#65 - Modernising digital services at scale with Hefen Wong
What does it really take to modernise critical government systems while they’re live?
In this episode, we dive into Singapore’s ambitious transformation of its Employment Pass platform, an 18-year-old legacy system redesigned to deliver seamless, human-centred digital services at national scale.
Together with Hefen Wong from Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower, we explore why modernisation isn’t just about technology, but about rethinking value creation: starting with better experiences for end-users, even when the benefits for internal teams take longer to surface.
We unpack how large-scale quantitative research can be combined with targeted qualitative insights to guide decisions, how user satisfaction becomes a key metric for success, and how agile ways of working enable continuous improvement in complex environments.
A conversation about balancing long-term transformation with short-term buy-in and what it really means to design digital services that work, at scale.
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