Portia Loh, Director of COE Hub and Plans & Strategy division, Home Team Science and Technology Agency (HTX), Singapore

1) How do you use your role to ensure that technology and policy are truly inclusive?

HTX, as the agency that advances science and technology to force multiply the Home Team, develops solutions with both the public and our frontline forces in mind.

Our engineers and scientists do so by ensuring that the solutions are fit-for-purpose.

My contribution in this process is more of an upstream one – I’m involved in the approval of all new tech proposals, and I serve as the checkpoint to ensure that project teams are clear about how their proposals address the gaps of today and/or anticipate the challenges of the future.

We challenge the feasibility of the solutions to ensure they are robust and value-for-money.

2) What’s a moment in your career when you saw firsthand how technology or a new policy changed a citizen’s life for the better?

For me, it has to be the New Clearance Concept.

As a member of the public who has personally experienced the seamless, passport-less and contactless immigration clearance at Changi Airport, this innovation has fundamentally uplifted the standards of public service delivery.

As someone who has elderly parents, this innovation has also lifted barriers, as older folk usually face challenges with faint prints or dry skin.

As a member of the Home Team (which includes ICA and HTX), I am immensely proud of all the engineers who made this happen, not overnight, but over years of deliberate planning and painstaking prototyping and trials.

This would not have been possible without strong executive leadership, which served as a reminder to me that a compelling vision can be a strong catalyst for change.

3) What was the most impactful project you worked on this year, and how did you measure its success in building trust and serving the needs of the public?

My team organised the “HacX! Hack for Public Safety” in November this year in collaboration with Microsoft and the Singapore University of Technology and Design.

This is HTX’s annual hackathon that empowers young changemakers from secondary and tertiary institutions to use science and technology to address pressing public safety challenges.

While this is a regular affair, this year’s run was exceptionally special and memorable.

Besides the fresh buzz we created with our new format – done “Shark Tank” cum tech carnival-style - I witnessed returning participants from previous years who shared anecdotally why they came back.

The key reasons were the tangible and meaningful problem statements on public safety, and their knowledge that many of the innovative ideas could be spun off eventually into actual capabilities that make a difference in society.

While the success may be difficult to measure as the impact is felt some years later, I know this effort goes toward building up the next generation of STEM talents who would be fired up to join us as public sector innovators in the future.

4) What was one unexpected lesson you learned this year about designing for real people? This can be about a specific project or a broader lesson about your work.

One foundational lesson I took away was that sometimes, simplicity is the ultimate UX.

As scientists and engineers, our instinct is to use technology to solve problems.

And with artificial intelligence (AI), there can sometimes be a strong gravitational pull toward solving every complex issue using cutting-edge generative AI (GenAI).

While that may be needed in complex problems, sometimes the strategy may benefit from prioritising simple, robust solutions or through the reengineering of processes or policies.

This, in turn, allows our AI engineers to focus resources on GenAI research and development (R&D) and product development work in high-reward areas that offer greater strategic value.

5) We hear a lot about AI. What's a practical example of how AI can be used to make government services more inclusive and trustworthy?

The Report Lodging Co-pilot (R-COP) would be a great example.

From the perspective of a citizen, R-COP uses AI to make the report lodging process more efficient while still maintaining the trustworthiness of the interaction that members of the public have established with the Singapore Police Force.

Lodging a police report is often done under stress or trauma, and the system’s step-by-step conversational interface makes the reporting experience inclusive by reducing the cognitive load on the individual during a vulnerable moment.

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Making an inherently challenging situation simpler and faster is the highest form of trust-building in the public safety context.

6) How are you preparing for the next wave of change in the public sector? What new skill, approach, or technology are you most excited to explore in the coming year?

In my view, the next wave of change is not about technology per se - it’s about managing uncertainty headed towards us at an accelerated speed.

For the public sector to deal with the many waves of technological risks and opportunities, we will require not only good forward planning and a strong cadre of STEM talent in our mix, but also dynamic operational structures and resourcing models.

I’m excited to explore ideas for models that would allow us to adapt to the fast pace of innovation with minimal friction in the coming year.

7) What advice do you have for public sector innovators who want to build a career focused on serving all citizens?

My humble advice would be to prioritise empathy.

Public sector innovation is not (always) about building the most dazzling, complex system; it’s about solving that nagging problem that our public servants have been enduring, or a painful common problem that our citizens have been facing.

Ultimately, the public service mission must come first, and it must, in turn, guide the technical potential of your work into public value.

8) Who inspires you to build a more inclusive and trustworthy public sector?

My family is my greatest inspiration.

They represent the pioneering builders who laid the foundations of Singapore and the future citizens who will inherit these building blocks.

This perspective grounds my work ethos in working towards a society where trust in Singapore’s public sector is inherent and preserved.

9) If you had an unlimited budget, what would your dream project be?

Tough question!

The way I see it, every mission is an important one, so this makes prioritising one over another extremely challenging!

10) Outside tech, what excites you the most? 

I’m a mom of two toddlers.

So nothing excites me more than the process of cultivating resilience and curiosity in them.

Watching them learn, explore and recover from small setbacks is a constant reminder to me that long-term success is not about avoiding failure but having the gumption and curiosity to try again.

As selfish as it may sound, to me, that’s the highest stakes “strategy” work that I do!