Mr Lim Hup Seng: The greatest difficulty and challenge always comes down to people – people’s willingness to take risk.

Mr Lim Hup Seng was recognised as IT Leader of the Year at the Singapore Computer Society’s IT Leader Awards 2010. As Deputy Secretary (Performance) in the Ministry of Finance from 2005 to 2009, he led the development of the iGov2010 masterplan and spearheaded a shared HR, Finance and Procurement system for 11 government agencies. He also led the Unique Entity Number project, a standard identification number for all entities registered in Singapore. In an interview with iN.SG, Mr Lim talks about his involvement with IT and the transformational impact that it can have
on work.

How did you first get involved with IT?
I don’t go into IT per se, but I do work and it is a tool with which work is done. For example, I don’t look at RFID and think: What can I do with it? I look at work and think: How can I do things differently? It is a shift in the philosophical framework surrounding work.

Can you give us an example of IT can transform work?
In the 1980s, when I was in the Ministry of Defence, I remember being in the office at around 7 pm, when I saw this fellow at one corner of the office. I asked him what he was doing and he said his job was to move the files from the “In” tray to the “Out” tray. He was processing claims, and he had to go through every single item to make sure that the expenditure had been authorised. That was not work; that was drudgery!

Suppose we allow people to file claims via the computer and at the corporate level we honour the claims – that was a fundamental transformation, from requiring 100 per cent clearance to a system based on honour. It changed the whole philosophy of how work was done. I was fortunate because when I returned to the Ministry on a second tour, the senior management was more enlightened. I could not have done this without the Permanent Secretary agreeing to it.

We did what we could to minimise the risk. We had an audit system in place to keep people honest. But it was a tremendous change, and it could only come about because we had IT as a tool to effect the change.

Another aspect of this transformation is the idea of self service – let people do for themselves what they can do for themselves. For example, you know your age, you know your address, why should I update it for you? You go to the system and do it yourself. That actually frees the Public Service from a lot of work.

What were some of the difficulties involved in trying to effect these changes?
The greatest difficulty and challenge always comes down to people – people’s willingness to take risk. In an ideal scenario, everyone is of the same mind and comes together to consider if a risk is worth taking, and if the value far outweighs the cost. But the reality is that I may be responsible for a certain sector, and in my sector, I may be willing to take risks but on its own it’s inadequate. The public sector is inter-linked. Somewhere along the line, if people are not prepared to take risks, it will not work.

Describe one of the more challenging initiatives that you have been involved in?
I would say it is the shared Human Resource (HR), Finance and Procurement system called ACE (Alliance for Corporate Excellence). Mindef had an integrated system for these functions, so when I came to the Ministry of Finance (MOF), I thought – why can’t we have the same thing for the wider Public Service?

The system for HR, finance and procurement is actually quite generic but across the Public Service, in the hands of individual agencies, it sometimes becomes an art form, so 100 organisations will have 100 systems that they have tweaked and are therefore incompatible.

I called for data and we discovered an opportunity for integrating these systems because about a dozen statutory boards had their systems due for renewal. We had five agencies which were interested. We did feasibility studies to find out the potential cost savings for the project and the conclusion was that this was doable.

What were some of the issues you encountered during the project and how were they resolved?
At the macro level, everyone agreed on the principle behind the system but when it came to mapping out business processes, differences emerged. Just take the claim form, for example. How do you have a system to support 50 different forms for 100 different organisations? The value you would derive from it is gone.

That was a crisis point. But we were able to get all the CEOs to make changes to their processes because the value they would get out of making that change would be more than the information that they would lose.

How do you minimise the risk of failure in a project?
I make a strategic assessment to see if a project is doable. If people are not willing to take a risk, are not able to think radically about transformational change, then it’s a non-starter. We need people who are prepared to commit, to take the challenge. Most of the time it is a judgment call. It is about having the right idea at the right time.