Celebrating Transformation of Services and Growing Richer Experiences at Public Service Week 2023

          Public Service Week (PSW) 2023 kicked off today with the presentation of 115 Public Sector Transformation (PST) awards to agencies and officers who have demonstrated exemplary efforts in service delivery, innovation and developing themselves and their teams.

2          At the event, Minister-in-charge of the Public Service Mr Chan Chun Sing thanked public officers for their hard work and urged officers to boldly go beyond traditional work boundaries, guided by the core purpose of doing good, to transform our service. In line with this call, a new ‘Public Service for Good’ movement was announced, calling on officers to get involved in new and different ways to do good for Singaporeans, beyond traditional job and agency boundaries. [See Annex A for details on Public Service for Good.]

3          In order to transform services for the public, Minister Chan reiterated that investing in the growth, wellbeing and experiences of public officers is essential. For PSW 2023, the theme “Enriching Your Experience, Transforming Our Service” spotlights how public sector transformation both enriches the experience of public officers and enhances services for Singaporeans. [See Annex B for details on the key events of PSW 2023.]

ANNEX A: Public Service for Good

The ‘Public Service for Good’ movement aims to encourage public officers to go beyond traditional job and agency boundaries, and get involved in new, different ways to ‘be a force for good’ for the benefit of Singapore and Singaporeans. The movement is starting with getting public officers involved in the following areas.

Mentorship Programmes for our Youth

2          PSD is partnering organisations such as ITE, NTUC, Advisory Singapore, Access SG and SG Enable to launch internship and career exploration programmes for youth from ITE and secondary schools. Under the internship programmes, students have internship opportunities at public agencies and are partnered with public officers who volunteer as mentors to nurture students during their journey. Under the pilot career exploration programme, public officers can also volunteer as career guides and mentors to work with secondary school students to analyse, ideate, and present their solutions to real-world problem statements. 

3          So far, over 250 students have benefitted from these programmes, with internship opportunities in various domains including Service Delivery, Community Services, and Information Technology. Moving forward, we are scaling these programmes for more agencies to come onboard.

National Programmes for Families and Social Groups

4          PSD is partnering agencies such as the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) to amplify volunteering opportunities in key national programmes among public officers. Doing so harnesses the strength of the Public Service workforce for key Government initiatives and broadens the exposure of public officers to the rest of the Public Service. For instance, PSD is working with MSF to rope in public officers for the ComLink Befrienders programme.

5          Over 100 officers have stepped forward as ComLink befrienders within four weeks. The aim is for public officers to adopt up to 800 ComLink families as befrienders over the next two years. Moving forward, PSD is also expanding into volunteer opportunities for other national programmes in the social domain.

Skills Volunteering with Non-Profits

6          PSD is working with agencies such as the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth to promote skills-based volunteerism by matching public officers to volunteering opportunities at non-profit organisations in the social sector that tap on the skills of officers. For instance, this could include having public officers with IT, research or media communication skills to volunteer similar skills at the non-profit agencies. This helps officers enhance their skills while concurrently doing good in the social sector.

7         Officers can leverage the measure introduced in 2022 that allows public officers to use up to 40 hours a year to participate in volunteer opportunities that are centrally curated by PSD or self-sourced, as part of the movement.

ANNEX B: Key events for Public Service Week (PSW) 2023

(i)             PSW: Spark – 5 July

This opening event brings public officers together to celebrate and recognise officers and agencies for excellence in service delivery, organisational practices and innovation. At the event, Public Sector Transformation (PST) Awards were presented to 115 individuals and teams across 13 categories. The event also spotlights how public sector transformation both enriches the experience of public officers and enhance services for Singaporeans.

(ii)           PST Convention – 11 July

PST Convention seeks to inspire and encourage public officers to transform the way services are delivered to citizens, through the sharing by leading private and public organisations on how they went about the transformation experiences for their own organisations.

(iii)         Learning Festival – 20 - 21 July

The Learning Festival will focus on growing the skills and competencies of public officers, especially in emerging areas, both to enrich the experience of public officers and to support public sector transformation.

(iv)         ‘Discovering Good@Work’ Job Sprint

The job sprint seeks to allow public officers to see public sector transformation in action across agencies, through short 0.5- to 2-day immersion programmes to find out more about public sector jobs that involve transformation and/or cross-agency work.