Moments of Life

About the city. In November 2014, Singapore announced its smart city initiative called Smart Nation. Since then, it has attracted interest from technologists, urban planners, entrepreneurs, and public sector officers worldwide.

Goal

The project aims to consolidate government services across different departments and push relevant services and resources to citizens at timely moments in their lives.

Implementation period. The app was released in June 2018.

Fact

Singapore has one of the highest mobile penetration rates in the world at around 154%, and citizens prefer to make deals with the government on the go, 24/7, using their mobile apps. (The study was conducted on behalf of Infocomm Media Development Authority)

Solutions

The Moments of Life app was launched in June 2018 to support families with young children and seniors.

Two technologies developed at GovTech were used for the Moments of Life (Families) app.

The first, Next-Generation Container Architecture or NECTAR, is a platform that provides the benefits and flexibility of cloud services, but with reduced security and operational issues and greater compliance with GovTech requirements.

The second system, called Application Programming Interface Exchange (APEX), allows GovTech systems to easily “talk” or exchange information with the digital systems of other public agencies.

Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt-r2vCqSh8&

Both resources are part of the Singapore Government Tech Stack. Since 2018, the app has gradually added new features to serve citizens in other aspects of their life path. Currently, about  7 out of 10 Singapore births have been registered using the app. Other features include the Active Aging module for seniors aged 60 and older (released in September 2019) and most recently the Employment Support Guide for job seekers (released in June 2020). To date, the app has been downloaded more than 165,000 times.

On August 19, 2020, the responsible Minister of the Smart Nation Initiative, Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan, announced the rebranding of Moments of Life to LifeSG. The rebranding reflects the government’s future plans to expand and serve citizens beyond key moments in their lives. It was also updated during the Covid-19 period, combining information on more than 30 types of COVID-19 grants and assistance into an ” Eligibility Checker”, as well as support for employment and staff reduction into a single guide. Currently, the application has been improved to provide users with access to more than 40 services of various government agencies.

Challenges

The team behind Moments of Life (Families) found that bringing all the agencies together wasn’t easy. Each Agency already had its own way of doing things and different plans. For example, in order for parents to register the birth of their child and apply for a Baby Bonus on the same platform, the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) had to speed up its plans for online birth registration to meet the project deadline.

ICA and MSF also had to work closely together to meet their work processes, data requirements, and system improvements.

Team

GovTech, the Public Service Division (PSD), Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF), Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA), Immigration & Checkpoints Authority (ICA), and Health Promotion Board (HPB).

Timeline

Since April 2017, the integration exercise, co-led by the Moment of Life (Families) Programme Office and the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF), has involved over 200 representatives from 15 agencies, including the CPF Board, ECDA, Health Promotion Board, and education and health ministries.

As of January 31, 2020, the app has facilitated:

• Registration of more than 18,000 births in public and private hospitals;
• Application for three services (birth registration, Baby Bonus, and children’s library membership) via a single form available 24/7 and pre-filled with government-verified information;
• Notification of free passport rights for newborns;
• Prompt access to children’s vaccination records and medical appointments;
• Convenient location-based search and display of interest to preschool;
• Use the family support calculator for young families to find out what benefits they enjoy.

MOL (Moments of Life), which has been downloaded more than 165,000 times, has managed to cut the time spent on such applications from 60 to 15 minutes and has enabled the registration of seven out of 10 newborns here.

If you notice an error or inaccuracy in our editorials, please email [email protected] so we can look into it.