Config 2024: How pigeons led to emergency room optimizations
Summary
TLDRZul from Singapore shares his journey from tech to government, highlighting the transformational impact of Open Government Products (OGP). OGP, functioning like a startup within the Singapore government, has revolutionized public services through innovative apps, including a COVID-19 vaccination appointment system and a parking app, enhancing efficiency and citizen engagement. Zul emphasizes the importance of a 'Citizens First' culture, autonomy in small skilled teams, and a relentless focus on impactful outcomes, showcasing how OGP's model has delivered 30 significant products over five years, improving lives and setting a precedent for public tech innovation.
Takeaways
- 🌟 The speaker, Zul, from Singapore, works for an organization called Open Government Products (OGP), aiming to change the perception that governments build poor products.
- 🛠️ OGP functions like a startup within the Singapore government, with a mission to build effective and inclusive products, starting with experimentation, demonstrating success, and propagating the practices.
- 💉 A notable product developed by OGP is an appointment app for COVID-19 vaccinations, which helped achieve a 96% vaccination rate among the eligible population in Singapore.
- 🅿️ Another product is a parking app that replaced the inconvenient system of paper coupons, offering a digital solution for roadside parking payments and refunds.
- 🏥 OGP also built an enterprise patient management system for public hospitals in Singapore, saving $85 million by developing it in-house with a small team.
- 🚀 OGP has delivered over 30 products in 5 years, showcasing the potential for government entities to innovate and create impactful solutions.
- 🔍 The health appointment system began with identifying the inconvenience of getting vaccinated and addressing it through a user-centered design approach.
- 📈 Through iterative testing and learning, OGP increased the conversion rate of the health appointment system significantly, demonstrating the effectiveness of their approach.
- 🤝 OGP's success is attributed to creating a culture where citizens are prioritized, giving autonomy to small, skilled teams, and being obsessed with delivering impact.
- 📊 OGP is transparent about their performance, sharing detailed report cards that include metrics and costs, which helps keep teams accountable and focused on impact.
- 🌱 OGP's culture includes initiatives like 'Heaton', a month dedicated to exploring new ideas and solving problems, leading to innovative solutions like a language simplification app for seniors.
Q & A
What is the primary mission of Open Government Products (OGP) in Singapore?
-The primary mission of OGP is to change the perception that governments are known for building terrible products by experimenting with new practices, demonstrating their effectiveness, and propagating them to the rest of the government and potentially to governments around the world.
How did OGP address the challenge of low vaccination rates for certain vaccines in Singapore?
-OGP addressed the challenge by building a clinic app to display availability and a patient app for the public to book appointments, making the process of getting vaccinated more convenient and accessible.
What was the initial reaction to the health appointment system launched by OGP?
-The initial reaction was not as positive as expected. The team set a target of 50,000 appointments by the end of the year, but after the first month, they only had 50 appointments, indicating a need for a different approach.
How did OGP improve the effectiveness of their health appointment system?
-OGP improved the system by conducting numerous experiments, such as using SMS instead of physical mail, testing different tones of voice in messages, and finding the optimal time to send SMS for higher conversion rates.
What is the significance of the 'Hecaton' that OGP conducts every January?
-The 'Hecaton' is a month-long innovation sprint where OGP stops all critical work to focus on new ideas and solutions. It has been instrumental in generating impactful projects and fostering a culture of innovation within the government.
How does OGP ensure that its products are citizen-centric?
-OGP ensures citizen-centricity by creating a culture where citizens are always first, engaging with them directly, and making design decisions that prioritize the needs and convenience of citizens over other considerations.
What is the role of the policy officer within an OGP team?
-The policy officer, embedded within an OGP team, has deep government experience and connections. They help navigate bureaucracy, unblock the team when stuck, and can even rewrite policy papers to remove boundaries and enable the team to deliver impactful products.
How does OGP maintain transparency and accountability in its operations?
-OGP maintains transparency and accountability by publishing a report card that displays key metrics, costs, and the impact of each product. This report card is also used as part of the performance review process.
What impact has OGP had on the government's approach to technology and cost management?
-OGP has influenced the government by setting a benchmark for cost-effectiveness and product quality. Their transparency helps government officers evaluate vendor proposals and demand better value for money.
How has OGP grown since its inception in 2020?
-OGP has grown from 40 people in 2020 to 190 people, delivering 30 great products over 5 years with a focus on creating a citizen-first culture, giving autonomy, and being obsessed with delivering impact.
What is the broader vision that OGP hopes to inspire in others?
-OGP hopes to inspire a broader vision where the brightest minds work on solving the most important problems, building technology for public good, and considering the impact of their work on families, communities, and society.
Outlines
🌟 Transforming Government Products with OGP
Zul, from Singapore, introduces the concept of governments creating high-quality products, a paradigm shift from traditional government services. He shares his journey from tech companies to the Open Government Products (OGP) organization, which operates like a startup within the Singapore government. OGP's mission is to change the perception of poor government products by experimenting with new practices, demonstrating their effectiveness, and propagating them globally. Zul highlights three key products developed by OGP: a COVID-19 vaccination appointment app, a parking app, and an enterprise patient management system used by public hospitals, which saved $85 million. He aims to inspire the audience about the potential of government products.
🚀 OGP's Health Appointment System Evolution
The narrative focuses on OGP's efforts to improve vaccination rates for seniors in Singapore, which were initially low. The team identified the inconvenience of getting vaccinated as the main barrier. They developed a clinic app to display availability and a patient app for booking appointments. Despite an initial lack of success with physical mailers, they pivoted to using SMS, which proved to be significantly more effective. Through various experiments, they discovered that a friendly tone and sending messages before 10:00 a.m. on weekdays yielded the best results. This iterative process led to a 7X increase in conversion rates, and the system now facilitates a wide range of health appointments, significantly impacting public health.
🛠 Navigating Bureaucracy for Public Good
Zul explains how OGP operates differently within the government framework, emphasizing the importance of a citizen-first culture. He describes how OGP navigates bureaucracy to deliver effective products, such as the health department system. The team's approach includes creating a culture of prioritizing citizens, conducting an annual 'Heaton' month for innovation, and making difficult design decisions. They also ensure transparency by publishing a report card that details each product's impact and cost, holding teams accountable for delivering value.
🏆 OGP's Approach to Team Autonomy and Impact
This section delves into OGP's structure, which empowers small, cross-functional teams with full autonomy over their products. Each team is responsible for their product's success and includes a policy officer to navigate government policies. A key example is the simplification of financial assistance processes in hospitals, where a policy officer helped streamline patient information sharing across institutions. OGP's radical transparency and focus on impact have led to significant achievements, such as educating government employees on the cost of tech products and improving procurement decisions.
🌱 Cultivating a Citizen-Centric Tech Ecosystem
Zul concludes by reflecting on the growth of OGP from 40 to 190 people and the impact of their work over five years. He contrasts his early career in tech, where his work was more commercially driven, with his current role, where the impact is measured in lives saved and services improved. He calls for the brightest minds to work on solving the world's most pressing problems, advocating for a tech ecosystem that serves the public good.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Open Government Products (OGP)
💡Inclusive Society
💡Health Appointment System
💡Vaccination
💡User Research
💡Conversion Funnel
💡Policy Officer
💡Enterprise Patient Management System
💡Hackathon
💡Citizen-First Culture
💡Autonomy
💡Impact
Highlights
Zul's introduction and the vision of an effective, inclusive, and innovative society through government-built products.
The establishment of Open Government Products (OGP) as an experimental unit within the Singapore government, functioning like a startup.
The three-step approach of OGP: experiment, demonstrate effectiveness, and propagate practices to other governments.
Achievements in building notable products like the COVID-19 vaccination appointment app, which vaccinated 96% of Singapore's eligible population.
Innovation in parking solutions by replacing paper coupons with a parking app, offering refunds for early returns.
Development of an Enterprise Patient Management System used by all public hospitals in Singapore, saving $85 million.
The process of building the health appointment system to increase vaccination rates for seniors and other recommended vaccines.
The importance of user research and the discovery of inconvenience as a barrier to vaccination.
The team's volunteer-based initiative to save lives by building a clinic and patient app for vaccine appointments.
Learning from initial failures and conducting experiments to improve conversion rates for appointment bookings.
The surprising effectiveness of a 'nice' tone in SMS reminders compared to 'scary' or 'concise' versions.
Optimizing SMS timing and day of the week for maximum conversion rates in appointment bookings.
Evolution of the health appointment system to include over 19 types of services and facilitating over 350,000 appointments.
The challenge of navigating government bureaucracy while delivering impactful products and services.
Creating a 'Citizens First' culture within government and prioritizing citizen needs over clinic preferences.
The autonomy given to small, skilled teams at OGP, allowing them to operate independently and be accountable for outcomes.
The role of policy officers in removing bureaucratic barriers and enabling policy changes for better public services.
The emphasis on impact measurement through report cards and transparency in cost and performance.
The impact of OGP's work in government compared to traditional tech startups and the profound effect on society.
Invitation to join the mission of building tech for public good and the potential of collective bright minds tackling important problems.
Transcripts
[Music]
imagine the worldall where governments
build great
products I know right it's it's like a
whole new world but paying taxes will be
easy health care services will make you
feel cared for wouldn't we create a
society that is effective inclusive and
Innovative good afternoon and welcome my
name is zul and I flew all the way from
Singapore and it's so surreal to be in
front of you
[Applause]
today thank you I spent the first 10
years of my career in various tech
companies from Texas setups all the way
to big Tech but two years
ago I made a leap to government I joined
an organization called open government
products or ogp for short and ogp is
basically an experimental unit within
the Singapore government and we
basically function like a
startup and all mission is simple
governments are known for building
terrible products but we want to change
that
and we're going to do it in three simple
steps first experiment with new
practices demonstrate that it works and
then propagate it to the rest of our
government and hopefully to the
governments around the world I think
we've done a pretty decent job on the
first two steps and here are some
notable products that we have
built the covid crisis was very scary in
Singapore citizens were eager to get
vaccinated but there wasn't an easy way
to do so so we built an appointment app
within 2 weeks and we got 96% of all
eligible population
[Applause]
vaccinated in Singapore we also used to
pay for roadside parking using paper
coupons every half an hour is one coupon
so can you imagine if you want to park
for the entire day your whole entire car
dashboards is just fill With Coupons
it's terrible so we got rid of it we
build a parking app and today if you
visit Singapore and if you want to pay
for roadside parking anywhere in
Singapore you'll be using our app and
the best part is if you come back to
your parking earlier we'll refund you
the
[Applause]
difference so many people will say that
hey startups they probably can't do
Enterprise level systems but we did it
we built an Enterprise paal management
system that has been used by every
single public hospitals in Singapore and
we did it took us one year with a team
of less than 10 people and we saved $85
million by building it
ourselves so those three
products are just a fraction of 30 great
products that we have delivered over the
past 5
years so today I want to give you a
behind the scenes look at how we did it
and the model that made it possible and
by the end of it I hope to inspire you
and and make you feel hopeful about the
future products coming out of your
government all right let me bring you
through one of our product that we built
this is the health appointment system
but how we started was two years ago a
government agency the health promotion
board approached us for help you see we
did quite a good job with Co but for
other highly recommended vaccine we were
terrible only 12% of all seniors in
Singapore are vaccinated against pacal
vaccine which basically protects you
against bacteria that may lead to
pneumonia pneumonia is the second
highest leading cause of death in
Singapore less than 20% of women in
Singapore have taken the HPV vaccine
which protects you against certain
viruses that may lead to several
cancers if we compare this to higher
income countries around the world
Singapore is ranked
last so when we did our user research we
found out that the main barrier is
basically how inconvenient it was to get
vaccinated we do a lot of government
campaigns such as this one and we
encourage citizens to go to their
nearest clinics but when they go to the
nearest clinic the vaccine are stop and
even if they manage to find a clinic
where they stop they have to endure a
long waiting time so we knew we have to
change it we have to fix
it so what we did was Canna here our
product manager doing one of the weekly
all hand sessions pitch to the entire
company the problems the opportunity and
basically ended the pitch by saying hey
we are going to save some lives who's
with
me so four people volunteered
[Applause]
at the point in time we were like less
than 100 people so four is quite four is
quite good and these volunteers right
they are spending their time outside of
work to work on this so it's yeah it's a
bit different so we have one designer
who's with us in the crowd today and we
have three other
engineers and over the next few months
we buil a clinic app for clinics to
display their
availability we build a patient app for
members of public to book
appointments and within four months we
launch and I use the word we because at
this point is is the point where I
joined ojp and this was the very first
product that work
on so everything went well and we
reached the moon
right well I I wish it was that smoo but
here's what happened we sent hundreds of
thousands of physical males to seniors
because those are the target group that
we we were we were aiming for and we
were very optimistic about it we set a
target of 50,000 appoint app ments by
the end of the year uh it was 5 months
away till the end of the year so every
single month we are expecting about
10,000 by the end of the first month
50 yeah so you can imagine the whole
morale of the team right oh my God what
went
wrong so we did what any other Tech
startups we have done we talk to our
users uh we use data doc to look at all
the replays we Dove deep into our
conversion panel and here's what we
learned our assumptions were
wrong we assume that the seniors
Preferred Physical meal as a form of
marketing medium but realized that a
physical male often get lost with other
Jung males and it doesn't look official
enough and even if the seniors open up
the mail there's a QR code and there's a
URL at that point in time we didn't
think so much about it but can you
imagine seniors and like taking the
camera trying to scan the QR code or
like typing the URL yeah it was terrible
so we conducted numerous experiments and
the very first one was okay physical
meal sucks so what will be a better
medium and we found out that smss or
text messages were super effective so we
double down on
it we then double down on trying to
figure out like does the content matter
does the tone of voice matter and here's
an example of an experiment we ran
there's three different type of tone of
voice we have nice
scary and
concise okay let's let's do a quick poll
who think the nice is will have the
highest
conversion no okay who thinks the scary
have the highest conversion
wow and then who thinks the
concise okay I think it's quite a mix
between scary and concise so our team
thought scary would be the way to go
like if you scare a senior into taking a
vaccination right that will work but
guess what the nice version
won which is like super surprising right
and the nice version won by a whopping
15% it has 15% more conversion than the
scary so our experiment went we were
crazy was like wow this is crazy so we
decide to run another experiment does
the day of the week matter and does the
time of the week where you send the SMS
matter and we learned that actually yes
if you send an SMS before 10:00 a.m. it
has 20% on average more conversion than
after 10:
a.m. and if you send between Monday and
Wednesday marginally better 3 to
5% so just to recap in April K of the PM
made the pitch two months later we
launched the clinic app two months after
we launched the patient app and we did
the whole bu measure learn cycle and ran
a series of experiments and we managed
to increase the top of final conversion
by whopping 7X from 3.5% all the way to
27% today 2 years later the health
appointment system has evolved
significantly we have facilitated over
350,000 appointments and we are aiming
for half a million by the end of the
year we started with num Cal vaccine and
we move on to the next vaccine and the
next vaccine and today we have 19 over
sort of services so you can boook your
health screening you can boook your
doctor visits our MPS it's world
class we were so effective that some
clinics had to rush to
restore their their their vaccine
supplies and they had to tell us to slow
down so at this point I think many of
you might be thinking how is this
different from what many Tech startups
are
doing and the short answer is that it's
not it's very very similar to what many
of you are doing today but what's
different about it is that it's being
done in
government governments are known to be
slow and full of rate ties but we manage
to navigate through the bureaucracy we
manag to deliver the health department
system and 30 plus other products so let
me share with you a model that work well
for
us at the root of everything is creating
a culture within the government where
citizens should always be
first unfortunately in many governments
today the government employ get
distracted in trying to please their
bosses please politicians or please
Lobby
groups that has to change and to change
that we need to create a culture within
the government where citizens should
always be first you should always be on
the ground talking to Citizens and if
you're constantly engaging citizens
you'll start realizing that there are so
many problems to
solve and because there are so many
problems to solve what ogp do is that
for the entire month of January we stop
all critical work and we spend one whole
month doing a
hecaton that's right the entire month of
January and we have been doing it every
year for the past 5 years and here are
some interesting projects that came out
of this year's
Heaton Singapore is a multicultural
country English is the primary language
but not everyone can read it especially
the seniors so for the seniors when they
receive a physical meal that is in
English
what they do is they just put it aside
and they leave it P up until a trusted
one a trusted person come in and help
them to read it so we have heard cases
where they leave the letters P out for
so long that they miss paying up paying
for their
bills so one one of the hecaton teams
what they did was they buil a web app so
now all the seniors have to do is take a
photo of the letter and we will use a
large language model to synthesize it
simplify it and trans trans it to a
language that is more suitable for the
seniors and now the seniors don't have
to leave it par up they can do it
themselves another problem that was
tackled is that the less fortunate often
have something very specific they need
so in this case we learn about the story
of a young man who has seven schoolgoing
siblings and he wanted to help his
family and his request is very simple he
just want an oven and a few baking
materials so what another Heaton team
did was build a platform where a
registered social worker can put up such
requests and donors can fund such causes
directly the last one is not so much of
a problem but sometimes we work on fun
stuff as well so today we are at mosy
Center and we are located at Howard
Street who know who is
Howard yeah none of us right so this
Heaton team wanted to make learning
about history and Heritage more fun
through its street
names and just in case you're wondering
who's Howard Howard is a prominent
Merchant that was very influential and
the development of this city
yeah so again those three projects are
just a fraction of the many Products
that come of Heaton in fact typically at
the end of each Heaton we have about 30
to 40 working products and four to five
of them will have G will have so much
traction and so much potential that we
will continue resourcing it and this is
super important because in a domain in a
environment where there are so many
problems to solve it's so important that
we focus on the right ones and the
impactful
ones if we look at ogp products 70% of
them started from
heatons and creating a culture of
Citizens First also means making
difficult design decisions and being
very opiniated so for example going back
to the health appointment system when we
talk to the users we learn that they
care a lot about cost they want to know
how much they are paying when they go to
the clinic and what subsidies are they
eligible for but when we spoke to the
clinics they're like uh no I don't want
to display my course up front which
makes sense because they don't want
other clinics to undercut them so who do
we priortize the happiness of our supply
the clinics or doing what's best for the
citizens we do what's best for the
citizens we display the cost up front
and we even double down we featured
clinics who offered extra subsidies so
now patients citizens can make an
informed
choice so I talk Citizen First next is
giving
autonomy what we've done at ogp is that
we have created small teams of skilled
practitioners and they have direct
accountability ownership of the
problems our team size for each product
is typically 4 to 10 people
everything is done inhouse nothing gets
outsourced it's a balanced team very
typical roles you have a product manager
designer a few engineers and we have a
product Ops each team runs fully
independently they decide what problem
to tackle what tools to use no one tells
them what to do so in our early example
of the health appointment system the
team Works directly with government
agencies without any layers in between
and because the team size is so small
every single member of the team is
accountable and responsible for the
success or failure of the product so
it's very common to see engineers and
PMs leading user interviews on the
ground it's also unsurprising to see
designers going into the code base
making a few changes and pushing up PRS
we do whatever it takes to make the
product
successful but what's unique about our
setup is that we have this role called
the policy officer that is embedded
directly into the
team our policy officer has many years
of government experience they have built
deep domain expertise and they have
built numerous connections across
various
Ministries when the team is stuck with
bureaucracy the policy officers are the
one to unblock it and sometimes that
means rewriting certain policy papers
let me give you a specific examples
when we were working on the Enterprise
patient management system we realize
that every time a patient visit a
hospital and they require financial
assistance they have to fill so many
forms and provide so many documents but
if they visit another public hospital
they have to repeat the whole
administrative process over and over
again it's such a terrible patient
experience so what the policy officer
did was work directly with relevant
authorities and Universal consent the
default what it means is that if a
patient has shared their information
before with a single public hospital
with the consent of the patient that
information can be shared with other
public hospitals so now the patient can
focus on recovery instead of paperwork
and this is a great example of how a
product team leverages a policy officer
that is embedded within the team to
remove the boundaries
I think the problem that we have in a
lot of governments today is that
governments have this challenge of
Legacy policies and and they have to
work around it but by having a policy
officer directly embedded into the team
you can remove those Legacy policies you
can rewrite them you can remove the
boundaries so we talk about Citizen
First we talk about giving autonomy last
but not least is our obsession over
impact for every product that we work on
we have a report C
it displays all the key
metrics and what they what each team
have delivered quarter to
quarter we even display our cost and we
are radically transparent about it so if
you go to our website products. openen
dog. SG you will see every single
product that we have everything that we
have delivered every cost your
infrastructure cost your staff cost
everything but what this does it it
helps keep steams accountable and keeps
them for focus on what's truly important
this report card is also being used as
part of a performance review to measure
the level of impact each team has
delivered and impact doesn't just have
to be from product metrics we also look
at impact outside of it so for
example we realize very quickly that
within government a lot of government
employees don't really know what good
product looks like but more importantly
how much it should cost so let me ask
like how much should a static website
cost
yeah I I heard free yeah so it's
uncommon for a government agency to be
paying
$20,000 every single year and and I say
every single year because once they
build it just to maintain the static
website it still cost $20,000 a year and
it's ridiculous it's just a web page
with a few Horder content so what we are
Contin continuously doing is we are
running this boot camps for
non-technical government officers and
basically we make them do coding design
and deploy a web app for one of the bot
camps that we have done at the start of
the bot Camp only a quarter of them have
some some sort of technical literacy by
the end of it it's quite a majority and
this is super important because now when
vendors give outrageous proposals they
cannot confidently say that this doesn't
make sense this sucks yeah and this is
also why our report card we were we are
radically transparent so that we can be
used as a bench
they can now say that hey you only cost
ogp this much amount why does your
proposal cost 10x or 20x
more so let me give a quick look
back when ogp was in in 2020 ogp only
had 40 people today we are at 190 and we
have our fair share of growth
pins by creating a citizen's first
culture
by giving
autonomy and by being obsessed with
delivering impact we have managed to
deliver 30 great products over 5 years
with a team of less than 200
people and speaking of
impact when I first started my career I
designed this sticker feature which make
people pay money just for the stickers
to a few appear for a few
seconds but here I made so much money
for my startup and I thought wow I did
impactful
stuff when I joined government the very
first product I work on was the health
appointment system and for every user
that I brought through the conversion
funnel I am potentially saving their
life that kind of impact hits very
different the first one was great this
was even
greater today when we look around the
world there are so many challenges and
it can feel quite
overwhelming but imagine if the
brightest Minds Among Us work on solving
the most important
problems I invite all of you to join me
in this mission to think about how your
work impacts your family impacts your
community and impacts the
society let's build tech for public good
thank you
[Music]
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