Ensuring Adherence to “Digital First But Not Digital Only” Approach across Government Agencies

Ms Denise Phua Lay Peng asked the Minister for Communications and Information how can the policy of “not digital only” be better enforced in all Ministries and Government-linked agencies to better support residents who are not digitally able.

Sir, there are three aspects to being "digital first but not digital only". First, agencies strive to make digital services easy to use, guided by the Digital Service Standards (DSS). Agencies design and develop digital services that are: (a) accessible and inclusive; (b) usable; and (c) relevant. To supplement agencies' own usability tests, the Government Technology Agency (GovTech) helps to identify areas of improvement for frequently used services. GovTech also provides central diagnostic tools for agencies to detect usability and accessibility issues. These, together with feedback from the public, are taken into consideration when agencies update their digital products and services.

Second, there is a conscious effort to make non-digital alternatives available to members of the public who are unable to go digital by themselves. For example, the Central Provident Fund (CPF) Board and the Housing and Development Board (HDB) provide in-person and contact centre services to assist those who have difficulty transacting online. These agency-specific service centres are complemented by seven physical ServiceSG Centres across Singapore. By housing multiple services under one roof, these ServiceSG Centres simplify and enhance citizens' experience and better implement the not-digital-only approach. ServiceSG will continue to expand the network of centres to prioritise areas with higher demand and concentrations of citizens, especially seniors. Two more centres will be established at Woodlands Civic Centre and Bukit Merah Town Central by the end of 2024 to achieve a wider outreach to citizens.

Third, we persist and continue in helping our people to pick up digital skills and keep abreast of new developments. For example, the Infocomm Media Development Authority launched the Digital Skills for Life framework in January 2024 to equip Singaporeans with the necessary knowledge, skills and attitudes to navigate the digital space, carry out daily tasks and stay safe online. To better support vulnerable groups, such as seniors, to learn basic digital skills, the SG Digital Office has also introduced initiatives, such as the Seniors Go Digital programme.

These efforts seek to enable all Singaporeans to share in the benefits of digital developments.

Sir, I thank the Senior Minister of State for his reply. Radin Mas is home to many seniors and I have often received feedback about how difficult it is for them to keep up with the new digital way of life. In fact, to our most elderly, even simple things like renewing their telephone contracts can be a frustrating experience, often having to jump through multiple digital loops and even coming to see their Member of Parliament.

I would like to ask how the Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI) intends to help seniors feel more included in our digital society beyond the Seniors Go Digital programme. At the same time, how can we also better protect our seniors as more and more of them come online, especially against scams and malware? Are there any plans to cultivate and deploy what I call "senior influencers" to better reach out to their peers, in particular, those who are still apprehensive about coming on board? In our push for digitalisation and productivity, we must ensure that our Pioneers do not feel left behind.

Sir, I thank Mr Yong for his three supplementary questions. The short answer to all three is yes. We do want to make sure that our seniors benefit from the various efforts that we are making around digitalisation and for them to then have the opportunity to go online.

We have a number of training programmes that we have explained in this House and outside. We have the Silver Digital Ambassadors as well that we train. They are peer influencers along the lines that Mr Yong spoke about. And we have spent some time and effort trying to educate all members of the public, including seniors, about how to better protect themselves as they transact online. Maintaining that trust in online transaction is important.

However, we are not insisting that they go online. And I hope that Mr Yong and other Members of this House can help to spread that message that if they choose to transact in person, if they choose to transact via other means, then we will find ways to make that possible. However, the approach around the public sector officers is to make sure that the public sector officers that help the seniors are themselves empowered by a digital backbone that makes their work as productive and efficient and as secure as possible to optimise the service they offer to the citizens.

Mr Speaker, I thank the Minister for his answer. I have two supplementary questions to raise on behalf of my Clementi residents, a number of whom are seniors who helped build the Singapore that today can digitalise.

Firstly, if I may draw his reference to a quote by former Head of Civil Service Mr Lim Siong Guan, the quote says, "Implementation is policy." Can I ask the Minister if he agrees with that and, if so, would he consider user interface, user experience as implementation, together with implementation being policy?

Secondly, can I also ask the Ministry, do our agencies track not just the uptake of digital services, but also whether there is a digital drop-off among seniors who previously accessed Government services but may now feel afraid to go online?

Lastly, can the Ministry assure us that it is also looking at the user interface of these services to minimise technical debt taken on by end users who compensate in their own time and personal effort for suboptimal user interfaces and challenging user design?

Sir, I may have miscounted and can stand corrected. I thought it was four.

I do agree that we have to make sure that we implement properly the various schemes and strategies that we have. I do agree that UI and UX, the user interface and user experience, is a key part of the implementation of the digital services. We do have some expertise amongst our public officers in designing digital user interfaces and user experiences. Some of this expertise rests within GovTech centrally, and agencies that have a large volume of digital transactions have also started to build up their expertise in this.

There is an extensive process of testing and user viability that many products go through. But even then, or I should say most importantly, after the products are made available to the public, we do pay a lot of attention to how they engage with it and seek to then improve the user interface and the user experience. This includes formal testing by engineers and teams at GovTech, developing and deploying tools that test readability, accessibility, but also then informal in terms of dealing with feedback, including through Members of the House. So, if there are specific issues around user interface and user experience, I would encourage Members of the House to let me know and we will follow up. Sometimes, the best feedback comes from our constituents, members of our family, our own elderly relatives. Rest assured, my elderly relatives do message me quite regularly about how to improve Government digital services and that is useful feedback. We take that seriously, that real-life experience and we will try to re-engineer those products to improve the experience.

We do not specifically track the digital drop-off that the Member talked about. The metrics that we have, they show an increasing acceptability and increasing engagement and increasing utilisation over time. So, it is unlikely that that represents a large number, but if there are specific instances that we can assist with, I would be more than happy to take some feedback from the Member.

Did I address all four of the Member's questions? Or three?

I would like to thank the Agency for Integrated Care as well as the CPF for being very inclusive in their services to make it accessible for our non-digitally savvy people.

I just have one micro-question. From the replies to our Meet-the-People Session appeals, I noticed that some agencies, in fact, quite a number, actually reply to our residents asking them when we have already told the agencies that these folks are not digitally savvy and they need help, personal help. The residents actually get replies from agencies, sometimes templated, asking them to go to an online portal and apply again. Then we have to scramble to find volunteers who then have to get Singpass information from our residents.

So, I thought MCI could be a facilitator to ensure that this does not happen so often because it creates a lot of frustrations on the ground.

Sir, I thank Ms Denise Phua for her micro-question. I would recommend that her residents who are in the position that she described should best be directed to a ServiceSG Centre because that is where there are staff who are able to help them conduct the transaction on their behalf or help them navigate the online space and do so in a way that perhaps gives them some confidence about the security and safety of the transaction. That is what the ServiceSG Centres are for – to assist the residents in these transactions.

There may well be a digital component to the transaction at the ServiceSG Centre and the staff there will help the resident do that or the family member who accompanies the resident. I hope that provides Ms Denise Phua an opportunity to assist the residents in that way.