Government Trends 2023 by the Deloitte Centre for Government Insights

As part of the “Government Trends 2023” report by the Deloitte Centre for Government Insights, VITAL is quoted in the section of “Back-office innovations improving mission performance” as a thought leader in government innovation and management practices.

Leveraging technology for corporate services transformation - the VITAL experience

By Dennis Lui, Chief Executive, VITAL

VITAL is Singapore Public Service’s central agency for corporate shared services. We serve over 100 agencies and more than 100,000 public servants. Our staff strength is approximately 500 - almost 3% are persons with disabilities. We aggregate and transform common corporate services in areas such as human resources and payroll, finance, and procurement to achieve economies of scale, improve efficiency, strengthen governance, and enhance service quality.

VITAL is constantly exploring new technologies to make government services even more efficient and robust. We are a pioneer adopter of robotics process automation (RPA) in public service. RPA application has helped us reduce manual effort, human errors, and turnaround time substantially. This translates to delivering more effective corporate services to the public service agencies that we serve.

In 2020, VITAL was entrusted with a new role as the robotics and automation lead in corporate and administrative services. VITAL’s ambition is to scale up the adoption of automation across Singapore Public Service. VITAL is now a platform for corporate services innovation. We actively seek opportunities to partner with policymakers, public service agencies, and vendors to help transform the delivery of corporate services. For instance, we are harnessing artificial intelligence and machine learning recruitment technology for process automation and better decision-making, enabling data-driven insights for a more effective end-to-end recruitment process.

VITAL is developing central infrastructure, using a “build once, use by many” approach. If each of the 100 public service agencies tried to develop its own tools, it would take hundred times the effort. We are creating a cloud-native automation platform to allow agencies to access best of breed automation tools without having to dedicate time or staff to build them on their own.

These new automation tools will augment rather than replace our workforce. The workforce of the future would be “citizen developers” - using low-code/no-code applications to develop and maintain their own bots and workflows. The bots will do the heavy lifting while officers can become “supervisors of bots,” with a focus on continuous process improvements, exception handling, and other higher-value–added tasks. However, to become “citizen developers,” significant investment in human capital is required. Therefore, VITAL is sending all our staff back to school - to be equipped with either a certificate or a specialist diploma in data analytics, RPA, and design thinking.

To conclude, the application of robotics and automation is not just enabling VITAL to provide public service agencies with more effective and efficient services; the core of our purpose is to equip and empower our people by giving them the tools and opportunities to move up the value chain. VITAL will become an engine of transformation for Singapore Public Service.

Click HERE ↗ (opens in new tab) to read the full report from Deloitte Insights website.