Big data to help drive capabilities in public sector

SINGAPORE — Big data will feature strongly in the newly established Government Technology Agency’s (GovTech) efforts to drive capabilities in the public sector, such as in developing new indicators to forecast where the economy is heading.

In a new initiative called Pulse of the Economy, anonymised data from “non-traditional” indicators will be analysed. They include crowd density and movements via EZ-link transactions, online job listings and even electricity usage.

At the launch of GovTech on Friday (Oct 7), Minister for Communications and Information Dr Yaacob Ibrahim said: “It will allow the Government to complement traditional economic indicators, such as GDP (gross domestic product) and employment rate, with new measurements to monitor the economy and identify growth opportunities.”

For instance, electricity consumed in an industrial park, as well as the number of people travelling there, can be an indication of the level of economic activity happening there, Dr Yaacob noted.

In another project, the Housing and Development Board (HDB) as well as data scientists from GovTech analysed over 90,000 emails containing feedback to the HDB. Their findings led to a change in the key collection system for flat buyers.

Instead of allocating appointments to collect keys, an online booking system to allow buyers to book their preferred time slots was set up.

“This will bring about an even better service experience for home buyers, and help HDB optimise its frontline resources,”said Dr Yaacob.

Such indicators can even act as early warning signals, should an economic downturn be looming, for example.

Mr Liu Feng Yuan, director of the Data Science Division at GovTech, said: “We’re looking at aggregating new, non-traditional indicators such as public transportation data, electricity consumption data to derive insights that can act as early warning signals of potential economic shocks, as traditional economic indicators still take some time to gather.

“This will provide more anticipatory insights for the Government to discover sectors that may potentially require early intervention, or develop policies and schemes ahead of an economic downturn.”

Currently, he said, GovTech is exploring the “usefulness” of these big data sources with various government economic agencies.\