PS21 ExCEL Convention and Awards Ceremony 2016

PS21 ExCEL Convention

10 November, 2016 – The Singapore Public Service kicked off this year’s PS21 ExCEL (Excellence through Continuous Enterprise and Learning) Convention with an awards ceremony on 10 November at ITE College Central. Held annually since 1998, the PS21 ExCEL Convention showcases and celebrates innovative ideas, projects and efforts from individuals and team contributors, which create outcomes that benefit citizens.

This year’s Awards Ceremony recognised 135 teams and public officers who best exemplified the spirit of innovation and continuous learning over the past 12 months. For details on Award Categories, Featured Projects and Featured Innovation Champions, please see Annex A, Annex B and Annex C respectively.

Apart from the Awards Ceremony, the ExCEL Convention also featured a two-day exhibition from 10-11 Nov. The exhibition comprised a total of 34 exhibits - 29 from the Public Service and five from the private sector. The theme for this year’s Convention is “Innovation. Productivity. Digital. Ready for the Future”. This reflected the Public Service’s push towards productivity gains in the face of resource constraints, leveraging digital innovations to be future-ready.   

Other highlights of the Convention included a digital government conference and a makeathon, where more than 50 public officers from 26 agencies came together to brainstorm and prototype ideas for the topic “How might we create One Public Service where public officers are proud to work in, and can deliver seamlessly across agencies”. Participants will get to present their ideas to a panel of senior public officers at the end of the Convention. Feasible ideas may be piloted subsequently.  

Public Service Transformation – New Initiatives 

Head of Civil Service, Mr Peter Ong, spoke about the next phase of the Public Service Transformation at the Convention. In line with the strategies of fostering a bold and innovative Public Service and working smarter and better through technology, he announced the launch of Workplace by Facebook for the Public Service. Workplace by Facebook is the company’s professional edition and currently accessible by 15 agencies and more than 5,300 public officers. When fully implemented by March 2017, it will connect all public officers in Singapore. The Singapore Public Service is the first Public Service in the world to get on to Workplace across the whole of government. 

Through communities of practice that can be established on Workplace, public officers will be able to build communities among like-minded people for conversations of a non-classified nature. This can promote collaboration, knowledge sharing and innovative practices. 

At the Convention, Mr Peter Ong also announced a pilot for a ShareYourSkills e-marketplace within the Public Service, which will facilitate the sharing of resources. The idea was proposed by a group of public officers during the Public Service Innovation Challenge in August 2016, conducted in the form of a makeathon for officers to moot ideas. Hosted on Workplace, agencies can post certain tasks that require specific skills within a time period, and interested public officers with the required skills can volunteer for it. Examples of such skills include graphic recording, translation or coding.