GovTech Reviews

This review is for the part of GovTech that's not Hive. This part of the organisation is mostly driven by tenders and procurement. Despite what all the glitzy recruitment activities may suggest, fairly little hands-on technical work goes on at the HQ. Some bosses in supposedly technical roles do not have much deep technical knowledge and have to rely on their more junior staff to provide insights. The messengers are the ones who score points with senior management and get promoted, not those doing the actual work on the ground. Also, it depends a lot on the boss you work for and the type of work they assign you. Some bosses do not see it as their priority to fight for their staffs' promotion, and they turn around to blame their staff for not being vocal enough etc. The so-called technical specialists do more administrative and logistical work rather than anything requiring deep technical content. It becomes quite difficult to develop and retain technical skills. It's hypocritical for people to pride themselves as subject matter experts in certain areas when all they do is manage projects and contracts. There are initiatives to relieve staff of such non-tech work and focus more on core technical functions though, but change is slow. Besides, other than these non-tech work, it's not clear what other things technical specialists can do once they are relieved of such drudgery. People who thrive are the extroverted ones who can micro-management, pressurise vendors and argue their way through. Those with technical capabilities are not appreciated. The ability to bs is a valuable skill to have, both within and outside of the organisation. Timeline for delivery is prioritised over quality. There is the blame-the-vendor culture. Generally, it feels like a place where one regresses to mediocrity, and not to do better. Thanks to the nature of the work, there is little impetus for personal professional growth. Those who want to strive for more are seen to "spoil market". Opportunities for yearly overseas conference attendance are given to the directors but eventually little or no sharing happens. Seems like a waste of taxpayer's money. Money would have been better spent on training for more junior staff. At best, junior staff only gets to go overseas once in their time with GovTech, if at all.

- parent kept telling us getting poor, no money for smart nation so need to scrutinise how much money is being spent, but some teams don’t need to cost recover at all - hired intact team of 60 that doesn’t need headcount with inflated salary and go around looking for other peoples project to duplicate but cannot function as intact team cos no projects. HR say must let them meet competency standards because of situation they’re hired under - ceo sent email to say too many people in org, then backtrack say no need to cut just let people quit on their own - ps say need to embrace change but management planned all sorts of reorg on their own (eg singpass) to quickly make people leave, staff only found out from announcement emails. basically, an organisation that used to be progressive but ran to the ground because management cannot get their act together. quickly left to avoid the mess, pity those left behind.