Keeping the innovation highway moving

THE CIO (chief information officer) is a job title that was created in recognition of the importance of technology systems to the workings of modern-day organisations.

However, in the Land Transport Authority of Singapore (LTA), the acronym has taken on a slightly different spin. As LTA's chief innovation officer, the pursuit of change appears to be the only constant for Rosina Howe.

Besides looking at new e-transformation strategies to improve customer service, she needs to come up with new programmes to develop the authority's mammoth human capital base.

She tells BizIT more about her unique job scope and how LTA is constantly paving the way for continued innovation within its ranks.

Q: Describe your role as a chief innovation officer.

A: Reporting to the CEO, the chief innovation officer in LTA is responsible for the formulation and implementation of e-transformation strategies and innovation initiatives to achieve total organisational excellence, as well as providing e-government leadership through value creation in process re-design, product development and service delivery.

This includes the development of LTA's human capital through a broad spectrum of organisational developmental programmes to nurture innovation as a way of life in LTA and promoting the use of technology to create sustainable innovative solutions to achieve performance breakthroughs.

Q: How has LTA changed over the last decade? Is there a new culture of creative thinking and innovation as opposed to keeping to proven systems and processes?

A: LTA's notable innovations began with the world's first Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) system launched in 1998 and it has since become a global benchmark for urban traffic management in many countries.

Since then, LTA went on to build the North-East Line (NEL) and in 2003 launched the world's first 'driverless' system for a rapid transit system. The driverless system involves a highly integrated supervisory control system that monitors and exerts control over more than 500 computer systems in the NEL.

The level of integration across the systems and controllers was considered unprecedented at that time.

LTA's innovation effort goes beyond traffic management and infrastructure development projects. LTA was among the first government agencies to introduce a government-related portal with transaction-capable services for the public when it first launched the ONE.MOTORING portal (http://www.onemotoring.com.sg ) in May 2001.

Meanwhile, thematic improvements were made to the portal while LTA embarked on a major transformation of its vehicle registration and licensing business processes and services. This effort culminated in the launch of e-Services@ONE.MOTORING in February 2006.

The new e-Services@ONE.MOTORING now serves not only the LTA, the entire motor and financing industry but also the public and other government enforcement agencies.

LTA provided training to over 3,000 personnel from the motoring industry on the new system to familiarise them with the new processes. An average of 60,000 transactions with the LTA are processed daily with direct system integration to 40 external parties.

By being customer-centric, we are compelled to simplify our processes and re-engineer much of our processes by putting in place new modes of operation that vary dramatically from the past, including the amendment of legislation.

An example of this is the amendment of the Roads Traffic Act to remove the vehicle registration card (better known to the public as the vehicle log card) and replace it with a paperless system.

A new vehicle registration now takes only 10 minutes to complete through electronic means compared with two to three days previously, including a physical trip to LTA with the necessary documentation for inspection.

Q: Can you provide some examples of how LTA has applied IT innovation to the way it works internally?

A: Our innovations are not limited to the services we provide to the public. Innovation is also extended to our internal services. Examples are in the areas of workflow and document management systems, corporate outreach programmes and IT Security Awareness initiatives.

Conceptualised in 2002 and implemented over three years, project ORBIT (One-stop Retrieval & infoBank InTerchange) is an integrated enterprise platform that leverages LTA's extensive IT network infrastructure to incorporate both document management and workflow technologies across the entire organisation.

LTA handles 200,000 pages of building plan documents monthly for approval. The incorporation of business process rules, auto-routing features and system-generated alerts has enabled seamless exchange of more than 200 different document-formats between one system and another. This resulted in savings of $1.7 million a year in operational efficiency for LTA.

Even a dry subject like IT security awareness is not spared in our efforts to innovatively impart the relevant skills and knowledge to all our users. As a major e-service provider and as a custodian of confidential documents, it is imperative that LTA enforces comprehensive enterprise security measures.

In essence, our enterprise security includes governance, culture, architecture and human factors. In short, it is called Information Security Awareness For Everyone or iSafe in short.

Through iSafe, we have instilled IT security industry best practices into different layers of LTA's business objectives. These include the formulation of corporate risk management, an IT security framework and a comprehensive IT security awareness and training plan.

Q: As a government agency, how does LTA strike a balance between innovation and accountability? Do you think that there is less room for experimentation since you have to be accountable to the public and hence there could be a tendency to go with the 'safe' approach?

A: Many people have the notion that the pursuit of innovation means more generous use of funds or less financial accountability. I think a strong financial discipline is necessary even in the pursuit of innovation. Having to account for the money spent means we need to focus on the outcome of the innovation and not be sidetracked by various spin-offs which can distract us from each project objective.

Innovation projects need to align its intent with the strategic aims of the organisation. In this aspect, the quantification of savings or benefits may be less rigorous but the qualification of its benefits is still a yardstick for measurement.

Most successful innovation projects do not materialise as large-scale implementation from day one. Instead, we adopt a proof-of- concept (POC) or a trial approach to ascertain the feasibility of the solution in a localised context.

Only when the POC, or trial, proves successful do we pursue a full-scale implementation. Hence, there is better accountability of the investment.

Even if a POC turns out negative results, the attempt itself generates useful learning points for the next trial. I often hear comments like 'oh, we tried it before and it failed. . . and so this approach doesn't work'.

However, what is usually not conveyed is why did it fail, what were the assumptions made and how was the trial done? It's not always about technology alone.

On the subject of accountability on the use of public funds for innovation, doing nothing does not make one less accountable to the public. The public has come to expect improvements in the way the public service delivers its services to its citizens.