Building an enduring culture of learning in a hybrid world
The Government of Singapore consists of 16 ministries, and within each there are several agencies and statutory boards that employ around 140,000 public officers. One of these agencies is GovTech, whose job is to build a community of data practitioners and enthusiasts across all agencies.
Why Workplace?
Prior to Workplace, efforts to rally the community were siloed – GovTech depended on engaging each of the communities within the agencies independently. This was cost inefficient and took a toll on the admin team as there were no easy ways to bring together disconnected communities.
Workplace helps to bring the different data groups to one shared platform with the goal to build a unified data community. Data enthusiasts and practitioners across the whole-of-government can now interact and facilitate engagement via meetups, activities and challenges hosted centrally on Workplace.
Government
140,000
APAC
“Workplace came at the time when the GovTech efforts of building up the community was nascent, and it helped provide the ingredients of community building - the ability to help people discover like-minded peers, facilitate questions and answers, and allow the organizing of meetups and running of activities and challenges.”
Results
Driving innovation remotely
Community managers run regular competitions and challenges. One example is the #OperationReimagine competition, where participants have to reimagine a data visualisation dashboard from a given dataset and share it with the Workplace community.The winner with the highest number of votes via comments gets rewarded with prizes and a Workplace badge. This helps employees build connections even when apart, spurs innovation in a fun and interactive way and generates engagement on Workplace.
Effectively running communities and improving engagement
The admin team has created a customised Workplace dashboard that tracks a unique metric dubbed ‘Buzz’. ‘Buzz’ is derived from a combination of three metrics: posts, comments and reactions. This has helped GovTech identify high-performing posts, allowing them to identify campaigns that resonate most with their community to keep engagement levels high.
Making learning accessible
Previously an in-person course, GovTech moved their “Data Champions Bootcamp” to Workplace. Referred to as an internal ‘community college’, the boot camp provides weekly on-demand training for students and easily accessible learning materials. Students can crowdsource information, exchange assignment tips and surface best practices, fostering interaction between colleagues in different ministries and statutory boards.
