Three weeks, eight products, one midnight deadline: How GovTech powered Singapore’s vaping enforcement system

At 12.40am on 1 September 2025, a 50-year-old man was caught with a vape and fined $700. It was the first case logged on a brand-new vaping enforcement system ↗ (opens in new tab) - one that a team of fewer than ten people had built in three weeks, going live at the exact moment Singapore's tougher vaping laws took effect.

The deadline traces back to a pivotal shift in how Singapore viewed vaping. It has been illegal since 2018, and for years officers treated it much like smoking. That changed in mid-2025, when vapes laced with etomidate, an anaesthetic, began causing users to suffer seizures and psychotic episodes. Vaping quickly became a public health issue overnight, and enforcement had to catch up fast with a system that was ready-to-go. 

This is how stacking and integrating existing GovTech platforms together helped make an impossible deadline possible. 

The enforcement gap 

Officers used to fill out forms by hand and carry them back to the office before a fine could be issued. A registry introduced in December 2023 moved part of that online, but it only covered composition notices and fine payment, with majority of the enforcement work having to be done manually. 

Then on 1 September 2025, the Government temporarily listed etomidate as a Class C drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act, bringing tougher penalties and a rehabilitation framework with it. The vaping ban enforcement now also meant having to run investigations and following offenders through rehabilitation across thousands of cases. 

The Health Sciences Authority (HSA)'s previous system was built solely for enforcement. Rehabilitation was a new ground for the agency, and there came a stark issue: there was currently no available feature in the existing tool that could manage rehabilitation too. 

Fragmented records also made tracking offenders slow and unreliable. An officer stopping someone on the street needed to know whether that person had been caught before, what their history looked like, and whether a rehabilitation programme was already planned before deciding on their next course of action. Yet, such information sat in separate systems and was not readily available at the moments on the ground when officers needed it the most.  

With the sudden change in vaping laws, there was no time to consolidate systems one by one or build a brand new system from scratch. Enforcement and rehabilitation processes took effect on 1 September regardless of whether officers had a platform to input their data into. 

GatherSG, the platform that was already there 

Thankfully, the team had an existing system called GatherSG that they could quickly build upon. GatherSG ↗ (opens in new tab) is a case management platform that simplifies the demands of casework, storing records that several teams can work from, providing visual boards that track a case’s progress and offering dashboards showing how cases are moving. 

GatherSG had already proven itself elsewhere in Government. Paired with the Personal Alert Button, installed in the homes of seniors living alone, it has helped manage cases vulnerable elderly people and government rental flat tenants, and supported responses to various life-threatening situations. 

GatherSG was also built to grow. New features could be added on top of what already existed, instead of every use case needing its own system built from scratch. Such flexibility was what made it feasible for VIS. 

Three weeks to launch 

With a foundation platform like GatherSG in place, the team could move straight to building. GatherSG went in as one of eight existing GovTech products the team stacked together for the job. The final integrated solution linked form submission, case management, delivery, and the Health Appointment System into a single flow so that an officer could book a rehabilitation session in the same step that recorded the offence. 

The entire build was carried out by a team of fewer than 10 people, racing against an impending deadline. The Vaping Information System (VIS) went live at midnight on 1 September 2025, the exact moment the new penalties took effect – with the first case arriving just 40 mins after. 

Keying in a name pulls up a person's full vaping history, the number of offences committed and whether they have gone through rehabilitation. With that information, VIS tells the officer what to do next, whether that is a fine or an arrest on the spot. 

That same record follows the case afterwards. The team managing rehabilitation at HSA works from what the officer logged on the street, and enforcement can see what happens once a case moves into rehabilitation. What used to run as two separate processes has now been integrated into one. 

Built long before it was needed 

Reusing products is nothing new. However, the bigger payoff is readiness, where products developed are developed with foresight and scalability in mind. GatherSG is an example of this principle in practice, building the right products well and fast, so that the product is ready to help tackle real-world challenges promptly.  

This also reflects why reliable infrastructure matters. A mission-critical system like VIS stays available and effective because the foundation it runs on was already tested and proven in multiple instances before it was ever needed here. Laws can shift overnight. With the right infrastructure in place, enforcement can too.