AT A GLANCE:
With the Public Sector evolving at a rapid pace, public service officers need to embrace and adopt new technologies to be effective and efficient in delivering services to Singapore citizens and businesses. Read Daryl’s story of how upskilling with GovTech Digital Academy has empowered him to embrace a product-centric mindset and the impact and value created for users and vendors.
BACKGROUND:
Meet Daryl Chee, an Infrastructure Engineer with the Product Delivery Office under Government Infrastructure Group (GIG) in GovTech. Daryl had always been passionate about thinking of new and better ways to empower public officers. As an Infrastructure Engineer, he explores new technologies, as well as design and implement suitable collaboration and productivity solutions that would empower Whole of Government officers to work more efficiently and effectively as they deliver services to Singapore citizens and businesses. Growing up, Daryl had been fascinated IT and how IT is integral to every industry – a sentiment that he holds true to this very day and one that inspires him.
NEED FOR UPSKILLING:
In 2022, GIG team prioritised upskilling as a key initiative for their officers as part of its efforts to transit from traditional project implementation to a product-centric delivery to keep up with the evolving business landscape and user needs. GIG worked with GovTech Digital Academy to meet the team’s upskilling priority. Read GIG’s success story here.
LEARNING JOURNEY:
Situation
Daryl and his team works closely with Tech MNCs and realised that they had evolved and embraced a product-centric mindset and this has changed the way in which they release packages, services and products to users. For example, Daryl recounts the time, when his team implemented ‘Teams’, many were resistant to change and preferred the older tool, 'Skype'.
Task
The team recognised the need to pivot – to embrace a product-centric mindset and learn how private sectors have evolved to design and package products with users’ problems in mind so as to create value for users that creates impact to agencies.
Action
The team attended a suite of Product Management programmes by GovTech Digital Academy that were contextualised to GIG’s needs to enable the transfer of learning into practice. He gained new knowledge on the traditional software defined lifecycle model as compared to product lifecycle management. He keeps the users and their problem statement at the core of every stage of the lifecycle. Most importantly, he learnt that it was ‘ok’ to change the problem statement at any time as this ensured that products delivered will always meet users’ needs that will enable easy adoption at a later stage.
Results
After attending the Product Management Programmes with GovTech Digital Academy, it has helped Daryl clarify how industry partners (Tech MNCs in particular) design and package products. This knowledge has helped the team to better align and work seamlessly with the industry partners to bring forward features that useful for users and impactful for WOG agencies rather than just going for the coolest or most popular feature. This further helps the team to manage communications of new technologies and its downstream adoption by officers with ease. Daryl says, “I realised that maybe we should have spent more time in the early days of the project to identify issues faced and focus more on how the new tool and augment the gaps in the old tool and encourage public officers to increase MS teams adoption”.
Fast forward to 2022, the team has achieved 79% adoption by WOG officers on new ‘Teams’ tool.
Daryl Chee
Infrastructure Engineer, Product Delivery Office, Government Infrastructure Group (GIG) , GovTech
NEXT STEPS:
Daryl is excited to deepen his upskilling journey with other GovTech Digital Academy programmes for e.g. Software Architecture to further value add to GovTech and Singapore Public Service.
EMBARK ON YOUR LEARNING JOURNEY:
Daryl's story is a testament to the power of investing in professional development. Keen to embark on your own learning journey?
Find out more about GovTech Digital Academy and our role in building a digital public service workforce. Browse our programmes or connect with us and take the first step to become the future-ready you :)
Be a future-ready digital practitioner and leader with GovTech Digital Academy.
