Citizen-centred leadership helps governments buffer against uncertainty

In a world where uncertainty was the new certainty, what would be the best way forward for public sector leaders who have been tasked with governance and policy framing? 

Speakers at this year’s Festival of Innovation (FOI) 2026 opening panel discussion on March 3, Governing Through Uncertainty: Innovation, Inclusion and Leadership for the Next Era, shared different perspectives but were unanimous that the way forward was through empathy, citizen-centred leadership, and collaborative frameworks. 

As Malaysia’s International Trade and Industry (MITI)’s former Deputy Minister and Taylor University’s Adjunct Professor, Ong Kian Ming, put it, governance must begin with understanding different stakeholders and the citizens, empathising with their needs before rushing in with solutions.  

“Without a human touch, even well-designed policies risk losing legitimacy and failing to land with the people they are meant to serve,” noted Ong. 

Home Team Science & Technology Agency (HTX)’s Deputy Director xDigital, Matthew Chua, who moderated the session, noted that to scale innovation, public sector leaders must be comfortable working collaboratively across institutions, open to experimentation, and able to turn peer pressure from competing agencies into a momentum for reform. 

Maldives’ former Minister of State for Environment, Climate Change and Technology, Mohamed Shareef, noted that uncertainty used to be something leaders “managed around” but today, they must govern through it. 

“For small states [like the Maldives], that means doing two things at once: getting very good at delivering today’s services and meeting current expectations, while simultaneously building the capacity to adapt to a fundamentally unknowable future.  

“Traditional three- or five-year planning cycles are no longer sufficient, even for those like me who have led 20-year planning efforts,” Shareef noted. 

Built for a slower era 

Agreeing with Shareef on the need to change government planning cycles, Tony Blair Institute of Global Change (TBI) Singapore’s Senior Policy Advisor, PeiChin Tay, said most governments were built for a slower era.  

“Policy is still often made, implemented and reviewed in multi‑year cycles, with budgets set every three to five years. In a world of rapid shocks and constant disruption, this is no longer sufficient,” Tay noted.  

To “leap through uncertainty,” governments needed to spot problems early, be proactive, and continuously monitor situations and outcomes, she added.

Tay noted that technology, particularly artificial intelligence (AI), could help by improving “trend detection, forecasting and real-time monitoring”, shifting policymaking from periodic reviews to continuous adjustment. 

A state of permanent disruption 

ASEAN Economic Community’s Deputy Secretary-General, Satvinder Singh, took the view that crises were no longer episodic but a state of “permanent disruption”. 

“Rather than thinking in short cycles, regional bodies must anchor themselves in long-term planning, such as the ASEAN Community Vision 2045”, he said. 

Singh noted that to bring different ASEAN economies on board for the Digital Economy Framework Agreement (DEFA), which promised to unlock US$2 trillion (S$2.54 trillion) in economic benefits for the region, negotiators had to use the data to “show the money” and prove that lower-income economies would benefit the most on a per-capita basis.  

“This evidence-based framing flipped the narrative from ‘these benefits only the advanced members’ to ‘these lifts everyone’, enabling all 10 countries to move forward without asking for discounts or opt-outs,” Singh noted. 

Cognitive sovereignty 

On what less developed and small countries should do, Shareef said political leadership needed to exercise “cognitive sovereignty”. 

He said well-meaning aid architecture for smaller countries, offered by multilateral institutions, often meant external partners arriving with polished, pre-packaged solutions.  

“While often brilliant, these can lead governments to outsource their thinking and, in turn, their ability to decide their own futures,” Shareef said.  

He added that small states needed to remain vigilant about who was doing the thinking, what was being built, and “whose hands ultimately control their innovation”.  

Sovereignty in the AI era was not just about data centres and models, but about retaining the “capacity to think and choose independently”, he said. 

Small is beautiful 

Shareef also challenged the assumption that small size was a constraint for innovation.  

“If a country is no bigger than a mid-sized town elsewhere, it can treat the entire nation as a testbed, moving more nimbly and experimenting at a scale larger countries can’t match,” he said. 

The question for small states, therefore, was not how to imitate big economies, but how to “reframe smallness as strength” by innovating more intentionally, Shareef said. 

This required understanding clearly what they [the countries] were building and protecting and designing institutions for a fast-changing world, he said.  

“Small states do not need to innovate less ambitiously; only more deliberately and on their own terms,” Shareef added. 

Providing air cover for innovation 

TBI’s Tay observed that governments that successfully institutionalised innovation required a mandate from the senior leadership, as this subsequently created a “ripple effect” across the whole of government.  

“This often involved locating national AI or digital efforts in the centre of government, such as the Prime Minister’s Office or Cabinet Office and integrating them into the core delivery machine, rather than treating them as peripheral pilots in a single Information and Communications Technology (ICT) ministry or innovation lab,” Tay said.  

Without the right digital and organisational foundations, pilots stay pilots and never scale, she added. 

Echoing Tay’s comments, Taylor University’s Ong said government innovation was driven less by technology and more by mindset and behaviour. 

Policymakers need entrepreneurial flexibility, a willingness to work across political divides and tap external expertise, along with the ability to communicate authentically with all stakeholders, he said.  

The panellists converged on the idea that empowered, values-driven public servants, backed by regional cooperation, were essential to building resilient institutions for an unpredictable future.