Jacelyn Poh Xin Yi, Manager (Integration), People's Association, Singapore

1) What does public service mean to you? Can you share more about your role in the public sector?

Public service, to me, is the privilege of doing work that genuinely matters to people's everyday lives.

The best public servants are stewards who serve with heart, not just competence. You have to care about the people your work touches. 

At PA's Integration Division, I foster connections between residents of all backgrounds, creating spaces where people feel moved to participate, show up for one another, and build something together.

Every programme we run, every conversation we facilitate, and every moment we create for people to meet and connect is a small step towards a more caring and united Singapore. 

2) Tell us about a project you championed. What impact did it have on the community?

At a recent PA hackathon, my team tackled a problem quietly affecting hundreds of new staff every year.

New hires posted to our Constituency Offices (COs) were struggling to find and learn the systems they needed before formal training was even available. 

Roughly half of all new CO hires annually were affected, placing heavy reliance on already stretched supervisors. 

Our solution was an AI chatbot, a single intelligent point of contact available 24/7 to answer system queries, guide staff through access procedures, and direct them to training resources.

Instead of hunting through manuals or waiting for a colleague, new staff could receive immediate, personalised guidance from day one. 

No one should be left behind, and that applies not just to the communities we serve, but to the staff serving them. When we invest in our own people, we strengthen the entire chain of service.

We won first place, and the real win for me was knowing this could ease the anxiety so many new CO staff quietly experience when they first join. 

3) As a young professional, how has your unique background or perspective allowed you to identify a solution that others in your organisation might have overlooked?

My background in business and social enterprise taught me to ask who is not in the room, and why.

That mindset shapes how I approach integration. It is easy to design programmes for residents who are already engaged.

The harder question is how we reach those who are more hesitant, the new resident who does not yet know their neighbours, or the long-time resident who has not had reason to connect with someone different from themselves. 

My hospitality background added another layer. In hospitality, the difference between a good event and a memorable one comes down to invisible details, how people are welcomed, whether the flow feels natural, whether every guest feels considered. 

Together, these perspectives shaped a conviction that belonging must be actively designed for, not assumed.

It is not enough to open the door. You have to make sure people feel genuinely welcome walking through it. That is what I try to bring to every programme and every space I help create at the Integration Division. 

4) What is your personal strategy for staying motivated when managing heavy workloads and tight deadlines?

I focus on what is within my control. Bureaucracy exists to ensure accountability and maintain public trust, and within those boundaries there is almost always room to improve how things are done.

That reframe alone keeps me from feeling stuck. 

Outside of work, I convene PA's netball team, and that role has reinforced this mindset in unexpected ways.

In sport, you are constantly adapting, adjusting strategy, and keeping your team motivated when things are not going your way. There is no time to be paralysed by obstacles. You find a way through, together. I bring that same energy to the workplace. 

PA is full of colleagues who genuinely care about the communities they serve, and that collective purpose is one of the most powerful antidotes to frustration I know.

I also make sure to stay connected to the ground, attending community events and hearing real stories from residents and colleagues. It is hard to lose your creative spark when you are regularly reminded of who you are doing this for. 

5) If you had just one area to invest in to accelerate transformation in the public sector (regulation, technology, talent, etc.), which one would you choose and why?

Talent, specifically people who can bridge the gap between technology and human needs.

You can have the most sophisticated systems and progressive regulations, but if the people behind them lack empathy or the willingness to challenge the status quo responsibly, transformation stalls. Strong systems are ultimately built by thoughtful people.  

It is tempting to chase quick wins through technology upgrades or policy tweaks, but the more durable investment is in people, building a generation of public servants who are not just competent administrators, but genuine stewards of the public good. 

My hackathon experience reinforced this. Building the AI chatbot required real technical work, from designing the conversation flows to ensuring the guidance it gave was accurate and accessible.

But the insight that made it worth building was human. It came from listening carefully to new staff, understanding their anxiety, and deciding that the emotional experience of being new mattered just as much as the informational gap.

Technology gave us the means; empathy gave us the direction. 

6) What is your greatest ambition as you grow in your public service career?

I want to help build a PA, and a public service, where every person feels genuinely supported and equipped to do their best work for the community.

The thread connecting my integration work and my hackathon project is the same: belonging and support must be intentionally designed. They do not happen on their own. 

Every generation has to re-earn Singapore's success. We cannot assume that what worked before will continue to work, or that community bonds will sustain themselves without effort.

The work of integration is ongoing and without end. There will always be fresh ground to cover, new connections to build, and belonging to be renewed.

In the longer term, I hope to shape the systems, programmes and culture that make this possible, through the way communities are built, knowledge is shared, and space is made for every person to feel they belong and can contribute. 

7) What is a “universal value” that connects everyone in your department – from interns to directors – and how do you use that to drive collaboration?

A shared sense of responsibility towards people. 

Regardless of role or seniority, there is a quiet but powerful understanding that our work has real impact on residents, communities, and the fabric of everyday life in Singapore.

That sense of stewardship does not belong only to those at the top. It runs through every level of the organisation.  

Building genuine connections between residents of diverse backgrounds cannot be done by one person or team alone. It requires everyone, from the intern coordinating a community event to the director shaping divisional strategy, to pull in the same direction.

Regardless of role or seniority, there is a quiet but powerful understanding that our work has real impact on residents, communities, and the fabric of everyday life in Singapore. 

What makes that possible is the shared belief that every conversation facilitated and every space created for people to meet is a meaningful contribution to a more caring and united Singapore.

When people feel part of something larger than themselves, collaboration follows naturally. 

8) What is the best piece of advice you’ve got for the next generation of public servants?

Do not wait for permission to care about a problem.

The most impactful ideas do not come from the top of an organisation chart. They come from people who are close enough to a problem to feel it, and brave enough to say, "I think we can do this better." 

Public trust in institutions has to be earned continuously, through the quality of our work and the sincerity of our intentions.

That means not just following processes, but asking whether those processes are truly serving the people they are meant to serve. 

The public sector can feel like a place where change moves slowly, and it is easy to become passive in response.

But the most admirable young public servants stay curious, stay close to the ground, and keep asking uncomfortable questions, not to be disruptive, but because they genuinely want things to be better. Each generation has to re-earn Singapore's success. That starts with us. 

9) What is a myth you wish to debunk about young public servants?

That we are just here to follow the hierarchy, push paper, and wait our turn. There is a persistent image of the young public servant as someone who defers upward and is more comfortable maintaining the status quo than questioning it. 

But the young public servants I work alongside are genuinely curious and quietly determined.

They are asking hard questions, spotting gaps that have been overlooked, and finding ways to move things forward even within real constraints. 

Our hackathon is a good example. A group of young PA officers identified a problem affecting hundreds of colleagues, built a working solution, and won first place.

That happened not in spite of being in the public sector, but because we understood our responsibility to the people we serve and took it seriously. 

I think that spirit is more common among young public servants than the stereotype suggests, and I hope more people get to see it. 

10) Write a letter to your future self in 2035. Please keep it within 200 words.

Dear Jacelyn, 

I hope you have not lost your sense of purpose. There will have been days when decisions felt easier to justify on paper than in reality.

I hope you kept asking the difficult questions, even when it was uncomfortable. I hope you never stopped asking: what does this person actually need? 

You will have navigated bureaucratic walls and moments where ambition and reality felt very far apart. I hope you met those moments with patience and creativity, and never forgot that public trust is not to be taken for granted. 

On the days when the work felt too small, I hope you remembered that the work of integration is built one person, one connection at a time. They are what the larger picture is made of. 

I hope you made space for others to grow, just as others once did for you. If you have grown more certain, I hope you have also remained open. If you have grown more tired, I hope it is from doing work that mattered. 

Most of all, I hope you are still someone your younger self would recognise, someone who always remembered why she joined the public service. 

With belief,  

Jacelyn, 2026