encouraging more civic behaviour in cleanliness in public areas. Together, let us work towards our vision of ‘One Service, and an Engaged Community, for a Better Living Environment’.