How Sophie is making Singpass support work better behind the scenes — Public Sector Transformation Awards 2026

When solving everything became the problem

In her second week at GovTech, Sophie took over Customer Support for Singpass. Her first instinct was to clear the cases reaching her as quickly as possible.

It didn't take long for her to see the flaw in that approach.

Sophie had unintentionally become an operational bottleneck. When frontline officers hit uncertainty, the default response was to escalate the case straight to her. At one point, she was reviewing around 20 cases a day and roughly 100 a week, even though resolving individual cases wasn't her core responsibility.

Being fast and available had initially felt like leadership but in reality, the operations had become too dependent on one person.

When Sophie joined the team, there was no shortage of urgent issues competing for attention. She started looking beyond individual cases to understand why so many were being escalated in the first place.

"When everything feels urgent, prioritisation itself becomes the first problem," she said.

Rather than reacting case by case, she asked two questions for every recurring issue:

"How often does this happen?"

"Who is most affected?"

The volume of case escalations to Sophie quickly stood out as the clearest signal, but the queue itself was only a symptom, not the root cause. The deeper issue was that frontline officers didn't always have the knowledge, tools, coaching or confidence to make decisions on their own, making them more likely to escalate cases rather than resolve them at the frontline.

Building the system, not just clearing the queue

Once Sophie understood what was driving the case escalations, her focus shifted from clearing the queue herself to giving frontline officers what they needed to resolve more cases independently.

Drawing on her previous experience in private-sector customer operations, Sophie developed a tiered support model for Singpass that took into account the scale, security, and public trust involved in Singpass operations.

The team clarified the roles and responsibilities of frontline support, Product Operations and Engineering, while strengthening training, playbooks and coaching within the Helpdesk. Instead of escalating whenever there was uncertainty, frontline officers had clearer guidance on what they could resolve themselves, when to make a decision, and when case escalation was truly needed.

"The goal was not to manage more cases" she emphasised, "it was to build a capable system where fewer case escalations were necessary."

The system holds, and citizens feel it first

The results have been substantial. Sophie used to review around 100 cases a week. Today she typically sees only one or two. That is a reduction of more than 90 per cent, indicating that the majority of cases are now resolved at the frontline.

More importantly, operational decision-making was no longer concentrated on Sophie.

Her proudest moment was realising that the team could operate confidently without depending on her.

For Sophie, that is a more meaningful measure of progress than simply resolving cases faster. By building capabilities and empowering her team, she removed herself as a bottleneck while giving frontline officers greater confidence and ownership over the cases they handle.

"I am proud that we did not simply improve a metric, we built lasting capability that continues to create better outcomes for citizens," she firmly pointed out.

Building that lasting capability, though, was never only about speed and efficinecy. As Sophie reflects on her leadership journey, she shares that working in the public sector has taught her that people whose circumstances do not fit the usual journey can never simply be dismissed as "edge cases". Every citizen's case, however unusual, deserves the same weight and the same care as any other, and this is a firm belief that her team carries into every case they manage.

When that capability works as intended, citizens don't need to see it. They simply experience it through the help that arrives quickly, when they need it the most.

Freed from clearing the queue herself, Sophie's attention has now shifted to what she considers the real work: addressing the needs of the people behind the cases and not just the cases themselves.

Sophie is quick to point out that building this capability was a team effort. Frontline officers were open and honest when they shared that existing processes weren't working, Team Leads took on greater responsibility for coaching and decision-making. Colleagues across Product, Engineering, Policy, Security, Communications and partner teams brought in expertise that no single person could hold alone.

The clearer roles, tiers, playbooks, and lines of authority took shape because people were willing to identify what wasn’t working and improve things together.

When good operations become invisible

When Sophie found out she had received the WOG Service Champion Award, her first reaction was simple: "Honestly, I was stunned."

The recognition was especially meaningful because much of operational work is invisible by design. When it's done well, citizens rarely see the difficult case that was resolved, the process that was improved, or the teams coordinating behind the scenes.

"I do not do this work for recognition," she said, "but I would be less than honest if I said it did not feel amazing."

That invisible impact also shapes how Sophie thinks about her next steps.

Her team handles thousands of cases, but behind every case is a citizen trying to get something done and facing a blocker. By analysing patterns in the types of issues reaching the Helpdesk, Sophie wants the team to shift from reactive case handling to proactively identifying and addressing problems before more citizens encounter them.

"The best productivity improvement is not simply closing a case faster," she shares. "It is preventing the citizen from needing to escalate in the first place."

Citizens won't see the escalation model Sophie rebuilt, the playbooks her team uses or the operational decisions happening behind Singpass. They will simply experience a service that works and get timely support when they need it.

For Sophie, that's what good operations should look like.

"Good operations absorbs complexity on the inside," she says, "so that the citizen experiences greater clarity on the outside."

It's this kind of unseen work, done well and repeated often, that keeps the services that citizens rely on every day working seamlessly.