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Q: As a Deputy Director with GovTech, how would you describe your typical workday?
HY: There are five main tranches to my work: developing products, getting internal people on board, getting users on board, project management and talking to your people one on one to make sure they’re developing.
The core work is figuring out how to develop products. This involves everything that goes with software engineering and product design – talking to users, figuring out user interface design, figuring out software architecture, and the actual writing of the code.
The second part is working the bureaucracy. The government has to account for public monies so there are processes to clear before you can push out a product. If it were a normal tech company, you could build a product and say “Here you go” and it would be pushed out. It’s not like that here. You’ve got to clear internal processes, and get people on board – and because not everyone has the same understanding of what is good, you need to spend some time convincing people of your idea. This is true in any organisation – especially so here.
The third part is figuring out your user strategy. With the product and internal stakeholders settled, now you need to get your external stakeholders on board. For Parking.sg, it’s about identifying your key user groups and figuring out how to engage them. For Data.gov.sg, it’s about figuring out who the people who care about data are in Singapore and reaching out to them to get them to use your product. For Forms.sg, it’s about trying to identify users in government agencies. A product – no matter how well-built – if not used, is nonexistent.
These are the three main chunks of work necessary to get a product out to the public, and then you have running the team itself, which involves two main things. The first is basic project management: keeping track of what needs to be done, keeping everyone informed of what’s happening, and trying not to be too heavy-handed. The next is making sure that the interests of the people on your team are being taken care of, that their careers are being developed, and that they don’t feel blocked in their work.
https://advisory.sg/2018/09/03/conversations-with-li-hongyi/