The agency’s development work is driven by the agile methodology, which allows them to test and iterate solutions quickly

All governments in the world are complex systems, made up of different agencies, departments and ministries. An efficient government is defined by how well these different bodies work together in harmony, and the ease with which the country’s citizens can access their services.

The ubiquitousness of digital platforms has made it easier for people to use public services without having to leave their homes. Take for example the Singapore’s SingPass system, with the use of a single username and password, Singapore citizens and permanent citizens can access all government e-services, such as the filing of taxes,offered by more than 60 government agencies.

In 2016, the Singapore government set up the Government Technology Agency (or GovTech), with the aim to strengthen its tech capabilities and increase the interconnectedness between various government networks. One of GovTech’s latest initiatives, the Singapore Government Tech Stack (SGTS) infrastructure, is designed to take its directive one step further by building a framework that allows developers to test and iterate solutions quickly. The developers draw from a unified suite of tools and services — all hosted on a shared infrastructure.

“SGTS reduces the time and effort to introduce an early version of a digital service, and enhance and maintain existing ones,” says Steven Koh, Deputy Director of GovTech’s Agile Consulting and Engineering, in an interview with e27.

In previous years, government projects relied on the the waterfall methodology. As its name suggests, this model employs a cascading design method meaning that the software development process is laid out in a sequential manner. While that has been the industry standard in years past; it also means the software typically requires a long timeframe to develop, which in turn, makes it difficult to incorporate changes or revisions in the middle of the project.

“This technical specifications would take one to two years to develop, evaluate and award the tender before development began. When it comes to system integration, the old method of point-to-point (or system-to-system) data exchange made upgrades or changes to digital services brittle and cumbersome to coordinate,” says Koh.

This point is especially pertinent when one is running a national level infrastructure that involves millions of citizens accessing the system regularly. Government agencies need to iterate, test and update solutions to meet the needs of the public.

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Koh points to the advent of virtualisation, which he says, provides faster development and test mechanisms by creating development and testing environments rapidly.

“Virtualisation helps to farm out certain components of commonly used tech stack, as as servers, storage and networking. Today a developer is able to make changes easily and test them from the convenience of their workstations without being physically present at a data centre since they are connected remotely.” he says

Achieving flexibility and speed by becoming agile

SGTS is also leveraging agile methodology — a process by which a project is broken down into small incremental builds to be completed within a short allocated time (also called sprints) — to speed up the development process. This also means that different phases of the project are built concurrently as opposed to sequentially, as it is with the case of the waterfall methodology, and shortens the time it takes for the solution to be released.

“We run two-week sprints, with business people and developers working together. This allows us to make iterations quickly and dynamically scale in accordance with user demand and feedback. This enables faster delivery of digital services and brings about cost savings,” says Koh.

“This agile approach is similar to the platform approach adopted by tech giants such as Google and Facebook. The agile methodology is critical in ensuring continuous delivery with minimal disruption to users. This is how big tech players like Facebook and Amazon perform hundreds of incremental releases in the background without any downtime,” he adds.

One way SGTS supports the adoption of agile methodology is through its Hive Agile Testing Solutions (HATS). “As a functional test automation tool for web and mobile applications, HATS promotes continuous and iterative testing. It lets users perform end-to-end testing, of a government website for example, and automates test executions which are otherwise, manually and humanly impossible,” says Koh.

Also read: Singapore’s GovTech agency aims to make e-gov services user friendly

Services built on SGTS

An example of a project hosted on the SGTS is MyCareersFuture.sg, which helps match local jobseekers to jobs relevant to their skills. The portal was developed together with Workforce Singapore, with a minimum viable product (MVP) developed in just four months and beta-tested in career service centres in another four months.

Because it was developed on SGTS, which allowed for a shorter time-to-market and reduced infrastructure cost, development cost for MyCareersFuture.sg came up to at least 40 per cent cheaper than it would have using traditional methods, which would have taken two years or more.

Another project that was delivered in less time and with a smaller budget was the Business Grants Portal (BGP). BGP was one of the first large-scale government digital services developed using Agile. With continuous integration and automated testing using hats, code quality was higher and deployment was faster and more frequent; saving developers’ time and reducing the time-to-market.

SGTS’s data sharing capabilities can perhaps be demonstrated using its APEX platform. Developers can share and use APIs across various government agencies using this centralised data sharing platform, which connects disparate systems used by agencies while centrally monitoring and managing the security of the services. This benefits not only developers but also end users.

“In the case of MyCareersFuture.sg, APEX allows for easy integration with MyInfo, the citizen’s personal data platform, so that MyCareersFuture.sg can pull information of citizens and registered businesses effortlessly. This improves the user experience, allowing job seekers to focus on their task of job application and employers who are posting a job,” says Koh.

Benefiting developers and citizens

Ultimately, because SGTS already provides the necessary infrastructure to work with, developers can focus on building — and improving — its digital services. They can exchange data across different government bodies and scale their operations based on demand without having to meander through byzantine frameworks.

“More importantly it speeds up the development of new government digital services, and helps save time and cost for government agencies,” says Koh. For citizens, they can expect a better experience through a more seamless, consistent and connected experience across government digital services and faster deployment of solutions or updates.

“GovTech is focused on applying technology that is practical and solves real pain-points for citizens. It’s neither technology for technology’s sake nor technology looking for a problem. It’s about meeting the needs of citizens in a more effective and efficient manner.”

Both public and private software developers can tap onto SGTS’s infrastructure to develop solutions.

“SGTS levels the playing field for big and small tech players. By developing on the SGTS, smaller tech players can work with us to develop and push out a product or service quickly without having to worry about building multimillion dollar technology infrastructure,” Koh concludes.

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GovTech’s first-ever STACK Developer Conference is happening on October 2-3, 2018. If you are part of the developer community and are keen to participate in developing Singapore’s Smart Nation journey, register today. Click here for more information: https://govtechstack.sg/

Stock image: 123rf.com/ Leo Wolfert

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