Innovation in Citizen Services
Create new GoWhere sites in less than a day
4 April 2024
Could DIYGoWhere's self-service approach revolutionise how government agencies connect with citizens online?
By now, you’re probably familiar with GoWhere and its multiple campaigns, which are instantly recognisable by the URL gowhere.gov.sg.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, GoWhere has offered intuitive location-based search for Government campaigns, services and information. Two classic pandemic examples are VaccineGoWhere, which was instrumental in informing Singaporeans where to get vaccinated and ARTGoWhere, which informed the public on where to pick up ART test kits.
Post-pandemic, the GoWhere team has been supporting multiple campaigns to help Singaporeans in aspects such as:
Supporting heartland merchants — CDC vouchers
Helping Singaporeans stay active and connected to their community — Healthier SG
Fostering resilience and preparedness — SG Ready
Helping Singaporeans support heartland merchants
Since 2022, Singapore introduced the CDC (Community Development Council) vouchers scheme to help heartland merchants. CDC vouchers are also a way to help Singaporean households cope with daily expenses.
To support this campaign, the GoWhere team created CDCVouchersGoWhere – allowing citizens to find out where they can spend their CDC vouchers easily.
Helping Singaporeans stay active and connected to their community
Healthier SG is a national initiative by the Ministry of Health (MOH) focusing on preventive health. Singaporeans can take proactive steps to manage their health, prevent the onset of chronic diseases and have strong support to lead healthier lifestyles.
HealthierSGEventsGoWhere was created as a one-stop directory for community healthy lifestyle activities. Citizens can find events such as yoga, brisk walking, HIIT, K-pop-inspired workouts and yes, good ol’ classic line dancing.
Fostering resilience and preparedness
This year, GoWhere also supported the conduct of the inaugural Exercise SG Ready via SGReadyGoWhere. Held in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of Total Defence, Exercise SG Ready aimed to increase Singapore’s readiness for crises and disruptions. Participating organisations across Singapore simulated disruptions to power, water, food supply, and digital connectivity and conducted fire evacuation drills during the two-week exercise period from 15 Feb 2024 to 29 Feb 2024.
With SGReadyGoWhere, Singaporeans could easily find out the dates, duration and locations of these disruptions during the exercise period. At the same time, Singaporeans can also use the SGReadyGoWhere to locate their nearest Civil Defence shelters in the event of a wartime emergency.
But here’s the thing: Managing campaigns and keeping information update-to-date was resource-intensive
While users appreciate the helpfulness of GoWhere campaigns, there is a lot of coordination and verification that goes into creating them. Behind the scenes, the GoWhere team has to coordinate with multiple parties to collate the information, verify, translate and thereafter publish these campaigns/services on the site. This is especially true when accurate information has to be updated in a timely manner.
In the past, this is what the GoWhere team had to do:
The GoWhere team had to liaise with business users, translators and internally within the team to gather requirements and content for the campaign, build the GoWhere site and translate the content. The GoWhere team would function as a bridge between all these parties.
This old process was time-consuming and also required a lot of unnecessary coordination. Getting a GoWhere site up takes an average of about 4 days, and updating it can take an average of 3 days.
Given the demand for GoWhere websites, this process quickly became overwhelming and was no longer effective. Business users should have the right to make these changes on their own.
DIYGoWhere – empowering users to build their own GoWhere campaign
To resolve this, the GoWhere team launched DIYGoWhere, a ground-up initiative that enables business users/agencies to self-update existing GoWhere sites and eventually, spin up new GoWhere sites by themselves.
Today, DIYGoWhere features a content management system with an approval workflow, translation request and fulfilment tracker, and user management.
To put it simply, DIYGoWhere promises:
More control for business owners, allowing them to update their GoWhere campaign sites anytime.
Reduce the turnaround time to launch GoWhere campaigns and updates.
Streamline and reduce unnecessary coordination work from all parties.
Unlocking the possibilities
From collecting CDC vouchers to helping out with Total Defence, the GoWhere suite of products has helped simplify various aspects of life for Singaporeans. With the implementation of DIYGoWhere, we’re excited to give this tool to agencies to use.
Contact the DIYGoWhere team.