Open Government Products

1 Month, 21 Tech Solutions for the Public Good, 100 Passionate Builders: Build for Good Hackathon 2024 Last Saturday marked the culmination of our third and largest Build for Good hackathon, showcasing 21 impactful tech solutions addressing diverse issues from eldercare and healthcare to sustainability and inclusivity. 📆 Throughout the month, our participants dove deep into their chosen problem areas, refining their ideas through workshops, user testing and mentorship from OGP and better.sg. Additionally, with support from the Singapore Government Partnerships Office, teams had the opportunity to consult a wider group of subject matter experts across government to better refine their ideas and explore collaborations. 🎙 The finale showcased these efforts in a dynamic science fair format. Teams pitched and showcased their prototypes to an esteemed panel of judges, along with Mr Alvin Tan — Minister of State, Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth & Ministry of Trade and Industry, government and non-government representatives. Congratulations to the following teams for emerging as the top 5: • Birdhouse — a motion sensor, coupled with a monitoring system that provides real-time monitoring of seniors’ activity levels in the comfort of their homes. • CareCompass+ — a platform that provides personalised, step-by-step recommendations for caregivers based on the needs of the recipients. • EBI — a companion application that helps mental health support seekers describe their issues more quickly and seamlessly with any therapist. • Let’s Kaypoh — a platform that rallies the community to check-in and help out socially isolated elderly, to reduce the reliance on AACs and befriender organisations. • OhmSweetOhm — a web app that helps homeowners estimate their household energy consumption costs and encourages energy saving. They will receive funding and go through an 8-week accelerator programme which will provide them with more resources to launch and scale their solutions. 👏 Check out all the 21 impactful solutions at build.gov.sg. A heartfelt thank you to all builders for your dedication to improving Singapore through technology, and we look forward to seeing solutions go beyond the hackathon to make a real difference in Singapore ✨ Thank you to all our judges: Hongyi Li, Yumin Wong, Aakash Kapoor, M. Ibnur Rashad (一诺) 🕊️ Social Technopreneur and Sustainability Inventor, Matin Mohdari, 🇬🇧 🇸🇬 Cyprian Wong

Did you know that #Singapore has taken an innovative approach in empowering #publicservice with #AI? 🕒 With over 60,000 registered users and 20,000 weekly active users, the Pair Suite developed by Open Government Products has saved public officers an estimated 46% of their time on administrative tasks! What lessons can we learn from Singapore's journey in harnessing AI for public sector impact? ✨ It is important to cultivate an ecosystem for AI innovation and create an environment that prioritizes innovation, experimentation, and learning 🔄 Adopting a product-first mentality centered around a continuous loop of delivering good products that actual users adopt and building specific domain and product capabilities to fuel product development can be beneficial 🔍 Effective learning and adoption are crucial for successful implementation of AI tools 🤖 Constantly perform applied Research & Development to ensure that the most applicable and advanced technologies are applied More in our latest blog by Bryan Ong Wen Xi and Gary C.: https://lnkd.in/g5uczcUV

When we started the journey with #buildforgood, hacking together a prototype that eventually would become RemediSG, never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined it would lead to me sharing a stage with Singapore’s senior leaders at the official launch of Smart Nation 2.0. It feels surreal but Elton Tay, Madeleine Koh, Zacary Tan and I are just happy and proud to have made it to this point. For me personally, this is an incredibly rewarding movement and the result of a several year long journey with ups and downs. Almost 6 years ago, after finishing my masters, I decided to take a break from my healthcare career to learn more about technology. It had become crystal clear to me that, whether I liked it or not, more and more technology was going to enter every aspect of our lives, and the job - and often, when technology is built by outsiders, the results for us on the ground were less than optimal. I really wanted to change that, but to be able to have a seat at the table with technology, I was going to have to learn it. I took my first baby steps in tech with a programming bootcamp. Unfortunately the experience I had as a female, mid career professional in a program full of male, much younger tech enthusiasts was … not great. In fact, it made me temporarily question my choice for a career break. Ultimately, instead of quitting, I chose to join TechLadies to do something about that - help other women getting into technology have a better start. For me, this was also the start into tech volunteering. From there I got involved with better.sg , learning more and more about technology, making new friends and expanding my horizon. The Covid hit and healthcare professionals were needed and I decided to sign up to help with dormitory testing operations and at NCID to do my part. This eventually led me back into healthcare, joining Woodlands Health and doing my tiny part launching Singapore’s latest hospital. When the opportunity arose this year to join the latest iteration of Build For Good, I reunited with some of the people I met during my volunteering journey and, for the first time, took the role of the sole software developer on a project: RemediSG.com, our medication donation platform, is meant to address a real problems we see day to day in the field. When we set out to build it, we did not know what to expect, but with the amazing support from the BFG team (Shannen, Cheryl, Yihan, Alwyn - thank you!) and the good people at Open Government Products , we somehow ended up as one of the finalists and I ended up, for all of us, on a stage with Singapore’s most senior leaders. It’s humbling, it’s dizzying, it’s rewarding and for me personally, it validates that choice six years ago to take the plunge into the unknown world of tech and bring the experience back into healthcare. #mddi #smartnationsg

Our government is working with our community to come up with solutions to ground issues like at risk seniors, scams and mental wellness. This weekend, I got to #geekout with our innovators at our Build for Good 2024 Hackathon Finale! 🚀💻 ❤️🔥 Our innovators are passionate about building tech solutions to tackle community issues, and have done so in just 4 weeks. From Team Heart Hacker's Birdhouse, a non-intrusive IoT solution for continuous monitoring of seniors' activity at home with AI-powered personalised insights, to Team AreYouOk's EBI, Emotional Baggage Interface, a companion application for mental health support seekers - the creativity was off the charts! ✨🤝 This hackathon is more than just a competition. It is a collaboration, between citizens, residents and public agencies who worked together to develop tech solutions that can improve lives. 🧑🧑🧒🧒 Open Government Products and the Singapore Government Partnerships Office partnered for the first time to bring government agencies and citizens together. It involved - 100 participants, 10+ ministry families, 50+ user testers, and hours of mentoring. A special shoutout to better.sg for bringing in volunteers who provided invaluable guidance to the builders and to all our mentors and judges! Super excited to pilot many of these innovations on the ground 🚀 👉About Build for Good: www.build.gov.sg 👉Partner government for public good: www.sgpo.gov.sg Our SG - Home of Forward SG #BuildforGood #OGP #SGPO #BeTheChangeSG #TechforPublicGood Dawn Yip Matin Mohdari Hongyi Li Aakash Kapoor 🇬🇧 🇸🇬 Cyprian Wong M. Ibnur Rashad (一诺) 🕊️ Social Technopreneur and Sustainability Inventor Yumin Wong Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY)

Join us and test over 20 tech solutions built by passionate teams in our Build for Good programme. Your feedback is crucial in developing solutions that can truly impact our community. Sign up via https://lnkd.in/gKmHj7bB by 12 Sept, and we’ll reach out to confirm your participation!

𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗲𝗲! We’ve kicked off another run of Build for Good in collaboration with the Singapore Government Partnerships Office (SGPO)! This time, we have 100 participants who will spend a month building tech solutions to tackle various issues such as healthcare and wellbeing, supporting the elderly, youth and education, and more. 🔥 The kickoff week included a fireside chat on building impactful tech solutions in one month, featuring past Build for Good participants Ong Zhi Xuan (member of the winning team, NoteFlow), Audrey K. (member of the winning team, RemediSG), and our product manager Jan Donyada, who built Kampung Spirit (kampungspirit.gov.sg). 📚 We also ran a Human Library segment featuring 20 experts from government and non-government organisations, where participants discussed issues faced in Singapore today, such as undetected senior deaths, mental health challenges, social isolation, fighting scams, and more. Dawn Yip, Coordinating Director of MCCY, also provided context on Singapore’s social compact and areas for co-creation between the government and citizens. 🧠 Participants were then guided in scoping and validating their problem statements through a workshop led by our UX researcher Fiona Pay. They also learned from our product manager, Yi Zhuan Foong, about accessing national datasets and APIs through data.gov.sg, with examples of public co-creation use cases. It has been an action-packed week for the Build for Good teams, and we can’t wait to see the tech solutions they’ll come up with! #buildforgood #techforpublicgood

𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗚𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗔𝗰𝗰𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿: 𝗗𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴, 𝗽𝗶𝗹𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗹𝗮𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝘁 𝗯𝘆 𝗰𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘇𝗲𝗻 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺𝘀 Last Saturday, 5 winning teams from Build for Good Environment completed our 8-week accelerator to develop, pilot and launch solutions for public good. After having completed the month-long Build for Good hackathon in collaboration with SG Eco Fund, the teams underwent workshops, sharings by startup founders and industry experts, and mentoring, to hone their solutions and run pilots with various organisations from the public, private and non-profit sectors that support environment, sustainability and conservation efforts. Minister for Digital Development and Information, Mrs Josephine Teo , was our Guest-of-Honour and shared that “We do not have a monopoly on good ideas. We don't even have a monopoly on understanding the problems completely, so being able to reach out to a far wider group of stakeholders and getting everyone involved is a very important part of acknowledging this reality”. Congrats to our teams for having dedicated their passion and skills to tackle environment and sustainability issues through technology! We look forward to everyone’s progress and continued impact! Catch the accelerator finale documentary video here: https://lnkd.in/g3DCVMbc #buildforgood #environment #techforpublicgood Audrey K. Madeleine Koh Zacary Tan Elton Tay Ervin Cheng Ritwik Jha Jackson Ng Indraneel P. Nazrul Syahmi M. Vaelyn Luo Krithika Prasad Tan Eu Zin Emmanuel Oh Shawn Sim Bernard Heng Benecia Tang Tan Jun-En Javier Yuen Sheng Azad Akim Ahamed

The newly-enhanced ScamShield app now lets you check suspicious calls, websites, and messages (SMS, Telegram, and WhatsApp) to know if they’re scams! 🚫 Together with improved blocking and filtering of scam calls and SMSes, the app offers better protection against scams for you and your loved ones. Download or update to the new ScamShield app from an official app store today! 🔗 More info at https://lnkd.in/gbMqf6Zv

Recently, during the final phase of the 'Build For Good' hackathon, a citizen open innovation initiative by Open Government Products, I was invited to deliver a speech at Lazada One on my sustainability innovation journey, and had the privilege to guide the top five innovation teams on crafting sustainable solutions using tech, ranging from an application using AI to identify bird calls to redistribution of unused medication and medical supplies. Additionally, I was invited to return to my alma mater to inspire the next generation of innovators in the Raffles Global Studies Programme. This time, I focused my sharing on the importance of becoming a 'Renaissance Person in the 21st Century' and how that differs from the age of Leonardo da Vinci. Thank you very much, Raffles Institution, for this opportunity ❤️ When I started GUILD Asia | Ground-Up Innovation Labs for Development, I wanted to nurture the spirit and belief that innovation isn't just about new gadgets and algorithms — it's about rethinking our approach to problems and solutions, from singular to embracing infinite possibilities, be they global challenges or everyday inefficiencies 🌏 Our motto 'Invent for Impact' aims to instigate change by fostering creativity and exploration in all community segments. Through programmes like our invention bootcamps and STEM ground-up initiatives, we ignite the innovative spirit within individuals, preparing them to tackle not just the challenges of today but also those of the infinite future. This #InfinityDay, I wish all innovators, groundbreakers and changemakers the best in exploring the infinite futures that lie ahead of us. As Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story likes to say: "To infinity and beyond!" PS. Spot my Floating Chinampas invention 🌾 😄 #GroundUp #Renaissance #OpenInnovation #sustainability #innovation #education #empowerment