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Postman.gov.sg – Putting the ‘mass’ in mass communications

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In January 2020, a new virus spread at unprecedented speed across multiple countries. Little was known about this novel threat – it would be named COVID-19 only in the next month – and amid the uncertainty, misinformation about the pandemic travelled as rapidly as the coronavirus itself. To combat the flood of fake news, the government had to pivot and find ways to communicate accurate, verified information to Singaporeans across the globe directly.

Postman.gov.sg is a product built by GovTech’s Open Government Products (OGP) together with the team at the Ministry of Communication and Information (MCI) under the leadership of Minister Iswaran to address the unmet needs of updating citizens with bite-size information rapidly and at scale.

Using Postman.gov.sg, the Gov.sg WhatsApp channel was able to send a million messages within 22 minutes. This was a feat that was first of its kind, leading the wave to revamp how governments across the world could provide accurate public health information to control the pandemic. And the most amazing part? It was built in just three days, said Jean Tan, the tech lead for Postman.gov.sg’s engineering team at OGP who shared her experience in developing Postman.gov.sg at the Stack 2020 Developers Conference.

Well, know what they say – modern problems require modern solutions.

The need for speed!

Towards the end of January, Jean’s team met with MCI to tackle the problem at hand. MCI leadership emphasised the need to communicate on a timely and frequent basis. Both teams came together and recognised that the existing WhatsApp channel that was used for peacetime communication was not meant for scale from a technical perspective and quickly pivoted to finding a new solution.

As with any emergency operational processes, they started with manual processes for the updating of subscription requests while waiting for tech enhancement for the existing systems. One gap that was identified by the teams within 24 hours of operation was the fact that manual processing of subscription requests was not scalable.

There was a pressing demand for official Covid-19 updates given the uncertainty, however, the team could not keep up with the influx of requests – which they had to manually process. The second gap identified was the sending speed of the existing solution – which was built for peacetime operations and scoped for a smaller subscriber base. As a result of COVID-19, the subscriber base jumped from around 7,000 to more than 50,000 overnight.

The problem with lower sending speed was that it would take 14 hours to send out half a million messages, so the first and 500,000th recipient would get their messages more than half a day apart. It was not ideal for a citizen to receive an update from the government hours after someone else had received it.

Both MCI and the Postman.gov.sg teams came together to pivot a Postman.gov.sg prototype that was built during OGP’s hackathon to a new product that would address the problems that the Government faced with COVID-19. The team pulled all-nighters in the office to integrate Postman.gov.sg with Form.gov.sg and Facebook’s WhatsApp Business Client – where the subscription applications were made – to automate the processing, closing the four-hour lag.

After a couple of prototypes, MCI gave the go-ahead to launch on Feb 1, just three days after their first meeting. Eventually, the team managed to hit their target of sending out half a million messages in 10 minutes, 80 times faster than before.

## Overcoming technical difficulties However, things were far from smooth sailing on launch day. The team was forced to scramble for solutions after the boost in sending speed overwhelmed their cloud computing service. They also had to come up with a more efficient database to read and store the millions of messages that were generated after each broadcast. These issues were valuable lessons in understanding the technical limits of the system they were working with, Jean said.

This experience also taught her that she needed to know a system’s technical capabilities in order to stretch them and, more importantly, that she should not be afraid to push the boundaries.

For instance, the team noticed that each round of message sending involved a time-consuming validation of the phone numbers that were being pinged. Studying the technical documentation of the WhatsApp client closely, they figured out that they could do the validation just once a day at a different time from the broadcasts. As such, the system could now focus solely on sending out messages without being bogged down by the validation process.

Work in progress

Today, MCI uses Postman.gov.sg to send a million messages two to three times a day. The tool, which can also send email, SMS, and Telegram messages, has also been enhanced such that any public officer with a gov.sg email can use it. Entities without a government-issued email are also using Postman.gov.sg. For example, hospitals use the system to send out Covid-19 test results to individuals who did swab tests.

The team is not done with Postman.gov.sg and already has plans to improve it, such as by adding a rich text editor so that its interface resembles an email client. Perpetually on the lookout for feedback, Jean encouraged everyone – public officers or not – to try out the tool and reach out to the team with suggestions.

“We’re always happy to talk to you about what you want to achieve with Postman and help you achieve your goal,” she said.

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Qlik’s vision is a data-literate world, where everyone can use data and analytics to improve decision-making and solve their most challenging problems. A private company, Qlik offers real-time data integration and analytics solutions, powered by Qlik Cloud, to close the gaps between data, insights and action. By transforming data into Active Intelligence, businesses can drive better decisions, improve revenue and profitability, and optimize customer relationships. Qlik serves more than 38,000 active customers in over 100 countries.

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As a Titanium Black Partner of Dell Technologies, CTC Global Singapore boasts unparalleled access to resources.

Established in 1972, we bring 52 years of experience to the table, solidifying our position as a leading IT solutions provider in Singapore. With over 300 qualified IT professionals, we are dedicated to delivering integrated solutions that empower your organization in key areas such as Automation & AI, Cyber Security, App Modernization & Data Analytics, Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure, Workplace Modernization and Professional Services.

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SIRIM is a premier industrial research and technology organisation in Malaysia, wholly-owned by the Minister​ of Finance Incorporated. With over forty years of experience and expertise, SIRIM is mandated as the machinery for research and technology development, and the national champion of quality. SIRIM has always played a major role in the development of the country’s private sector. By tapping into our expertise and knowledge base, we focus on developing new technologies and improvements in the manufacturing, technology and services sectors. We nurture Small Medium Enterprises (SME) growth with solutions for technology penetration and upgrading, making it an ideal technology partner for SMEs.

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HashiCorp provides infrastructure automation software for multi-cloud environments, enabling enterprises to unlock a common cloud operating model to provision, secure, connect, and run any application on any infrastructure. HashiCorp tools allow organizations to deliver applications faster by helping enterprises transition from manual processes and ITIL practices to self-service automation and DevOps practices. 

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IBM is a leading global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting services provider, helping clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Nearly 3,800 government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM’s hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently, and securely. IBM’s breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and business services deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM’s legendary commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity, and service. For more information, visit www.ibm.com