About us
Who we are and what we do.
Last updated 14 February 2025
Who we are
We are an experimental development team that builds technology for the public good. This includes everything from building better apps for citizens to automating the internal operations of public agencies. Our role is to accelerate the digital transformation of the Singapore Government by being a space where it can experiment with new tech practices, including new technologies, management techniques, corporate systems, and even cultural norms. Our end goal is that through our work, Singapore becomes a model of how governments can use technology to improve the public good.
Our Mission
EXPERIMENT with new practices with the goal of developing good tech products that solve public sector problems.
DEMONSTRATE that these practices can work successfully and cost-effectively in our own operation.
PROPAGATE the adoption of the best of these practices to the rest of the public service to accelerate the digitalization of the government.
Our Vision
The end goal is to have Singapore become a model of technology enabled government.
A place where using government services is as quick and simple as a click of a button. A place where government operations are efficiently automated, improving reliability while freeing up human focus to tackle cases that slip through the cracks. Where data is freely accessible so that citizens and policymakers alike have a clear view to make informed decisions. Where healthcare becomes so efficient that no one ever gets diagnosed with a late stage disease. Where our legal system is so accessible that no one gets denied access to justice.
Our Philosophy
Solve Real Problems
Work on meaningful projects from communications to healthcare. Use your skills to fix actual problems faced in the community, not just to optimise profit.
Build for the User
Design and build products based on what real people actually need, whether they are members of the public or public servants.
Push For Change
Actively prototype and evangelize ideas to make real things happen. Work around or cut through bureaucracy.
Our Values
We maximise our impact on the public good.
We focus on real problems faced by real people, going beyond theoretical requirements to test that our solutions actually deliver value in practice. We prolifically explore many different ideas and aggressively prune them to focus on the most potent course of action given the resources we have. Bureaucratic pressures, individual aspirations, and even the success of the team are all secondary considerations. All our decisions are based on how we can best improve the lives of the people we serve.
We treat people fairly and communicate openly.
We want to create a high trust environment so that people can focus on collaborating and doing good. We create clear frameworks for all hiring, performance, and compensation matters, while getting information from multiple sources. By default, all information is openly accessible unless there is a strong reason to close it. All major team decisions are proactively shared with the team. And we open-source our code and best practices for people outside the organization. People should feel confident that they understand where the team is, where it is going, and why.
We empower people to make good decisions.
Our goal is to maximize the amount of effective brain power we have solving problems. This means organizing for creativity and autonomy more than command and control. Our organisation’s and managers’ role is to facilitate learning, provide resources, and help clear blockers that people face. We trust people to become experts in their area of focus, and give them autonomy to decide how to maximise impact in their work.
We do whatever needs doing for us to deliver.
We take on different roles depending on what needs to get done. Our skills do not limit our scope of responsibility, and we are defined by our mission more than our job. We expect unfamiliar problems and will learn what we need to overcome them. We regularly do cross functional training so that we can work effectively in cross functional teams. Each person in the organization has open-ended ownership of its impact.
We help each other to have impact as a team.
What matters is not each person’s direct contributions but their effect on team delivery as a whole. This means we cover each other’s gaps, support each other’s development, and work constructively together. At the same time, avoiding conflict is not the same as working constructively and is a non-goal. We challenge and criticize to help improve ideas and decisions, while respecting each person’s expertise and prerogative.