A joint team from both the PS21 Office (under the Singapore Public Service Division) and the IDA programme management office were responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Programme. The team was responsible for evaluating and funding ICT projects that met with the Programme’s objectives. These projects were often championed by other agencies, such as the Grassroots Leaders Portal by the People’s Association.
Since only the ICT development cost could be funded, the agencies who had championed the projects often had to shoulder other associated costs, like publicity, maintenance costs and manpower costs.
The Overseas Singaporeans Unit was responsible for maintaining the interest in the Overseas Singaporeans Portal by strategic tie-ups (for content and news), as well as maintaining the system, exploring new tools. There were a number of supporting activities like organization of trips for students, businesses and political leaders, social occasions like Singapore Day, recruitment drives, seminars, festive dinners. Manpower was needed to plan the trips, answer queries and moderate the site.
Key to the Grassroots Leaders Portal was the ability to train and keep interested the 25,000 grassroots leaders in Singapore. Many of these citizen representatives come from all walks of life. True to the demographic, a number of them belong to an older generation but were willing to step up to the challenge of learning how to be a part of this initiative.
With the SMS Tools, greater consideration had to be taken with the responses and how the feedback was to be responded to. Other policies’ considerations taking into account was planning carefully so that citizens would not feel they were “spammed” by government on their mobile phone for polls and consultations.
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