What Life Inside a GovTech Internship is like

Strong innovation culture

Prior to his internship at GovTech, Yi Shao expected technology adoption in a government agency to be slower and the working environment to be more bureaucratic. But this perception changed completely within his first two months at GovTech.

GovTech’s position at the forefront of government innovation gave Yi Shao access to enterprise AI tools, which many organisations have yet to roll out. And that access came paired with training, where GovTech ran regular sessions to help new users make the most of these tools, responsibly.

Jay Cin experienced that same innovation culture of GovTech in a different manner while being forward -deployed to MOE.

“The culture at MOE DXD has been one of the things I’ve really enjoyed. It can feel almost like a startup at times because we are constantly exploring and trialing new projects. I find it quite exciting to experience that kind of fast-paced and innovative environment within a government agency,” she highlights.

It wasn't any single project that made it feel that way, she explained, but how the team approached every new one, often starting without knowing exactly where it would land, willing to experiment, learn along the way, and accept that not every idea would work out. That willingness to innovate without the fear of failure holding them back was what made GovTech's strong innovation culture stick with her most.

Real Ownership

When Yi Shao joined GovTech, public officers were already facing a known problem: the data they relied on sat within a single external platform, disconnnected from the tools they used daily. That gap quietly hindered their productivity and solving it fell within the scope of Yi Shao’s team.

His supervisor handed him only the starting point: the pain point, and the use case. The rest of the building process was Yi Shao's to own, designing and building a solution that could eventually be used across the whole of government.

Full ownership, in this case, meant exactly that. His supervisor stepped into more of a mentoring role, giving him the room to figure out his own approach and checking in only when he needed it.

"It was both fun and challenging, because I truly owned the process from start to finish," he said.

Having ownership didn't mean going it alone as Yi Shao recalls how some of his colleagues helped him debug the issues he was facing together.

"I appreciated that balance," he said, "where I had the autonomy to figure things out myself, but always knew I had guidance and support when I needed it."

He eventually built a node in Opus (opens in new tab) that lets public officers pull data from external platforms straight into their existing workflows. Watching officers actually adopt it into their daily work was, to him, the clearest proof the problem had been well-addressed.

"That experience showed me what meaningful ownership as an intern could really look like," he shared proudly. "I wasn't just here to learn or observe, I was given real work that could impact others."

For Jay Cin, ownership came about outside of her day-to-day tasks, when she joined the organising committee for GovTech's Intern Engagement Day, having a hand in engaging the intern community.

"Community is very important to me," she said. "When the opportunity came up to help organise Intern Engagement Day, I saw it as a chance to bring interns together, meet people outside my immediate team, and learn more about the different work happening across GovTech."

Watching the event come together was what made the ownership feel real to Jay Cin.

"Seeing everyone having fun, making new friends and learning about each other's experiences made all the effort worthwhile,” she shared.

Building Tech for Public Good

There is a difference between working in the public sector and building the technology behind it. For the latter, it means building and shaping the systems and infrastructures that thousands of officers, and millions of citizens need and rely on.

"I found a deep sense of satisfaction knowing that the work I do can contribute to improving how the government serves people," Yi Shao said. "Building technology for Singapore means using my skills to make a meaningful difference at scale."

For Jay Cin, that same philosophy showed up as a question she now actively asks herself at work.

"Being a good data engineer was never just about building accurate pipelines." She emphasised that there is a much deeper meaning to her work. "It's also about constantly asking myself: why am I doing this, and who am I doing it for?"

From a dashboard built to surface insights for MOE HQ and school leaders to a node quietly running in the background of a hundred officers' workflow, they all connect back to the same purpose of building tech for public good.

Being Part of a Bigger Community

What stayed with Yi Shao most was not just the work, but the team he worked closely with.

That strong balance of work and play showed up in the small things: lunches on office days spent talking about "everything under the sun," advice from senior colleagues and even cycling to work together. All these simple activities were what enriched his experience at GovTech.

“It made my internship feel much more than just the work itself,” he shared.

For Jay Cin, that same sense of belonging within a like-minded community came from the people around her, and the passion they brought to their work. "One thing I've noticed is that both MOE and GovTech have people who are deeply passionate about the impact of their work," she said, a pattern she's seen consistently, whether talking to colleagues she works with directly or people she's met through other programmes.

That burning passion showed up in how far people's curiosity reached. Colleagues stayed curious well beyond their own projects, taking the initiative to understand what others were working on, learning from them, and thinking about how those ideas might apply elsewhere.

Being surrounded by that kind of passion motivated her to push herself too, to make the most of every part of her internship.

It is the kind of community Jay Cin never expected herself to be a part of, one where people actively push each other to grow together.

Their advice to the next intern

"Come in curious and don't be afraid to ask questions," said Yi Shao. "Interns at GovTech are trusted with real responsibilities that can shape how citizens experience government services."

"The job description is a good starting point, but the interview is also a chance to learn about the team and the people you'll be working with," Jay Cin advises. Meeting her Reporting Officer during the interview, she added, gave her a real sense of the team and environment she would be joining and it turned out to be one of the biggest reasons she accepted the offer.

She recounted how both she and her Reporting Officer saw learning the same way from the moment they first met. "I wanted the autonomy to explore and learn through doing, rather than simply being instructed on what to do," she said. "I learn best when I'm given the space to try things, and sometimes even fail, and figure out how to improve." And he was open to that from the start. Months into her internship, that promise has held. "Now that I'm here, I can say that he really didn't oversell the team or its culture," she shared lightheartedly.

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