Singapore's GovTech partners with Air Force to support agile development

In 2022, the Singapore government marked 55 years of Singapore’s national service by disbursing S$100 (US$77) to over one million past and present servicemen – without turning to paper-based vouchers and cheques.

The Ministry of Defence (MINDEF) and the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) were able to do so thanks to GovWallet and LifeSG, a central product that enables direct cash transfers to citizens. In its first year of operations, the app facilitated over S$41 million worth of transactions, according to The Straits Times.

This was by no means a one-off partnership.

This year, GovTech Singapore, MINDEF, and the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) have commissioned a new programme, the Alliance for Digital Transformation (ADX), to support digital transformation efforts and enable greater exchange between MINDEF and GovTech Singapore.

“It’s a division that looks into competency building in various aspects of engineering, product management, and technology for different agencies,” said Director of Product Management at GovTech Singapore, who oversees ADX, Gabriyel Wong, to GovInsider. He holds a concurrent position as Chief Product Officer at RAiD (RSAF Agile innovation Digital).

“Because our sponsors are the military from MINDEF and SAF, ADX caters primarily to uplifting competencies in MINDEF and SAF. But of course, our ambition is to bring the goodness of what we’ve learned from both agencies to the larger pool of government agencies,” he said.

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Meeting everyday needs

ADX’s first partner is RAiD, a digital startup team within the Air Force that had previously worked together with GovTech Singapore to build products interoperable with civilian services.

Wong shared that RAiD aims to solve everyday problems faced by airmen and airwomen, such as simplifying how they can book facilities, in addition to warfighting related issues.

“These are real needs as well. We want to improve and broaden the spectrum of problems that can be dealt with,” he said.

To start, RAiD will soon be introducing QualiFly, a platform that logs micro-certificates earned by Air Force engineers during their training, enabling them to track their qualifications.

The platform breaks down traditional certifications into task-level micro-qualifications. This means that once staff have successfully completed enough tasks in a specific domain, they can be deployed quicker even as training in other domains continues – reducing deployment time from six months to as little as two weeks.

“That increases their deployability…it’s about matching resource readiness to needs at the operations level. It’s GovTech Singapore injecting the expertise in software development to help the military domain develop software in a more agile way,” said Wong.

Similarly, RAiD is releasing SAGE, an AI-powered platform that airmen and airwomen can use to ask questions and retrieve information from training publications and manuals, helping them learn faster.

“There are many scenarios where it’s a small chunk of users, but the impact is really big. Because you’re talking about defence, which concerns the security and lives of many people,” he said.

Developing software in high-security settings

The key challenge when it comes to developing products for the military is balancing higher security requirements with the agile development characteristic of the tech industry to improve software development within the military.

Even though RAiD’s remit tends to cover everyday problems relating to the work environment, security demands remain. This is why RAiD works closely with its stakeholders, particularly departments overseeing security policies and implementation, to design new approaches for software development. 

“It’s really about helping them release and deploy more frequently, by applying some of the industry best practices,” he shared. These include shifting left, a concept in software development where developers test code for bugs and security risks earlier on in the development process to reduce time and effort spent on fixing vulnerabilities later.

This is why RAiD partnered with the Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA) to clarify policies and introduce strategic process improvements to speed up QualiFly’s deployment by 300 times – an initiative called Project 300X. Project 300X aims to accelerate development and deployment for products in the military environment beyond QualiFly in the future.

“If we use a single methodology for software development, it sometimes leads to a longer time,” he said. He explained that they studied the previous software development process and found opportunities to unblock bottlenecks within certain security implementation approaches that led to longer development timelines.

This means making a distinction between what should be maintained to not compromise security, and which practices can be decentralised or managed via a tiered risk management framework instead.

Products are also developed within the boundaries of existing security classifications, he said.

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Closer collaboration, partnerships

Greater collaboration between the military and government agencies when it comes to tech products is only natural in a country where half the citizen population serves mandatory national service.

Wong shared that while GovTech Singapore has had longstanding collaborations with MINDEF, ADX’s partnership is the next step to driving systematic collaboration, raising digital competencies, and supporting exchange between agencies.

Unlike previous collaborations, RAiDers and GovTechies work very closely together – “a very integrated team structure,” he shared.

“They see us as RAiDers, not just GovTechies,” added ADX’s Product Marketing Manager, Rosalind Koh, who oversees product launch strategy.

“The identity element is extremely crucial because it causes the mental model of collaboration to change,” said Wong.

Building interoperable tech products that can work together and co-sharing common capabilities can also help various arms of the government coordinate better during times of national emergencies, such as the Covid-19 pandemic.

ADX is also actively hiring for new roles in UX design, product management, as well as software and cybersecurity engineers, he said – and are calling for interested folks to apply.

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