Government Agencies that Receive the Most Cases from Municipal Services Office

9 Mr Zhulkarnain Abdul Rahim asked the Minister for National Development (a) what are the top five agencies commonly referred to by the Municipal Services Office (MSO) in relation to cases lodged through the OneService app for the past three years; (b) what is the average time taken to close the feedback loop for those cases from each of those five agencies; and (c) whether the MSO independently tracks, audits or verifies that the feedback has been acted upon by the relevant agency.

The Senior Minister of State for National Development (Ms Sim Ann) (the Minister for the National Development): Sir, the Housing and Development Board (HDB), Land Transport Authority (LTA), National Environment Agency (NEA), National Parks Board (NParks) and Public Utilities Board (PUB), collectively accounted for 53% of municipal feedback that came through the OneService app from 2020 to 2022. The Town Councils handled another 44%.

From 2020 to 2022, these five agencies on average took between two and seven working days to close municipal feedback cases.

The Municipal Services Office (MSO) has been working with agencies to improve the timeliness and more importantly the quality of their replies to municipal feedback. For straightforward cases, agencies are expected to close the feedback loop only when they have resolved the issue on the ground, with a photo of the completed works where practicable. Such cases usually involve only one agency and are of a nature where clear, concrete actions can be taken to resolve the issue. For example, repairing faulty lighting or a broken footpath. This focus on true case resolution has been well-received by residents.

For transient issues like community noise, or complex cases, like those involving anti-social behaviour and enforcement action, agencies will respond to feedback providers on an action plan and indicative timeline to address the issues. For such cases, time is needed for thorough investigation and enforcement action. In such instances, MSO tracks the recurrence of the issue and works with the relevant agencies to better tackle the root causes.

Mr Deputy Speaker: Mr Zhulkarnain Abdul Rahim.

Mr Zhulkarnain Abdul Rahim (Chua Chu Kang): Thank you, Sir. I thank the Senior Minister of State and our officers from MSO for their hard work since 2015 on the OneService app. I understand that efficient and effective resolution of the issues much depend on the accurate characterisation and the details to be given. So, I can imagine it will be challenging for officers and agencies to route to the correct channels if such details are not given.

My questions are for the OneService app, how can it be further improved and would there be plans to further improve the app to ensure that users provide all the necessary information upfront and the details – perhaps by the use of ChatBots or AI or any other technology.

Secondly, I think I heard from Senior Minister of State that there are action plans to manage the expectations of feedback providers that may take longer time. Would interim updates be provided through notifications?

And lastly, we should leverage on community resources. Can the local grassroots advisors be alerted where key issues on the ground crop up through the OneService app, so that we can leverage on our local resource partners and other community resources on the ground? For instance, in Keat Hong constituency, we have an estates task force made up of resident volunteers and some community leaders that actually complement the work of the grassroots advisors.

Mr Deputy Speaker: Mr Zhulkarnain, if I could ask you to wrap up, please.

Ms Sim Ann: Thank you, Mr Zhulkarnain, for the supplementary questions. Of the use of AI, that has already being done, for instance, through our OneService Kaki ChatBot. The ChatBot does use AI to prompt the feedback provider to give more details that allow us or our agencies to identify the location of the case being reported better. So, that is an example of how we are using AI.

In terms of interim updates: first, agencies can use the interim update function that is within the app, to provide some update to our feedback providers before the case is completely resolved. Also, for the high volume type of cases, when the case is being submitted, that will be a link appearing to a Ministry of National Development (MND) website, where, if the feedback providers so wishes, he can be informed on which are the types of cases that might take longer to resolve and why.

Mr Zhulkarnain also mentioned about the use of community resources and keeping grassroots advisors in the loop. We will study his suggestion. I am very encouraged to hear that he has a community task force and my team would be glad to discuss how we can support each other in better resolving municipal feedback cases. In terms of the volume that we handle, it is very high on a daily basis. So, I think we would have to think about how to provide the information in a more summarised form, for ease of partners that wish to work with us.

Mr Deputy Speaker: Ms Hany Soh.

Ms Hany Soh (Marsiling-Yew Tee): Thank you, Sir. I have two supplementary questions in relation to the OneService app. The first is, what is the current subscription rate for the OneService app?

The second one is, apart from reporting a municipal issue, which my Parliamentary colleague has raised earlier, the OneService app provides many other useful services, such as rendering help to your neighbours and also in terms of finding out which are the nearest useful facilities near you. So, I wish to ask are there any plans to increase awareness and the take-up rates and whether more such useful services will be included in the app in due course?

Ms Sim Ann: I am happy to let Ms Hany Soh know that we have just crossed the half a million mark, in terms of user accounts registered with the app.

And in terms of further enhancing the app with more services beyond just reporting municipal feedback, yes, we have been doing so. We have a "Help Neighbour" feature and very recently, we also collaborated with a VWO on using the app to broadcast information about persons with dementia who may be who may have lost their way in the community and whose loved ones are very eager to find the person. We look forward to more of such collaborative opportunities so that we can leverage on the large user base to help improve lives for Singaporeans.

In terms of improving the use of the OneService app, yes, we are also constantly looking at digital and non-digital ways to promote the use of the OneService app to more potential users. For instance, we note that some outdoor advertising could be quite effective. So, we will also be deploying banners to some of our neighbourhoods so that people who might not already be seeing our digital publicity can also be aware that there is this app which they can download.

We will continue to take in more suggestions and feedback and I thank Members for being so supportive of the OneService app.