About The Customer

Over the last 40 years, Singapore's cityscape has been transformed dramatically. Today, Singapore has become a modern metropolis and yet retains its Asian charm and cultural identity. This was no accident of nature. It is the result of four decades of judicious and long-term land use planning. The Ministry of National Development (MND), which aims to enhance Singapore's physical infrastructure and environment to make it a thriving, and vibrant world-class city for business, living and leisure undertake this responsibility.

Established in 1959, MND is responsible for the physical development of Singapore through careful, long-term planning. MND's portfolio encompasses the areas of land use planning, urban redevelopment and building conservation, public housing, the construction industry, parks and greenery, and food safety and security. The policies that MND formulates and implements in these areas impact on the economic and social well being of all Singaporeans. MND's policies on land-use planning and infrastructure development, in particular, are critical to sustaining Singapore's economic development.

In order for MND to function effectively, MND has a few child organizations to carry out specific responsibilities. Its child organizations are

1. Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority
2. Building and Construction Authority
3. Housing and Development Board
4. National Parks Board
5. Board of Architect
6. Professional Engineers Board
7. Urban Redevelopment Authority

Challenges Faced By MND

Currently, Ministry of National Development (MND) owns a tracking system to track all file movement. Documents such as emails, spreadsheets, slides, WORD documents, memorandum, etc. are circulated and all tracking information is stored manually, i.e. hardcopy filing and storing in PCs. The volume growth rate has made filing processes more tedious and the perceptible loss of corporate memory has now become a serious concern to the ministry. Therefore, a Document Management System must be implemented to address this issue. The Document Management System is also known as the "eRegistry System".

SingaLab Solution

The MND eRegistry System shall allow users to check-in and checkout documents such as emails, letters, faxes, etc. Registry Officers / Action Officers with the appropriate access rights shall be able to edit, retrieve, search, and store documents. This can be accomplished either from their personal computers or remotely via browsers, Notes Clients or Windows Explorer. Therefore, the System should be more efficient and effective and the processes are streamlined to ensure that users are able to execute their work in the most productive manner. A Storage Area Network (SAN) solution shall be provided to manage data storage in a more efficient way and to cater for future implementation of SAN in the remaining systems in MND.

The eRegistry System should achieve the following objectives:

• Provides a systematic file structure for the storage of documents.
  
• Provides softcopy filing of e-mails within the electronic mailing system.
  
• Enable the process of accessing and saving of documents in the File Menu commands in Microsoft Word, Excel Spreadsheet PowerPoint and other ODMA compliant applications.
  
• Allows the filing of scanned hardcopy documents in electronic form into the System.
  
• Where practical and efficient, digitize the existing physical registry system.
  
• Facilitates the routing of emails by designation, in addition to the existing facility of routing by name.
  
• Organizes access to classified materials.
  
• Assists in work assignment and task management within the electronic mailing system.
  
• Organizes and monitors work assignments, projects and tasks.

Challenges Faced By Singalab's Team

The biggest challenge was the complexity of workflow and MND requirements. Different scenarios have to be discussed and evaluated, so that an optimum solution can be selected for the ministry. At the same time, SingaLab has to introduce to MND on the best practices adopted in the IT industry.

Confidential registry and secure email are also quite challenging, as the design and architecture have to comply with iDA's IT security standards. On top of that, the secure email requirements have not being finalized (by iDA) during the design stage. As such, SingaLab's engineers have to design the system such that any changes to the secure email requirements will have minimal impact to the system.

In addition, iDA maintains MND Lotus Notes servers and any changes to Lotus Notes environment setting must conform with the IDA.

It was a major accomplishment for the team as the proposed solution has been accepted, both by MND and iDA.