How OneService handles 1.7 million complaints from Singapore residents every year

OneService processes feedback ranging from broken footpaths to cockroaches in food establishments. (Photo: CNA/Abigail Ng)

SINGAPORE: Some say Singaporeans complain more than anyone else. And when it comes to municipal issues, OneService can put a number on it – 1.7 million.

That is how many complaints Singapore residents submit in one year to the government-run app that collects feedback on estate problems. The gripes range from overflowing rubbish bins and illegal parking to noisy neighbours and pest problems.

Since OneService went live in 2015, it has gained some fans.

In April this year, a Reddit post praising the app was upvoted 1,700 times and attracted more than 180 comments, many of them positive.

“It’s like LHL (Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong) himself is monitoring the app,” one user wrote. They are super duper prompt, much more prompt than calling or emailing them.”

Mr Yap Yeow Chern, who leads the OneService team, shared the Reddit thread on LinkedIn with the caption "Oh my heart".

For the record, he said the Prime Minister does not track the app’s performance.

“It’s not true,” Mr Yap, who is a senior director of operations in the Municipal Services Office (MSO), said with a laugh.

“But if you think we did a good job, you can tell the (prime minister’s office),” he quipped.

Mr Yap Yeow Chern (second row, seventh from right) with members of the OneService team at the Municipal Services Awards ceremony in 2022. (Photo: Municipal Services Office)

A comment that declared the OneService app as second only to Singpass was one of Mr Yap’s favourites.

“As a government, we invest tons of resources to make it tip-top, (it) almost never breaks down and it’s great – only second to Singpass I think is great already. Enough to retire on,” he said.

Asked why he thinks OneService has been praised for being efficient, Mr Yap said the portal uses the complaints it receives for data analysis.

Users are required to select categories and sub-categories from a pre-set list when reporting a case through OneService, which is also available as a chatbot on messaging platforms and on the LifeSG app. This makes it easier to channel the complaint to the right people.

“Each button you click is giving clues to, eventually, the (artificial intelligence) engine,” said Mr Yap.

The agency or town council can then look at the description, photo and location, which are required in the report, and get to work resolving the issue.

For example, a complaint about overgrown grass may be sent to the National Parks Board, while feedback on a damaged road sign would be handled by the Land Transport Authority (LTA).

The person who submitted the case will receive updates through OneService, including an acknowledgement when the case is being processed, a notice when the agency is working on it and another when the case is closed.

Workers repair an uneven footpath near Aljunied MRT station. This case was flagged to the Singapore Land Authority by the Municipal Services Office. (Photo: CNA/Abigail Ng)

Cases are used to train the AI model multiple times a year, something that cannot be easily done when feedback comes in through email or phone because such data is unstructured.

Five agencies – the Housing and Development Board, Land Transport Authority, National Environment Agency, National Parks Board and PUB – handle 53 per cent of cases, Senior Minister of State for National Development Sim Ann said in parliament in May.

On average, they take between two and seven working days to close cases.

About 90 per cent of the complaints can be automatically directed to different agencies or town councils.

With the help of human judgment and site visits by a team nicknamed the “Special Crimes Unit”, another 7 per cent of cases are assigned to the right people.

The remaining 3 per cent includes cases that are in the “greyest of grey” areas – which may be handed over to an agency or picked up by MSO – as well as cases that are out of OneService’s purview.

Even though OneService is like a “vacuum cleaner” that sucks up cases, some simply are not municipal, Mr Yap said.

He listed past reports that the team has received, such as losing a car key in a reservoir, an earring lost in a car park and even supernatural sightings.

RESIDENTS WANT RESOLUTION

For all the upvotes and positive comments on social media, however, the OneService team is aware of criticism of the portal.

Mr Yap said customer perception surveys have shown that residents still find it cumbersome to report issues, and some do not know who to go to.

For those who do submit complaints, responding quickly is not enough. Residents do not just hope the issue would be resolved, they expect and demand it, he said.

One Reddit comment said the user made a OneService report about faulty exercise equipment at a void deck. The next day, the area was cordoned off and the case was marked as closed.

But six weeks later, the issue was still not resolved. “The warning tape (is) still hanging there like decoration,” the comment said.

Mr Yap said such cases are now fewer and further between as OneService adjusts its policy in terms of how cases are closed.

“Going forward, straightforward cases ought to be closed only at the point of resolution,” he said, estimating that they account for around 50 to 60 per cent of all cases.

The remaining complaints may involve antisocial behaviours or complex issues that cannot be resolved easily. Some of those cases can be closed after the agency shares a course of action and timeline.

Mr Yap Yeow Chern (right) and his colleagues at the Public Sector Transformation Awards 2023. (Photo: Municipal Services Office)

When asked if the response differs depending on which agency the case was directed to, Mr Yap said OneService does share performance metrics with government agencies and town councils.

Town councils are not part of the executive branch, so “we have less hold on them”, while a bit more in-depth analysis is done for agencies, he said.

“We’re able to even go down and say look, this one really not well done. Sometimes we even float it up to their bosses and say, this one, your agency (has a) problem,” he said.

OneService also sends monthly and quarterly reports, which will flag “at-risk” cases to the agencies.

“If there are cases which exceed a certain performance threshold, we may do special pings,” he said.

“NEW WAYS OF DOING THINGS”

Mr Yap also said OneService evolved over the years.

“It used to be known as the complaints app. During COVID, we were called the ‘pao toh’ app,” he said, using the Hokkien term for tattletale.

In 2020, there was an option for users to report people who were flouting safe distancing rules.

“It has evolved from that, and we now offer quite a decent range,” he said. Users can book facilities, pay for parking and report neighbours in need on the OneService app. Around 40 per cent of the cases flagged through the Help Neighbour channel were new cases for social service agencies in Singapore.

OneService also started a six-year-long pilot project in Tampines last year, where high-volume, low-complexity issues are sent directly to a contractor instead of to government agencies who then get contractors to resolve the issue.

“LTA does infrastructure, PUB does infrastructure – actually concrete is concrete,” Mr Yap said.

“Repairing a drain is not very different from repairing a simple footpath. Can we do it together for cost savings?”

The so-called “recipe” still comes from an agency, but these instructions are put into a playbook that the contractor can follow. The contractor for the pilot project can handle a broad range of issues but also engages sub-contractors as needed.

The LTA has a similar project where feedback on illegal parking goes straight to an operator and a parking warden is deployed.

Mr Yap said OneService’s mandate is to be “faster, better, cheaper” in resolving municipal issues, which is why it is carrying out this pilot.

“We take it upon ourselves to try out new ways of doing things,” he said.

That includes using technology to address complaints about pests. “What used to be something that you would use for aircraft or the military, which is thermal imaging, we now use it to spot rats and mozzies,” he said.

In the mornings and evenings, when there is a bigger temperature difference between the ground and water, thermal imaging drones can detect puddles of water which represent a dengue risk.

The drones can also pick up heat signatures caused by rats running up and down the burrows in the ground. “It used to be that NEA or the town councils would send people in to manually eyeball and probe these issues,” he said.

Now, drones can help to determine the location of the problems.

New ways of doing things also include trying to fix the root cause of problems.

One such example is how the MSO worked with religious and community groups to educate the public on myths associated with joss paper burning. That led to a drop in the number of related complaints during the seventh lunar month and Chinese New Year.

In a bid to address neighbour noise complaints, MSO is also setting up an experiential space in vacated HDB flats that will simulate a noisy living environment.

The hope is that it will help people understand the impact of the noise created by dragging furniture or playing mahjong. Grassroots leaders and people bothered by noise will be invited to the exhibition.

“If possible, we’ll try and encourage those who are, maybe even going for mediation cases,” Mr Yap said.

The organisers will also share tips, such as getting chair socks or using door-stoppers to prevent doors from slamming.

The usual way of responding to feedback is to address it directly, but such experiments try to encourage behavioural change.

“It’s not something typical that government usually does, but MSO is solving atypical issues, which require atypical approaches,” Mr Yap said.

The “holy grail” would be to reduce the number of complaints received.

But as he said, “every feedback is good feedback" – all 1.7 million of them.

This article was originally published on ChannelNewsAsia. Its inclusion on this website is solely for education purposes.