Five citizen-led sustainability pilots move towards launch

Can the state of public toilet cleanliness be “the next Singapore River Story”? That’s the moonshot goal that one group of citizens in Singapore, who have spent the past three months working on a data platform to crowdsource feedback on public toilets, have been aspiring towards.

On August 17, Singapore’s Open Government Products (OGP) concluded an eight-week accelerator that supported five citizen groups in launching and scaling pilot projects aimed at addressing environmental challenges, the first such accelerator programme of its kind.

This followed a hackathon organised by OGP, an experimental tech team housed within GovTech Singapore, which saw five teams emerging as finalists for their prototypes.

During the accelerator, the teams received funding of up to S$100,000 (US$76, 000) from OGP and SG Eco Fund, a fund administered by the Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment to support environmental solutions, mentorship by tech and sustainability experts, and a series of workshops and sessions.

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“We do not have a monopoly on good ideas, we don’t even have a monopoly on understanding the problems. So being able to reach out to a far wider group of stakeholders, getting everyone involved, is a very important part of acknowledging this reality,” said Singapore’s Minister for Digital Development and Information Josephine Teo at the Build for Good Accelerator finale.

She later referred to the accelerator as “support infrastructure” for sustainable solutions. 

Forging partnerships, refining products 

During the finale, the project teams spoke about how the accelerator enabled them to build partnerships with players in the existing ecosystem, refine products in response to feedback, and launch the initial phases of their solutions.

One such team, Koel, which aims to create an app that can identify animal sounds to speed up biodiversity monitoring and support environmental impact assessments (EIA), shared how they partnered with Singapore’s National Parks Board (NParks) to run a pilot analysing audio data at the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve.

They also partnered with Mandai Nature to record bird audio and refine their machine learning model, and connected with Arkadiah, a nature tech company, which expressed interest in adopting the tool to better conduct EIAs. EIAs are usually carried out to evaluate the impact of a development project.

Similarly, RemediSG, a project that built an online platform to redistribute excess unused medication to needy recipients, identified potential healthcare donors and recipient organisations and saw through its first distributions during the accelerator.

They were also able to clear their redistribution process with the Health Sciences Authority, the country’s health regulation authority, speeding up their launch process.

Speaking to GovInsider, members of RemediSG shared that being part of the accelerator initiative made it easier for them to approach potential partners and learn from entrepreneurs and startup founders on product development.

The teams also spoke about their plans beyond the accelerator, such as further scaling, future product development, and securing more partners.

Addressing sustainability challenges

The five groups tackled key environmental issues that Singapore faces, such as food waste, coastal litter, and public toilet cleanliness. Participants could either choose to work on problem statements developed by government agencies or develop their own problem statement to tackle.

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For example, RemediSG’s project aims to address the environmental impact of the healthcare sector, which accounts for 4.4 per cent of global carbon emissions. Two of the four RemediSG team members work in the healthcare sector, and their routine observations of excess medical waste inspired them to participate in the hackathon.

“On a regular basis, we see [medical] waste being discarded firsthand,” said team member Audrey Kon, a self-taught software engineer who works as a Senior Nurse Clinician as her day job.

“We wanted to see how we can change a little bit and reduce the impact,” added Elton Tay, who works as a doctor.

Another group, CoastalClear, seeks to better coordinate voluntary beach cleanups, a common sight on Singapore’s coastlines, through a predictive data platform that can point volunteers to areas which need more frequent cleaning.

Not all teams are turning to digital solutions: one team, SUSFeed, is upcycling food waste to create innovative fish feed for ornamental fish and food fish. 

Government-citizen collaborations

The accelerator builds on a broader trend of government agencies both in Singapore and beyond running hackathons to crowdsource solutions for public good problems.

OGP has been running annual hackathons for its staff since 2021 and began running citizen hackathons in 2023, which saw the first iteration of Build for Good. Agencies such as VITAL, the government’s corporate shared services unit, have also run hackathons for staff.

Other countries have tapped on hackathons to drive public technology efforts. Taiwan runs an annual Presidential Hackathon, which aims to bring together experts, data scientists, citizens, and the international community to tap on the government’s open data to solve societal issues, with a strong focus on sustainability.

In Europe, countries like Poland and Lithuania organise regular hackathons as part of their govtech efforts, GovInsider reported previously.