The Municipal Services Office turns 10 this year
Oct 1, 2024
- 16 winners presented with Love Our ‘Hood Award and Municipal Services Awards
- MSO offers three tried-and-tested municipal solutions to ground volunteers
The Municipal Services Office (MSO) celebrated its tenth anniversary today with more than 300 staff and stakeholders from various Government agencies and the community. First set up in 2014 as the central office to coordinate and improve the delivery of municipal services across ten Government agencies and 17 Town Councils, its role has since evolved to that of a pathfinder and innovator for the municipal services sector.
In her speech at the event, Ms Sim Ann, Minister-in-Charge of the MSO and Senior Minister of State for National Development and Foreign Affairs, highlighted how Singapore’s ageing population and increasing urban density are reshaping the nature of municipal issues. The MSO can become better equipped for present and future challenges by investing in operations technology, community-based solutioning and sense-making.
SMS Sim also presented the Love Our ‘Hood Award and 15 Municipal Services Awards to individuals and teams who have delivered citizen-centric municipal services and fostered effective inter-agency collaborations to address municipal issues. These winners were selected from a pool of 127 nominations. Refer to Annex A for the winner profiles.
New resources for ground volunteers
Over the years, MSO has actively partnered with the community and youths to devise creative ways to nudge considerate behaviours and create a better living environment. In celebration of its tenth anniversary, MSO will be offering three of these tried-and-tested solutions to ground volunteers, supported by the Love Our ‘Hood Fund. From January 2025, each Citizens’ Consultative Committee can choose one of these solutions and apply for MSO’s funding support to implement at their constituencies. More details will be shared with the PA grassroots network shortly. See Annex B for details of these solutions.
Grassroots leaders and volunteer managers can also access a new profiling tool launched on MSO’s website to better understand their residents and volunteers within the municipal context. This would enable them to tailor their engagement programmes and initiatives to promote community activation. The profiling tool was created based on MSO’s Resident Archetypes Study 2023 [1], which found that over one-third of Singaporeans fall under the profile of “Champion Charlies”, who were willing to resolve municipal issues personally as a first step and come up with solutions to resolve issues in their neighbourhood. Residents may visit https://go.gov.sg/profiling-tool to try out the profiling tool.
MSO signs MOU with Temasek Polytechnic
MSO signed a five-year Memorandum of Understanding today with Temasek Polytechnic (TP). Building on MSO’s strong partnership with TP, the collaboration aims to explore innovative ways to enhance municipal services delivery and promote community activation to build a better living environment. This is part of TP’s focus to develop students with real world learning opportunities beyond the classroom through partnerships. Key collaboration outcomes include:
- A toolkit to guide residents to start their own ground-up initiatives to address municipal concerns in their neighbourhood;
- Projects that involve adoption or trial of technology to support municipal operations;
- Research studies and surveys to provide MSO and its community stakeholders with insights to municipal issues;
- Workshops to build capability among community stakeholders. For example, participants can learn how to develop effective communication materials to promote considerate behaviours and evaluate the effectiveness of community-led initiatives.
Winners of the OneService Game Changers Challenge
As part of MSO’s 10th anniversary celebrations, MSO co-organised the OneService Game Changers Challenge (OGCC) 2024 with TP. A two-day Gamification Hackathon was organised in June where 20 teams, comprising members of different age groups, designed games to promote considerate behaviours to tackle municipal issues for a better living environment. A judging panel shortlisted five teams to create high-fidelity prototypes of their games which were displayed as part of the MSO’s 10th Anniversary Exhibition. The winners of the OGCC were also announced at the ceremony:
| Ranking | Municipal Issue, Game Name and Description |
|---|
| 1st Prize – Team Ludo | Cluttered corridors:
In Our Tidy Spaces, players take on the role of residents living on the same floor in a HDB block. They accumulate Victory Points by managing the clutter both inside and outside of their homes, while playing their part to keep the common spaces clutter-free. The player who accumulates the most Victory Points at the end of the game, wins. |
| 2nd Prize - Team Currynuggets | Recycling:
Trash Towkay is a competitive recycling-themed card game where players combine Item Cards of the same category, to complete a set. The player that completes 3 different categories of the Item Cards first, wins the game. |
| 3rd Prize - Team VertiGO | Neighbourhood noise:
Noisy Lah! is a semi-cooperative board game in which players try to simulate and resolve different types of residential noise in the neighbourhood. Some of the resolutions may lead to social tension, which affects neighbourly relationships. To win, one must be the first player to have 5 Noise Cards, while working with the other players to maintain the Noise Level below 5 points and Social Tension below 25 points. |
[1] Please refer to https://www.mnd.gov.sg/newsroom/press-releases/view/fostering-community-action-for-municipal-issues for more details of the resident archetype study.
Issued By: Municipal Services Office (MSO)
Date: 1 October 2024
Annexes:
Annex A - Details of winners of the Love Our 'Hood Award and MSA 2024
Annex B - Details of municipal solutions offered to grassroots leaders