From rodents to dirty public areas, stray animals to damaged footpaths, municipal matters can affect our living experience in Singapore. Whether you live in Jurong or Tampines, Punggol or Woodlands, similar problems could arise in our neighbourhoods.
OneService Turns Three!
Three years ago, a breakthrough in the municipal landscape was launched on 25 January 2015 by the Municipal Services Office (MSO). Together with GovTech and our partners, MSO developed the OneService App to give residents a convenient platform to alert Government agencies and Town Councils about problems in their neighbourhoods, without having to know which agency or Town Council is in charge.
Starting with 7 categories (Animals, Cleanliness, Pests, Roads and Footpaths, Drains and Sewers, Trees and Greenery, and Others), the App has since undergone a slew of improvements. Today, the OneService App offers 12 categories, including the latest on Facilities in HDB Estates and Shared Bicycles.
The former was the outcome of a successful collaboration among MSO, HDB and 16 Town Councils to link feedback management systems. The App has reached out to more than 80% of Singaporeans who live in public housing, to report maintenance issues of the facilities in their HDB estates.
This refreshing approach to municipal services delivery is not simply a one-way digital channel for residents to give feedback to Government agencies and Town Councils. It also provides residents with a full feedback management suite, where they can view the progress of their feedback under the “Track Cases” and the Case Map tabs in the OneService App. Each case is colour-coded to indicate its progress and provides information on which agency is working on it. Users also have the option of rating their experience of how their feedback was handled when their cases are resolved.
Two Platforms
MSO launched the OneService Portal in September 2016, which complements the OneService App by giving residents useful information about their neighbourhoods and municipal matters via the “My Neighbourhood” feature. Residents can be updated about the latest happenings in their neighbourhoods, and retrieve information such as the location of dengue or Zika clusters, construction work, and traffic incidents.
There is also a Services Directory showing the amenities and facilities in the neighbourhood including CHAS clinics, community clubs, HDB Branches, Resident Committees’ offices, and recycling points, just to name a few!
Residents can also go to the Case Map to have an overview of the municipal feedback cases reported via OneService, thus building awareness about cleanliness, pests, and damaged footpaths in their neighbourhood. They can check if an issue has already been reported and find out the status of the case before submitting their own report, reducing duplicate feedback.
In 2017, the OneService Portal saw yet another enhancement: a new “Attend Events” feature to help bring the community together. It lists the events organised by different agencies and provides residents with information about activities such as nature walks which they can attend with their families, neighbours and friends.
Public-Private Partnership
Technology aside, the OneService team believes that the OneService App and Portal can only be as good as the community and partners supporting them. In 2016, the team worked together with the National Environment Agency (NEA) and five supermarkets to introduce the Abandoned Trolley category. Feedback sent through that category go directly to the supermarkets to help them recover their trolleys in a timely manner. The team also adopted a similar concept to create a new category to report shared bicycles which are parked indiscriminately and cause obstruction. This was rolled out in November 2017, with MSO, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) partnering five bicycle-sharing companies.
Better Municipal Services Delivery
Beyond the user-friendly OneService App and Portal, MSO also works with our partners to analyse the types of feedback received, to study trends in municipal issues and tackle them in a more systemic manner. The OneService team is always looking out for opportunities to improve the OneService platforms, and will strive to improve feedback management protocols across different agencies and Town Councils so as to enhance the delivery of municipal services to all our residents. If you have suggestions to improve the OneService App and Portal, you can reach us directly at mso_appenquiry@mnd.gov.sg.
The community can look forward to more exciting developments on OneService that will bring about a better living environment for all to enjoy!