User design key to making Singapore’s Culture Pass accessible to citizens

Singapore wants to make arts and cultural activities more accessible. 

The SG Culture Pass is a government initiative rolled out in September that allows Singaporeans aged 18 and above to redeem S$100 worth of credits on eligible arts and heritage experiences.  

But accessibility doesn’t just mean providing the credits, but designing the service in a way that ensures that no citizen, even those reluctant to use digital services, is left behind.  

This was the key takeaway from Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY)’s Project Director of the Culture Pass Office, Suenne Tan, who presented at GovTech Singapore’s Digital Services Awards (DSA) 2025 event on November 21. 

MCCY secured the Best Usability (Government) award at the event. 

In its fifth edition, GovTech’s DSA event recognises the agencies across both public and private sectors across 11 categories for delivering impactful digital services to the public. 

Tan highlighted making the user input a continuous conversation, as well as keeping an open mind for innovation as the key principles for developing user-centric digital services.  

Designing care beyond the interface 

Adopting a user-centric approach, the team worked with ticketing partners to make it easier for citizens to book events with their credits, and created a one-stop platform for citizens to access their credits and browse events.  

They also recognised that digital accessibility wasn’t enough to achieve universal participation, which was why the team extended the SG Culture Pass beyond the screen and into the community. 

To bridge the digital divide, Tan shared that ground ambassadors were deployed at 18 community centres and nine ServiceSG centres nationwide, providing technical support and personalised event suggestions to citizens needing assistance with the digital service. 

The MCCY team’s user research also recognised that some senior citizens preferred to engage in cultural activities as a group. This was why having a physical support structure could facilitate this by providing a common meeting point to facilitate group bookings. 

“We tested early and often,” said Tan, adding that the team tested with almost 100 citizen volunteers to continuously refine and improve the service.  

These user groups, ranging from tech-savvy youths to first-time digital users, were recruited through GovTech’s Tech Kaki community, active ageing centres and community centres.  

“We wanted to incorporate users into all aspects of designing the digital service. So, for every prototype, feature, and interaction, these aspects could be validated by end-users,” she explained.  

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Diverse perspectives through cross-functional collaboration 

“Collaboration is not just a good to have. It’s extremely essential,” Tan said. 

She commended the synergy between policy, operations and technology for the SG Culture Pass, saying that it exemplified “the best of what great collaboration could be.” 

“The policy makers would know the why, the operations teams would know the how, and the tech people would know what we can do to make all this happen,” said Tan.  

On the policy side, the MCCY team coordinated with various stakeholders to align goals and importance. For operations, they worked with the Chief Information Officer (CIO) to determine the right partners to implement this. 

Finally, the technology side involved partnering with GovTech to identify key gaps and develop user-focused solutions. 

“When the silos come down, it opens a lot of space for creative work and innovation. And that’s extremely important when we try to do something that didn’t exist before,” said Tan.  

Instead of only managing the one-stop platform, the MCCY team had to ensure that their platform was integrated with multiple, different systems operated by private ticketing partners like SISTIC and Klook.  

This meant that when a citizen books an event using any of the ticketing platforms, their booking and credit deduction could work instantly and accurately across all partners.  

WOG tools enables real-time monitoring of user-centered results 

The MCCY team actively monitored public sentiments through GovTech’s Whole-of-Government Application Analytics (WOGAA). 

WOGAA is an analytics and performance monitoring platform for Singapore public officers to monitor the performance of government websites and digital services. 

Since September, the team has obtained close to 1,600 ratings and 1,000 pieces of feedback which provided insights on areas of improvement. 

For example, when it came to navigation, users complained of the lack of a direct button to redeem the SG Culture Pass credits, which led to the MCCY team collaborating with ticketing partners on the direct button.  

The collaboration with ticketing partners has reduced navigation complaints by around 65 per cent.  

The team also utilised other GovTech’s tools like Oobee to improve accessibility for different users, SearchSG to ensure precise and up-to-date searches, as well as GovWallet to disburse money and digital credits to citizens. 

“With more than 300 events on the website and more added, we need to enable citizens who have different preferences and interests to be able to access the events, as well as ways to search for senior-, family- and accessibility-friendly events,” Tan explained.  

Beyond using smart tools to actively monitor user feedback, the MCCY team established a close feedback loop with key players in the arts and culture ecosystem, including ticketing partners, arts and heritage groups and community spaces.  

Direct user feedback helps the team to continuously identify, tweak, and improve the services, she explains.  

“For a national campaign like the SG Culture Pass, accessibility is ultimately key for us,” she said.