Mr William Toh shared the philosophy behind LTA's onemotoring.sg portal.

“Think big, start small, scale fast.” With this philosophy, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) created a portal that caters to the entire lifecycle of vehicle ownership, offering motorists greater convenience and increasing the proportion of e-transaction to 89 per cent over 10 years, said LTA’s Director of Applications Mr William Toh.

The portal, onemotoring.sg, was one of three Outstanding Award winners of the inaugural Singapore Government Web Excellence Awards which were presented by Mr Zaqy Mohamad, Chairman of the Government Parliamentary Committee, Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts, and Member of Parliament for Hong Kah, on 1 June 2010.

The other two Outstanding Award winners were the Central Provident Fund (CPF) Board’s cpf.gov.sg, and the Housing and Development Board’s (HDB) hdb.gov.sg. Seven other agencies also received merit awards. They were: the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (acra.gov.sg), Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (caas.gov.sg), Health Promotion Board (hpb.gov.sg), Immigration and Checkpoint Authority (ica.gov.sg), Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (iras.gov.sg), Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts (www.sg) and Singapore Customs (customs.gov.sg). 

Speaking at the Awards ceremony, Mr Zaqy observed that the range and depth of information and e-services provided by the government has increased over the years. Currently, 1,600 services are available online.      

Just as important as the range of e-services is the fact that they are easy to use. “Most people do not like paying taxes, but it helps when you have an efficient system that is fuss-free for most, and takes the complexity and pain from reconciling the various items that are taxable and deductibles,” he said. He cited the e-Government Perception Survey 2009, which showed that over 80 per cent of those who have dealt with the government online have found the experience satisfactory.

He warned, however, that there was no time for complacency. “Just as citizen expectations will continue to change, so would there be a need for the public sector to realign with this evolution.”

Sharing some of their insights into creating outstanding websites, Mr Ng Hock Keong, CPF Board’s Director of Service and Process Planning, recalled the old days when the agency’s site was “quite pathetic”. A bottleneck just before the 2001 election, when thousands queued up to withdraw their New Singapore Shares, drove home the importance of getting it right. Compared with 400 people on a normal day, the Tampines Branch saw 12,000 customers. “We activated everybody to serve customers,” he recalled, “including me, security guards and drivers.”

With such motivation, CPF established a customer-centric culture, adopting layman’s language in its website to make it easier to use, and went from 16 million transactions in 2004 to 43 million transactions last year, representing a whopping 96 per cent of the Board’s transactions.

As for HDB, Ms Choo Siew Lin, Senior Executive Systems Analyst, shared the Board’s guiding principle to keep things simple for its large customer base with diverse needs, so that they can find information in fewer clicks.

A clear starting point has made for easy navigation for all customer groups, while a personalised portal “My HDBPage” offering over 60 functions has attracted more than 170,000 customers every month.

Simplicity has also meant more engaging and interactive services for a seamless online experience, such as its Centralised Map Service offering a one-stop information service on housing, parking, shopping and business.