Credit: Pixabay When the Government Digital Service first signed a collaboration agreement with its Singaporean counterpart, Theresa May was prime minister, the first case of Covid-19 was still six months away, and the England women’s football team lost 1-0 in a Brighton stadium where 10,000 tickets remained unsold. For good and for ill, a lot has changed since then. But the relationship between GDS and GovTech Singapore has endured. The initial memorandum of understanding between the two agencies was recently renewed for a further three-year term, with the aim of extending and strengthening their co-operation. Since 2019, the two countries have engaged in “knowledge exchanges” focused on how digital services can be made accessible and inclusive, and designed around citizens’ lives – rather than the structures of government. Notes have also been compared on the two nations’ cloud strategies and work has begun on forging a path to mutual recognition of government-backed frameworks for digital-identity documents, while GDS has supported a review of data security processes in Singaporean public-sector entities. Visiting London to sign the renewed MoU, Kok Ping Soon, chief executive of GovTech Singapore, tells PublicTechnology that, while collaborative with one another, the two agencies’ approaches in the last few years have proceeded down “parallel paths”. GDS, which is currently engaged in creating the first-ever GOV.UK app, through which users will ultimately be able to access a comprehensive range of government services, would appear to be a little less far down the road than its Singaporean counterpart. There are, of course, contextual reasons that make progress more complicated in this country. Singapore is a city state of about six million people, with a government that has been led by the same, socially conservative party for 63 years and counting. “People who are digitally excluded… can now walk in into the ServiceSG centres, and have the same sort of experience as the citizens would get on the digital shop front.” Kok Ping Soon, GovTech Singapore Politics in the UK is, clearly, somewhat knottier. And, whoever is in in charge, it is typically set against a wider landscape soundtracked by a constant low hum of anti-government dissent and protest – something which has typically accompanied the failed attempts of various administrations through the years to introduce mandatory national identity cards. The incumbent national ID system of Singapore, meanwhile, has played a key role in underpinning the digital services of its government, and enabling citizens to connect to them – as well as to a growing array of private sector entities. The Singaporean government’s LifeSG app, which offers more than a hundred services, grouped by areas such as health, parenting, and retirement – rather than by government department – was first launched in 2018. “We recognise that citizens do not interact with government very regularly,” says Dominic Chan, head of GovTech’s digital identity programme. “They will usually come to us at a key moment of life… and, in those moments, we want to make it as seamless and frictionless as possible for them.” Prior to creating the LifeSG platform, research conducted by the tech agency identified three main difficulties citizens previously faced in their interactions with the state, the first of which is the departmental boundaries that create siloed services. The second issue was “poor discoverability” of the services they required. Chan says: “We asked citizens: ‘how do you search for certain services when you need them?’, and the most common response we always got was Google. Which is okay, and we can, of course, take the approach of trying to get better at SEO (search engine optimisation). But, given the current landscape – where there are so many scams or phishing sites out there – I think there's a certain amount of risk that we expose citizens to, if they try to figure this out themselves. If we can put all content together in a trusted place – and be able to make that easier for them to discover – I think that's really much better.” Bringing services together in one place also allows for tighter integration which, in turn, enables greater personalisation for users, allowing the government “to present the right information to citizens at the right time,” according to Chan. This then helps to address the third issue previously faced by service users, he adds. Three years Length of the initial MoU between GDS and GovTech Singapore – and the length of time for which it has been renewed 4.2 million Number of users of the SingPass digital identity app, equating to 83% of all possible registrants nationwide 100% Singaporean government target to be achieved by next year for electronic completion of government incoming and outgoing payments 1,700 Number of services – delivered across 460 government and commercial organisations – that use the SingPass digital identity for user login “A lot of times, citizens are not aware that they're entitled to certain benefits, or there are certain existing services that they could use that would make life a lot easier for them,” he says. The GovTech exec points to the example of the government’s current suite of digital services for new parents – which did not exist 14 years ago, when Chan and his wife had their first child. “We had to figure out where to go for registration. So, I went downstairs, and I had to get a nurse to help me fill out the forms and tell me where to submit them,” he says. “And, thereafter, I wasn't aware until my friends told me that, actually, we were entitled to a ‘baby bonus’ [payment] I had to go to another agency to apply for. And, before doing that, I had to apply for a child development account. All of this actually took a lot of navigation and asking friends. “But, fast forward to today: this whole process can be completed in 15 minutes, in the comfort of the ward – where parents should be spending more time with their child, rather than grappling with government services. These three processes are now all woven together in a single place: LifeSG.” ID high Underpinning the cross-government services app is the SingPass digital identity system, which GovTech claims has 4.2 million registered users. The system is powered by information from the country’s national identity card programme which citizens are required to register for within a year of their 15th birthday. SingPass App registrants can use the digital login platform to access 1,700 services delivered by 460 organisations, across both government and the private sector. Again, this is an area where the UK has similar ambitions – but is yet to make quite as much progress. The GDS-developed One Login system is intended to provide government departments with a single unified means through which citizens can access services. It will eventually replace an existing patchwork of almost 200 separate accounts that can be used to log in to services, incorporating 44 different sign-in methods. One Login is due to go live this month, on a pilot basis, with its first five services. Departments are required to draw up an adoption roadmap by March 2023, and the target is for comprehensive uptake across government by 2025. Even if it is a few years behind its partner in the MoU alliance, the good news for the UK is that, if it makes good on its ambition of establishing a universal digital identity, the benefits for citizens and government can proliferate from there, Chan says. Embedded within SingPass is a MyInfo profile for each citizen, which enables people to view – and, where applicable – edit all the information held on them by various parts of government. This include data such as addresses, passport information, demographic details, and family relationships. Updates can be automatically shared across agencies and, with the user’s content, can also be used as part of authentication services in areas such as financial services. “MyInfo is like a sister product of SingPass,”