PRE-LAUNCH Building innovative digital tools to address societal issues 1
PRE-LAUNCH what if... … tech could disrupt social problems the same way it disrupted industry, for the better? … tech could make social work more effective, as well as more efficient? … tech could nudge society towards better behaviour in real life? 2
PRE-LAUNCH why we care... Singapore is generally doing well, but new fault lines are emerging and old ones are widening. Social problems like racism, sexism, classism, injustice, immobility, and inequality continue to be issues. Disadvantaged and underprivileged communities are finding it harder to catch up or even cope. Social media and other technologies have worsened the scale, speed, and scope of these problems. Traditional volunteer welfare groups continue to work hard, but their methods are increasingly inefficient or ineffective against these trends. … because we can be better. 3
PRE-LAUNCH Ageing issues Mental well-being Apathy Healthcare Polarisation Civil discourse Discrimination Social services Financial adequacy Awareness Sustainability how can civic tech help? Technology has made old industries more efficient and effective. We can help welfare groups rejuvenate by modernising their methods, by adapting existing online tools in innovative ways to meet their needs. Technology has disrupted industries and social patterns for the worse. We can build and deploy innovative tools that disrupt the negative trends to make a positive difference. … but it’s not a silver bullet 4
PRE-LAUNCH supply gap demand gap civic tech gap Solving social problems is unprofitable and Welfare groups may not be tech-savvy and hence Current initiatives have huge barriers to entry doesn’t pay, so good firms / talents are scarce. unaware of the potential for tech to help. (awareness of social issues, tech ability, time, Good talents are busy, even if they want to help. Cross-domain or emerging issues are unowned. money, networks and influence, etc). No agency The risk appetite for testing innovative solutions is supports or recognises these initiatives. low in this sector. we can fill the gaps... … by creating a process that allows busy talents to contribute pockets of time and expertise in productive ways towards the development of digital tools. … by brainstorming and building innovative solutions for welfare groups or daring solutions on our own. … by creating a collective that reduces the barriers to entry for individual talents so that they can focus on helping where they are best at, while leaving the rest to us. … by finding, enabling, empowering, recognising, resourcing, and growing the civic tech ecosystem . … and inspire collective action 5
PRE-LAUNCH e � � � t � � � o f � � � “ M t o � v � � � � � � e t t , B a n “ � � � p � � � e l � � � � . ” e ” � r � � � n “Bol�, fa��, be���r” S i We will be the community for tech-savvy talents who want to contribute towards solving societal issues through the bold and innovative development and use of digital tools. our bold mission… ● We must find, inspire, enable, and empower civic tech talents and initiatives ● We must find and use resources / funds to enable our talents to focus on contributing to outcomes, and not on administrative hassles ● We should build networks with communities and organisations who may benefit from our work and can help us scale solutions nation-wide ● We should focus on doing high-impact work, and be more innovative, daring, and experimental in our thinking. ● We should create a process where anybody can plug in, contribute, and plug out in small bites. We will adopt the lean / agile / kanban mindset and focus on testing many ideas with MVPs rather than perfecting the first product. 6
PRE-LAUNCH our solution process… 1 2 3 4 PROBLEM COLLABORATIVE AGILE MVP USER TESTING IN GATHERING BRAINSTORMING DEVELOPMENT THE WILD What are the societal How can tech help solve What skills do we need on How can we deploy and issues? Who are the the problem? What are the team to sprint to test the MVP with the right communities affected, and current welfare groups develop simple MVPs? live users and rapidly what are their views? How doing? Can we make them Which part of the sprint iterate? What ideas work? much impact could solving more efficient or effective? can each talent add value Who can we handover this have on society? Is there a bold way to to? What micro-tasks need successful tools to for [Ethnography, Social Studies] disrupt the problem? to be done by when? long-term ownership? [Theory of Change, Design Thinking] [Agile / Lean Development, Kanban] [User research, Community 7 Networking]
PRE-LAUNCH our roadmap… 5 1 2 3 4 Focus on setting up Identify problem Focus on building a Focus our official Focus on refining our statements and few high-impact “launch” event to the society, processes (e.g. areas with potential MVPs and testing increase publicity, assembling the devops, agile flow, for tech solutions. them. Test out the recruit more talent, community outreach, launch team, and Identify potential process and gather secure additional testing processes, acquiring the right welfare group, tech internal feedback. funding sources, tech contribution dev / management agency partnerships, external modality, etc) so that tools with bootstrap institutional tie-ups. partnerships.. we can deliver funds. incredible value to people across a range of societal issues. 8
PRE-LAUNCH partnership options... funding talent outreach We want to support the civic tech ecosystem as a We need talents to build bold solutions. If your We need users and long-term owners for our non-profit and keep our code open-source so that organisation wants to enable the volunteering tools. If your organisation has access to anybody can use it to help society. We need spirit (“CSR” or “individual project time”) but finds disadvantaged communities or those facing funding support or resources in kind (e.g. it difficult to motivate staff to overcome the societal issues who can test MVPs and give us access to dev tools, hosting, etc) for that. barriers to running an entire project, we welcome feedback, contact us. If you are a social welfare your talents to just plug in to our process . group that would like to co-develop solutions or take over successful MVPs , contact us. … we are open to other options as well 9
PRE-LAUNCH BG Gaurav Keerthi Chan Chi Ling Dominic Soon [Pending] President Vice-President CFO CTO the launch team... SHAO WEI SANTOSH KUMAR LOUISA TAN GAILLE TEO JON CHUA SANJAY SURESH VISHAL HARNAL BEN GOH CHOY YONG CONG KWOK JIA CHUAN NIKHIL CHOWDHARY Dr JON KWONG HANS AVINDER JASON BEY LUCIUS LEE NICOLETTE TAN TAN ENG TECK KAREN TAY KENNETH KENNETH GOH LEWIS LIU RACHAEL BOK 10 … join us and be part of a growing ( , ), daring, new tech initiative
PRE-LAUNCH Get in touch with us today. gaurav@dialectic.sg [@better.sg emails pending] 11
Recommend
More recommend
