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Central Government, Government Analytics

How single ID improved interaction with govt

By Kelly Ng | 2 March 2010

To make it convenient for entities to interact with all government agencies, the Singapore government launched a multi-agency ICT project to implement a standardised identification number for each entity. Winston Wee, Head of Integrated Services, Ministry of Finance (MOF) told FutureGov of the challenges faced during project implementation and how they were overcome.

Before the implementation of the Unique Entity Number (UEN), an entity used different numbers to identity itself when communicating with various agencies. “The Accounting & Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA) would ask for your business registration number, Singapore Customs would need your central registration number and the Central Provident Fund Board would identify you by your employer reference number,” explained Wee.

With UEN, each entity needed just one number to interact with all government agencies for government-to-business e-services.

Heading a project which involved 50 government agencies was not an easy task, recalled Wee. “UEN would impact 84 government agencies, industry associations, and 400,000 Singapore-registered entities, which included companies, businesses, embassies, societies, schools, hospitals. Each had different working styles, organisational culture, interests, concerns and priorities,” he said.

Such a massive multi-agency project required senior management endorsement to push the agenda through the hierarchy, according to Wee. In the case of UEN, the support from Permanent Secretaries, CEOs and CIOs was strong. MOF and ACRA were the key leading agencies, but the project involved all other key agencies which had previously issued numbers to entities.

It took close to four years from the time of conceptualisation to the launch of UEN. Much financial and human resource was invested to ensure its success. “The UEN team included four full-time staff, 10 working committee members, 30 project committee members and 100 officers from 50 agencies,” noted Wee.

Reflecting on the project, Wee believed it was critical to empower the agencies to implement UEN for themselves. It was important to respect each agency’s needs and concerns, no matter how big or small the agency is. “We faced difficulties initially getting some agencies to migrate their system to the shared UEN one. Instead of pushing it down their throats, we worked together to understand the technical obstacles and find alternative solutions,” he said.

UEN was first implemented across 56 agencies in January 2009. Since 1 July 2009, 100 per cent of government-to-business e-services that require identification adopted UEN. This led to the adoption of UEN by all 84 government agencies.

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