Loh Jia Huey, CIO, Ministry of Social and Family Development, Singapore

How do you use technology to improve citizens' lives? Tell us about your role or organisation.

I am the CIO for the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) and the National Council of Social Service. MSF is increasingly enhancing our digital interactions with citizens, especially couples who are getting married and are planning to start a family.

One example is an e-service that will enable parents of a newborn to update us with their bank account so that the government can deposit cash gifts.

To further simplify the process for these new parents, the rest of their personal particulars have been pre-populated using the MyInfo platform by GovTech.

What has been the most exciting thing that you worked on in 2016?

In 2016, my team, along with key users from the different MSF divisions, came together to review citizens' key customer journeys.

This conducted in a workshop-style session using design thinking techniques and has enabled the MSF divisions to start designing the business processes from the citizen’s perspective.

This exercise has helped us see the same e-service that we implemented in a different perspective, and we are now looking at redesigning a new digital service according to what citizens want instead of what we think they want.

If you were to share one piece of advice that you learned in 2016, what would it be?

In whatever I do, I always remind myself to stay focused on my work. I do not want to be affected by matters that do not help me in getting my job done.