More people using digital channels for municipal feedback

SINGAPORE — More than 31,000 cases concerning municipal issues have been submitted and handled through the Municipal Services Office’s (MSO) OneService smartphone application since its launch in January last year.

Giving an update on the MSO’s efforts during the Ministry of National Development’s (MND) Committee of Supply debate on Monday (April 11), Culture, Community and Youth Minister Grace Fu — who oversees the MSO — also said that more than 55,000 users have registered on the app, which handles feedback on municipal problems, as of February.

Set up in October 2014, the MSO works with 11 government agencies to address problems that span various agencies in maintaining estates, and upgrading facilities and infrastructure. The OneService app automatically routes each piece of feedback to the relevant agency so that more timely service can be provided.

Over the past year, the MSO has cut the average time taken to close such complex cases from 21 to 13 days, said Ms Fu.

She also noted that more people are submitting municipal feedback through digital channels, from about 3 to 12 per cent over the past year, of which 5 per cent came through the OneService App.

Going forward, more features will be added to the app, such as a pilot initiative called Spot Abandoned Trolleys. Members of the public can submit the location and photographs of abandoned trolleys, such as at void decks and walkways, which will be retrieved by the relevant supermarkets. 

The MSO is working with five supermarket chains — Cold Storage, Giant, Mustafa Centre, NTUC FairPrice and Sheng Siong — on this, and the feature will be rolled out in the app by the end of this month. Ms Fu added that the MSO will look at expanding crowdsourcing arrangements to other municipal issues, should the initiative work well.

Meanwhile, to strengthen collaboration between government agencies and town councils, all 16 town councils will participate in a pilot started by the MSO last year with the Jurong-Clementi and Holland-Bukit Panjang town councils. 

The town councils and MSO will work on protocol for transferring feedback between government agencies and town councils, and for cases that require agencies and town councils to work together on a solution. 

Municipal issues that require the Government and town councils to work closely together include leaks from pipe fittings in HDB blocks. “Each town council has its unique processes and systems, and we will need time to work with each of them to ease the transition … by the end of this year, residents across the island will be able to benefit from the closer coordination between town councils and government agencies,” Ms Fu said.

Jurong-Clementi Town Council chairman Ang Wei Neng said his town council receives feedback on cases about cleanliness and infrastructure maintenance outside the HDB estates that have to be redirected to government agencies. 

Also, cases involving high-rise littering and water-supply issues, among others, require both the government agencies and the town council to work together to resolve them.

A case referral manual developed by the MSO and the pilot town councils “has been particularly useful”, as it helps clarify the responsibilities of each party. “Additionally, by partnering the MSO, our town council is able to tap the MSO’s network of agencies to better resolve those complex issues that straddle multiple parties,” he added.

Meanwhile, the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) will be expanding its Stray Cat Sterilisation Programme beyond the heartlands to cover stray cats in industrial and commercial areas, as well as private estates. The ministry hopes to sterilise 20,000 more stray cats over the next five years as part of the initiative.

In response to queries from TODAY, the AVA, which works with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Cat Welfare Society on the programme, said that since the start of the programme in July 2011, about 2,000 stray cats have been sterilised as of last December.