Opening Speech by Minister of State Jasmin Lau at GovTech Townhall on 18 May 2026

Being here for real

So today is the first time I speak to you as Minister-in-charge of GovTech. I can’t pretend I've been doing this job for long. It’s barely been about 1 year. But I've sat where many of you sit today — as a civil servant for almost 20 years across six postings. So I know what it feels like to work on something that almost no one notices. Until it breaks, or until it burns. This is a sentiment that many public servants do feel, and many of us in GovTech may feel the same as well.

I said this recently at an event – at GovInsider. I say I know about Speech Bingo — because I have played it myself. We sit around, guessing whether the POH is going to say a few popular words – ‘transformation’, ‘innovation’, ‘synergy’, ‘symbiotic relationship’ – and then the speech will end off by saying we have a vision and let’s all work towards it. We’ve all been there, and so today I want to share with you actually what is on my mind.

Singapore's Smart Nation ambition and what it actually means

Ten years ago, GovTech began as a much smaller team. It had a very clear belief that technology makes Government better, and of course makes Singaporeans’ lives better as well. Today, that belief has taken root across Singapore.

Many residents that I meet daily use GovTech products. They don't know it's made by GovTech officers, but they use it and it's become part of their daily lives. So GovTech is very central to making and shaping Singapore as a smart nation. We say smart nation as though it's a tagline, but it's gone way beyond that. It is now a promise that we make to every Singaporean that their government will keep up with them. That when life changes fast, the services they depend on will improve just as fast.

But what we face is an honest truth. We can't build a smart nation without fixing the plumbing underneath, without clarifying what our policy intents are, and without going to the ground to hear exactly how our people feel, what kind of services they need. And sometimes what they ask for may not be exactly what they need.

So smart nation for me starts here in this room with the people who build, who maintain and who reimagine those systems. The vision does belong to each and every one of us here in the room, but the foundation of that vision is built by all of you.

Aligned leadership

Before I go further, I want to say this and get it out of the way. Your leadership is aligned. From myself, to PS Kai Fong, to CE Wei Boon, to the Exco – there is genuine and shared agreement on what GovTech needs to do, and what GovTech needs to become. This is not a leadership team that is pulling in different directions while the people below manage the friction. It's taken us some time to discuss what we think GovTech needs to become. But one year on, we have arrived at an alignment.

I have to say this because I know from experience that one of the most demoralising things in public service is when you sense that your leadership is not aligned. When you are caught between the competing signals, when strategy changes with the wind depending on who comes in, who is your next boss. And I do not want that for GovTech.

So let me be clear with you: the hard choices we will ask you to make, the hard work we will ask you to prioritise – that has backing. Not just from me, but across your leadership team. And we will work hard to make sure that that backing goes beyond words, and it translates into real support for all of your teams, for all of your work, and that you have the capacity to do it well.

GovTech's role – laying bricks, not just building apps

GovTech is the builder of our government. But building more is beyond just writing code for the shiny new products. I know quite often as POHs we ask you for examples — give me another product that I can put into the speech, that I can say in parliament — but here and today, I want to tell you that good work in GovTech goes beyond building that next fancy product.

And in the years ahead, I want all of us to lean a lot harder into the foundational work. The work that is often harder, slower, less visible, and often less celebrated. I say this partly because I come from the public service, and I see where the real leverage is.

It is rarely in the new citizen- or business-facing product that gets launched with a nice announcement. It is actually in the legacy systems that finally get modernised so that ten agencies no longer have to maintain their own separate systems and databases. And it is in the data architecture that lets government actually respond well in a crisis without scrambling. It is also in the shared infrastructure that quietly multiplies the impact of everything that is built on it.

So I want to specifically recognise the people doing this foundational work. System modernisation, data architecture, cybersecurity, and shared platforms. You may feel like the most invisible people in your agencies. You probably also get more complaints than compliments, but I want to tell you that I see you. And I want you to know that what you are doing is what makes everything else possible.

To everyone else building the shiny products, I am not saying that you’re not doing good work. We still need to get the new products done because our citizens and our businesses do look forward to them. But I want to tell you to consider a posting or an experience in doing the foundational work. You will get tested because the work is hard. The stakeholders are difficult to manage. There are many tensions that pull at you daily, and there is very little immediate or near-term gratification. But there is impact that I personally respect deeply, and I hope more of you contribute to it.

AI with purpose, not AI with hype

Now, we are at that moment where AI is everywhere. Every speech you hear, you will hear the words AI – and so in this speech you will hear that as well – but I want all of us to ask a harder question: are we harnessing AI, or are we being swept along by it? Are you trying out tools because you actually believe it can do something good for your work, or are you trying it out because the boss said so, because PM said so, and you feel a little bit left out if you don’t try it? There is a big difference between adopting AI in how we work daily, in our individual productivity improvements – there’s a difference between that and truly mastering it.

We have tools like Pair and AIBots that already free up our public officers from laborious tasks so that they can focus on the judgment and care that only humans can provide. Those are very good. But we must also intentionally think about where we want to keep the human in the loop.

I personally do get worried when I see many of our public officers say, "Well, I think this can also be done by AI. That can also be done by AI. Let's just do AI because the bosses want us to do AI, because we have to hand up homework that have AI workflows embedded in them." I get worried because this is sometimes a signal that we are swept up by the craze and not actively thinking about where humans need to be more present in the workflows. AI can become something that we reach for as a reflex action. It gets quite addictive. You don't really have to think so much anymore. But when we stop applying judgement, when we stop questioning the outputs, we actually stop asking whether all of the work we do is right. And as GovTech officers, all of us have a responsibility to model what purposeful AI looks like. Yes, AI will help us do more, but let's not trade away our critical thinking in the process.

As GovTech, we are also responsible for spreading good use of AI across the public service. It is not an easy responsibility to shoulder. I’ll just share something more personal. I had a chat with a SM Lee recently and he asked me, "So what are you doing to spread the use of AI across the public service?" My instinctive response was, "But I'm in charge of GovTech, not the whole public service." And he said, "No — because you are in charge of GovTech, you better start thinking how GovTech is going to lead the way across the public service." So I couldn’t stay hidden very much longer, and my only response to him at that time was, "Okay, I will go and think about it." So now all of you are in it together with me.

It is not an easy responsibility to shoulder. You move too fast, and others will say, "Why were you so careless — careless with the resources, careless with how you implement? Maybe you shouldn't have moved so fast." You move too slow, and people will say, "How can GovTech be lagging? You’re supposed to be at the forefront of technology. Why are you so slow?" So people look to us, and we must find a good pace forward.

This is about Singaporeans — every one of them

All of us might be working with technology in some way or another, but our work is actually very human-centric. Every system that we seek to modernise, every product we build, every form of AI we decide to deploy — it has a name and a face on the other side that will get affected. It might be an elderly resident trying to renew a licence online. It might be a young mother navigating healthcare forms in the middle of the night. It might be a small business owner waiting for an approval, stuck in a legacy system that takes weeks to process. Or just a citizen making digital transactions with government agencies, but perhaps wanting to feel confident that their banking account details won't be intercepted or misused.

So what we do – we are doing for public good. We must build products with the citizens in mind and the public in mind.

Data sharing done responsibly will connect the people we want to support earlier. And so every bridge that we build across our systems must have a very clear public purpose. Not for curiosity, because we want to kaypoh what other people’s profiles look like; not for convenience, just to make the public officers’ work easier; not for commercial gain, of course – but to connect our people to essential services that they need.

Smart Nation should not mean a nation that is smart for those who are already familiar with technology. It must work for residents who are not digitally savvy – perhaps also for the families who speak a different language from us.

This past Saturday, I launched the tenth ServiceSG centre, which opened in Ang Mo Kio. Those of you who live in Ang Mo Kio or who are familiar with the area will know it's an extremely aged estate. Residents in Teck Ghee, for example — most would not dare to transact digitally with government. So we were extremely thrilled that ServiceSG was opening in Ang Mo Kio, so that we could send the hundreds and thousands of residents physically to the centre to get their services done.

But in the tour of the centre, that was when all of us as grassroots advisors realised that the services the centre could provide were all built on technology. GovTech was everywhere. All the systems we were speaking about — MSF systems for financial assistance, career and job search — most of the services are built by GovTech staff. The citizens themselves will not see it. They may not feel it. And I think that's the kind of experience that can be very precious for them, because they are afraid — they don't dare to transact digitally — but they can now work with humans in the public service who are still supported by the very technology that all of you built. And that's why we always say it's "digital first, but not digital only."

Transformation internally to keep pace

So we all know, GovTech turns 10 this year. As we look ahead, the next decade will be even more defining. Technology will move faster. The world will be uncertain. But this is a very good opportunity, a very good time for us to think about how Singapore can lead and show that we can build a society that is not only smart, but also inclusive, trusted, and human-centred.

In GovTech, we will relook at our structure, our priorities, and our processes.

Many of our roles in GovTech are changing profoundly. We have engineers who now worry because they thought they were going to do a job that required them to write code all the time, and now it seems like everybody else can be a coder too. We always tell them — engineers are not just coders. They are also architects, orchestrators, and system builders. People who can directly shape what AI produces. But that's one example of how roles, even in GovTech, are changing significantly. So GovTech, and by extension the rest of government, will also need to be reskill, upskill and build upvthe internal capability necessary to serve Singapore effectively.

A commitment, not a speech

Personally, I am not here to tell all of you and tell GovTech exactly what to do. I am here to work alongside all of you — to learn about the work you do, to advocate when you face barriers and challenges, and to make sure that the hardest, most foundational, and sometimes thankless work gets the recognition and resources that it deserves.

So I will commit to three things. Firstly, I will show up — which means being present, not just reading all the briefs that you send to me. Second, I will be honest with all of you, including when I don't know or don't understand the work that you do. And third, I will fight for the invisible work to be seen. The work I most want to fight for is not always the work that gets the headlines. It is the system that finally got modernised after years of trying — perhaps the users don't even realise that it's been modernised. It is also for the team that held the security posture when no one was watching, because maybe people feel safe not because they know of the dangers that are coming, but because there's always a protector around them. It is also the data pipeline that quietly enabled many different agencies to do their work better. That's the work I want to fight for, because that is also the work that I came from, and that is the work that I believe in.

So thank you very much, and I hope all of us have a good afternoon.