For the first time since it was first published a decade ago, there will be no hard copies of the Singapore Public Sector Outcomes Review (SPOR), a biennial stocktake of the sector’s work.
This year’s report, coordinated by the Ministry of Finance (MOF), has gone fully digital.
It shows incomes in Singapore have risen and inequality has fallen in the past five years, among other indicators of progress.
A seven-strong team at the MOF have tried to keep things simple by placing the information under two broad categories — citizens and businesses.
They worked with 15 other Ministries and their Statutory Boards to develop the information on the SPOR website.
Permanent Secretary for Finance, Tan Ching Yee (pictured) said interested citizens could jump around on the website looking at things they were interested in, and could skip the rest.
“There is a stronger focus on outcomes in the report,” Ms Tan said.
“Instead of saying we had rolled out this new scheme, or cut down a certain number of steps, we took a more deliberate effort to emphasise the ‘so what?’ aspect — such as the fact that one can start a business in Singapore within 11 days,” she said.
Ms Tan said the changes reflected the Public Service’s digital transformation, which had sped up due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It is hard to imagine the Public Service going back to life as it was before,” the Permanent Secretary said.
“Many things that we thought we couldn’t do, like having virtual meetings as a norm, became the default mode during the circuit-breaker,” she said.
Singapore, 4 December 2020
