GovTech's Restructuring, Roles Redesign and Retrenchments, and Support for Affected Staff

Mr Speaker, my reply will address the questions raised by Assoc Prof Kenneth Goh, Mr Patrick Tay, Mr Louis Chua, Mr Andre Low, Mr Yip Hon Weng and Mr Sharael Taha in today's Order Paper, as well as the questions filed by Mr David Hoe1 and Mr Christopher de Souza for a subsequent Sitting, as they relate to GovTech's workforce transformation. If Members are satisfied with the reply, they may wish to withdraw their questions after this session.

I would first like to acknowledge that this is a difficult transition for the affected officers and their families.

With that in mind, let me explain what GovTech has done internally, how we intend to strengthen conviction in our public mission and how we are continuing to support our officers through this change.

The Ministry was consulted on GovTech's workforce transformation plan and we support it. The transformation will be implemented progressively over two years to give officers time to adjust. GovTech will also incorporate lessons learnt from each phase.

The workforce transformation is a necessary part of GovTech's shift from a one-off project-delivery model to a continuous product-ownership model. GovTech's workforce will grow because of this shift, but its composition will also need to change.

GovTech officers will need to take greater end-to-end responsibility for the digital products and platforms that the public interact with, while continuing to partner with the industry where vendors bring specialised expertise. Teams that own the products must not only design and build them, but must also maintain and improve them continually, to provide more reliable, secure and responsive digital services for our citizens.

GovTech is therefore hiring more software engineers, product managers, designers, data specialists, cybersecurity experts and platform engineers. However, as GovTech builds more products and operates them in-house, it will need fewer officers doing traditional project and vendor management.

GovTech anticipated this need to reshape its workforce. For several years, through natural attrition and targeted recruitment, its workforce profile has shifted, but not enough to meet our needs.

Therefore, GovTech has also invested heavily in pilots and apprenticeships to retrain existing staff for new roles or to redeploy them. But there are limits to its pace and scale. Meanwhile, technology is changing fast and GovTech must keep up, because if we fall behind, the quality of our digital products and services for our citizens will suffer.

We will retrain and redeploy as many officers as we can, but we cannot avoid having to transition out some officers. We recognise the disruption this causes to the affected officers and their families, and we will support them fully through this process.

The first phase will affect 305 GovTech officers. Of these, 102 officers have been retained or redeployed into roles where their skill sets are still required; 110 are being supported through structured job conversion and apprenticeship pathways; and 93 are being retrenched.

In deciding whether to retain, place on apprenticeship pathways or retrench officers, GovTech first assessed the job roles it needed for its future organisational and capability needs. Then, it assessed individual officers based on their competencies, domain expertise, job fit and readiness for the roles required. GovTech also consulted technology leaders in our agencies, including Chief Information Officers and Practice Leads, but it took the final workforce decisions centrally.

Among the 93 exiting officers, the largest age group is 40 to 49. This age group accounts for 42% of the exiting officers and also, 42% of the 305 affected officers. This age group is therefore not over-represented among the exiting officers. There is no significant difference in tenure between the exiting officers and those on retraining pathways. The exiting officers have served for a median of 5.4 years, compared to a median of 6.0 years for the officers on retraining pathways.

As for seniority, two-thirds of the affected officers were individual contributors and one-third of the affected officers were Team Leaders.

GovTech decided to be upfront in informing the affected officers about the transition plans, to help them evaluate possible redeployment opportunities against other options. Where there was a suitable pathway, GovTech has retrained and redeployed its officers before considering external recruitment. The apprenticeship pathways provide full salary, structured training and on-the-job learning to support officers in developing capabilities required under GovTech's future operating model.

Where there was no suitable role within GovTech, affected officers were supported in seeking opportunities in the public and private sectors. GovTech is working with the Public Service Division, the Skills and Workforce Development Agency and the National Trades Union Congress' Employment and Employability Institute to facilitate job matching and referrals. Together, we identified a good mix of more than 300 job opportunities that are relevant to the affected officers' competencies. Officers interested in these options are currently in the application or interview stages. Affected officers also receive financial and transition support, career guidance and active job placement assistance.

GovTech will take the same approach in subsequent phases. We will strive for clarity on the roles and capabilities required, assess officers fairly against those requirements, retain and retrain where suitable, and support those who are retrenched.

The outcomes of the transformation will be assessed across three areas. First, whether officers have been supported through meaningful transition pathways, including retraining, conversion and redeployment where appropriate. Second, whether GovTech has strengthened the capabilities required for its future operating model. And third, whether GovTech successfully delivers more secure, reliable and effective digital services for Government agencies and citizens.

As the plans for subsequent phases firm up, GovTech will inform the officers affected of the timelines and the implications for them. GovTech's leadership will continue to engage officers throughout the transformation and work closely with agencies to ensure that critical projects and public digital services remain supported during the transition.

To sustain staff morale, GovTech has conducted town halls and dialogues at the cluster, team and individual levels. We seek to ensure that our staff understand not just what they are building, but why it matters. This fosters a shared sense of purpose and commitment to building technology for public good.

For the wider Public Service technology workforce, mid-career professionals in project and vendor management do bring valuable and transferable experience that can serve as useful foundations for product-oriented roles. However, these officers will still need to acquire relevant skills, such as agile delivery, user-centred design, cybersecurity and knowledge of data and cloud technologies.

We recognise that technology will continue to evolve and the skills required of technology professionals will also have to evolve in tandem.

The Government is committed to building a strong pipeline of digital tech talent to meet the growing demand for digital capabilities across the public and private sectors. We will continue to support workers, including mid-career professionals, through initiatives, such as the Infocomm Media Development Authority's TechSkills Accelerator. The Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs) will also equip students with product management capabilities through coursework and internships. Within the Public Service, GovTech's Digital Academy plays a key role in building these capabilities by providing structured learning pathways and programmes on designing and managing products and platforms.

We will continue to work with the industry and IHLs to ensure that training opportunities are available for Singaporeans to reskill and upskill to take on roles in growing digital fields, including digital product management and ownership.

Yes, that is right.

Thank you. Order. Leader.

REVISION OF QUESTION TIME

(Suspension of Standing Orders)

Mr Speaker, may I seek your consent and the general assent of Members present to move that Question Time at this day's Sitting be exempted from the provisions of Standing Order No 22(1) so as to enable Questions for Oral Answer to continue until the completion of Question No 25, including supplementary questions.

I give my consent. Does the Leader have the general assent of hon Members present to so move?

Hon Members indicated assent.

Leader, please proceed.

With the consent of Mr Speaker, and the general assent of Members present,

Question put, and agreed to.

Resolved, that notwithstanding Standing Order No 22(1), Question time at this day's Sitting continue until the completion of Question No 25, including relevant supplementary questions thereon. – [Ms Indranee Rajah].

GOVTECH'S RESTRUCTUING, ROLES REDESIGN AND RETRENCHMENTS, AND SUPPORT FOR AFFECTED STAFF

(Resumption for supplementary questions)

And now, we can take supplementary questions. Assoc Prof Kenneth Goh.

I thank the Member for his questions. We will continue to do our best in talent attraction and retention. We will explain the new roles that we are hiring for which are also closely aligned to the skills that are being taught in our IHLs today.

And related to the second question on the innovative culture, we will have to convince all of our existing GovTech's staff and also new recruits that the way we approach our work in GovTech is in service of Singapore. So, it is not about being careful or innovative for the sake of doing so, but it has to be done because that is the only way that we create and deliver better services for Singapore.

I thank the Member for his questions. Perhaps, I will share two lessons from this first phase.

First, on how officers experienced the transition itself. We have found that officers who have to spend an extended period on a pathway towards exit, even with the support in place, it did create prolonged uncertainty and anxiety for both them and also for the teams that they are in. So, going forward GovTech will aim to shorten this period, wherever possible, so that officers reach clarity on their next steps more quickly rather than remaining in a state of limbo for longer than necessary.

Another lesson we have learned is that it is on how this transformation can be understood or may have been understood outside of GovTech. Some of the messaging around this restructuring may have given the impression that GovTech intends to move all work in-house and not use vendors anymore. That is not the case. Vendors continue to play an important role, particularly where they bring specialised expertise that complements our in-house teams.

What is changing is that GovTech is taking greater ownership of the products that we build and the platforms that we deliver. We will be clearer on this distinction in how we communicate future phases, so that our partners and the industry understand exactly what is and what is not changing.

On the second question on contract staff, we do have contract staff across GovTech in different roles – in cybersecurity, in data management, in user design and so on. For contract officers who are in project and vendor management roles, then it is more likely that they will be affected by the workforce transformation plans going forward.

Sorry, can the Member repeat the third question?

Those above 50, that is right. On the proportion of affected workers above the age of 50, I believe the number is about 30%.

I thank the Member for his questions. As I explained earlier, we have tried in different ways through apprenticeships, pilots and training programmes to convert as many of our staff as possible, and also to allow natural attrition to take place. Unfortunately, it is the pace and the scale of the changes that have been that have required us to take the current steps.

I think for many of our affected officers, we also want to give them a chance to consider whether the conversion to these new rules is something they want to do, because their competencies and their skillsets are still in demand, both in other Public Service agencies as well as in the private sector. So, we want to avail to them all opportunities possible and let them consider if there are opportunities that match their skillsets as well.

I thank the Member for his question. I will reverse the order in how I respond.

We chose to inform the affected officers early after we completed our internal capability assessments and then determine which roles we needed going forward. We wanted to also give them early and direct communication because we think it serves to offices better.

Matching an officer to a role in other Government agencies is not something GovTech can do unilaterally by just comparing a resume against a list of vacancies. Every receiving agency and team have their own hiring processes which include interviews and assessments for fit. And an officer has to actively take part in that process for a match to happen at all. So, we wanted to do the communication early, give them some time and support to explore all options. We curated the list of more than 300 job opportunities and some of the offices are now in the application and interview stages.

All 93 officers are still on GovTech payroll. What we have done is to give them enough time after the notification to let them do both work handover and also look for alternative opportunities around.

I also just want to give a shout-out to all of them. Many of them are focusing very much on the handover of the work and some even tell us that they will do that first before they look around for opportunities elsewhere. We, in GovTech, are extremely grateful to them because they have helped us build up our digital products and services over the years.

We will continue to give them support for as long as they need and we intend to monitor all of them, all 93 of them, and any future GovTech officers who are retrenched, we intend to monitor their progress through the job placement efforts, to make sure that they have a good landing.

I thank the Member for his questions. Yes, GovTech will continue to invest in the skills of our officers.

Just to give you a sense of what apprenticeships look like and how we retrain and invest in our officers, our apprenticeships that we run for officers that have to go into new roles, they run from between 12 and 18 months. They are conducted on a full-time basis within a product team. Officers gain practical experience in the role that they have been mapped to. Every apprentice is given is an assigned mentor, clear learning objectives and they have regular developmental check-ins at key milestones throughout the 12 to 18 months, and then they go through a conversion assessment at the end of their apprenticeship period.

This is extremely resource-intensive but also demonstrates our commitment to ensure that all suitable officers who are put through these pathways do have a good outcome at the end of it.

The second question on whether or not it is a structural change in capabilities, I think overall, we try to explain the shift we are making towards product management and away from traditional project and vendor management roles. We are not moving 100%. We do recognise that there are still many projects that are being managed with vendors and we also value the expertise that industry and vendors bring. I think, overall across the industry, while we do see some shift towards more product management roles, there is clear recognition, whether in the public or private sectors, that vendors remain a key partner in our digital ecosystem. And therefore, going forward, we still expect to work very, very closely with them.

As for AI and the technologies and the benefits that AI will bring, we think that they can be brought on even as we move into product management, as long as we ensure that our product managers and software engineers have a good grounding in AI than any future products they build through a product management model can have AI already infused in them.

I thank the Member for his questions.

I think a proper treatment on how we will use AI in GovTech and across the Public Service will require a separate question and debate on its own. But I think, as I explained earlier, we want to make sure that all of our GovTech officers have a good foundation in AI first of all, so that as they build the existing products, as they improve, maintain the existing products, they are able to infuse some benefits of AI into these services.

I also want to end off by saying that transformation is never easy. And this is not a story about GovTech needing fewer people who care about Public Service, it is about GovTech needing more people equipped to build and own the technology that Singaporeans depend on in the long run. We build and we build for Singapore. We will not lose sight of it. That is GovTech's mission before this transformation and it remains true today.