[HN Gopher] Singapore Government Tech Stack ___________________________________________________________________ Singapore Government Tech Stack Author : korginator Score : 193 points Date : 2022-05-07 13:49 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.developer.tech.gov.sg) (TXT) w3m dump (www.developer.tech.gov.sg) | butterfi wrote: | I've worked on a Singapore website sponsored by the major | University and a Govt. office and frankly speaking, it's a poorly | managed process dominated by IT protocol more than | business/client goals. The admin responsible for running the site | was inept and his colleagues were worse. The person who inherited | managing the complex web stack was a secretary with no dev | skills. I hope it works out for them, but I'm not optimistic. | noobermin wrote: | On the one hand you said it's dominated by IT people with no | business goals but then complain the manager is a secretary | with no dev skills...which is it? | lgvln wrote: | Let's not forget the whole fiasco with Singapore's TraceTogether | app for contact tracing during the pandemic. The actual | implementation of it differs significantly from the white paper | they open-sourced. The actual app does not anonymize the data and | the government has access to everyone's location and interaction | data. Initially, their privacy policy promised the data would | only be used for tracking of the spread of COVID but it was later | revealed by the parliament that the police had in fact accessed | the data for investigation purposes. There is no constitutional | right to privacy in Singapore so they did not actually break any | laws so it was mostly an "oops, too bad, we didn't do anything | 'wrong'" moment for them. | | https://www.sgtech.org.sg/SGTECH/Web/SGTech_News_2020/May20/... | | https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/31... | quinnjh wrote: | Good thing the United States has a constitutional amendment | that totally protects us from having our location data | harvested sold and deanonymized by thousands of data brokers! | themitigating wrote: | What is the value of this comment? The US government, privacy | in the US, and the like is already discussed frequently here. | People are also aware of it so you aren't bringing it to | light. | saghm wrote: | I think it's fair, given that GP mentioned "There is no | constitutional right to privacy in Singapore so they did | not actually break any laws". There's a long history to the | debate of whether there's a constitutional right to privacy | in the US; it's not explicitly mentioned in the | Constitution but it's a fairly common interpretation | nowadays, so whether or not the courts in the US would | consider it legal if the US government did this is not a | sure thing either way. | pxeger1 wrote: | lgvln wasn't comparing it to the US. quinnjh was the one | who brought up the US. | noobermin wrote: | Looked at a wiki article, and it looks like not many | states have a "right to privacy" in their constitution | but rather have it specified by various other laws. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_privacy | tdhz77 wrote: | This practice should extend to the private sector in my | opinion. Protection of location data should fall under the | 14th amendment. | [deleted] | xeromal wrote: | My favorite comment. Let's ignore any valid criticism and | complain about something else instead. | noobermin wrote: | The unfortunate reality is a lot of people post comments | like GP but do so reflexively to deride non-US governments | then play defense for posts critical of the US. Some do it | for China, and so on. It would help in general if people | are reasonably (emphasis on reasonably) skeptical of all | states. | theteapot wrote: | I think the point was, we can't use the fact US (or | China, or state X) is a corrupt basket case to lazily | dismiss any valid criticism here. That's like dismissing | the teachers criticism of an A grade student's English | Literature exam question by saying "Yeah well, Ralph's | answer was 'boobs'". Ralph exists. The A grade student | wants to improve. These are separate concerns. | jolux wrote: | Let's not pretend that China's laws and norms are | comparable to those of the US here, though. Yes, it's | reasonable to be skeptical of all states, but there's | definitely a difference of degree in state overreach. | pphysch wrote: | Simply not true. For every (actual, not just FLG disinfo) | overreach of Beijing you can find one for Washington | | You are more likely to be permanently incarcerated in | America than China | jolux wrote: | What about people being welded into their apartments | during COVID lockdowns? That never happened in the US. | truthwhisperer wrote: | the road to hell is paved with good intentions let not forget | SG is a sort of single party system with no real freedom of | press. | legalcorrection wrote: | And that's a big part of why their country is wealthy and | successful while their neighboring countries are disasters. | noobermin wrote: | Korea and Japan rose from the ashes (Japan having lost WWII | after their imperialist ambitions failed) in the same | amount of time. Korea had a dictatorship or sorts but Japan | didn't, but unless I'm mistaken, neither government was as | autocratic (and still is) like the PAP is today. | phantomathkg wrote: | Any prove? | robertlagrant wrote: | I was really worried when I saw APEX. I thought it was that | crappy Oracle app-in-plsql nonsense. | | Thankfully not! This all looks pretty cool! | brassattax wrote: | I thought it was going to be built on Salesforce | robertlagrant wrote: | Yes, that would be better than the Oracle option! | pjmlp wrote: | That nonsense powers lot of companies where dbas can quickly | ramp-up applications, in the same vein as VB and macros filled | Excel documents. | Joeri wrote: | We have something similar to this in Antwerp, Belgium. | | Most of our solutions are built on top of a kubernetes-powered | microservices platform, with an API-first design approach. It is | called the Antwerp City Platform as a Service | (https://acpaas.digipolis.be). | | To ensure technological consistency we have a Digipolis Antwerp | Application Stack, which is the technological foundation for new | projects. | https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vR9N3gAJoJFI... | | And finally for UI consistency, we have a design system called | Antwerp UI (https://antwerp-ui.digipolis.be), which includes a | custom-designed font meant to evoke the city's historical | architecture, used both for internally facing web apps, and for | our public facing website https://www.antwerpen.be | daqhris wrote: | Hey Joeri, thank you! I've previously lived in the Antwerp | province. | | The whole time of my stay, I was in love with the city's visual | identity (posters, website,..) and the effectiveness of digital | services across the administration offices, public institutions | and media centers. It's the one city in Belgium taking | advantage, in the best way, of digital infrastructure and | modern tech. | | Nowadays I'm living in the Ardennes (Bastogne) where I can see | a huge gap (compared to Antwerp) in Internet services and tech | investments. I'm grateful to the people at Digipolis and the | city offices taking visionary steps in fostering the local tech | scene and building beautiful interfaces/apps. | [deleted] | herunan wrote: | Why reinvent the wheel? A lot of govt websites have very similar | use cases. I would e.g. just get The UK Government Design System, | which is really good: https://github.com/alphagov/govuk-design- | system | javajosh wrote: | This looks impressive, and something we (America) should copy. | | Man, I can't help wishing that if we had to have a dictator why | couldn't it be someone (mostly) reasonable like Lee Kwan Yew. | davesque wrote: | I understand the sentiment, and I don't think you were probably | being serious, but, for the sake of conversation, I think the | issue with dictatorships is eventually with stability. The | allure of that much power in a single position leads to the | wrong kind of people talking it. | | Actually, when we frame things that way, it almost makes me | feel like democracy is primarily designed to provide a certain | amount of _slowness_ in government; enough to spot corruption | coming and head it off. Maybe corruption always eventually | wins, just more slowly in democracies. Kinda feels that way | lately. | javajosh wrote: | It's nice to get the benefit of the doubt, and I'm tempted to | let it remain, but let me clarify: I'm serious. I was | impressed with Lee Kwan Yew's "From Third World to First" and | it seemed to me he wasn't bashful about talking about the | times he made an illiberal, dictator move. Both from the | outcome and his telling, he made these moves as rarely as | possible and didn't relish them. And he did smart things like | rewarding government officials extremely well so that they | would be (relatively) immune to bribery. I'm sure there are | other examples of good leadership from the seat of absolute | monarchy, even if we mainly focus on the bad ones in history | class. FDR's wartime leadership comes to mind (people seem to | forget how illiberal American government was during the war - | and it was surely effective). | | In all cases, the key to success with illiberal government | seems to be self-restraint. When the war ends, you give up | power. Or in general, when the object is achieved, you give | up power. I've not followed Singapore's timeline since I read | the book, so maybe they've backslid? Maybe its a psuedo | monarchy run my Yew's ancestors? If so, that's a failure. | Hopefully they can figure out how to pick leaders in a | rational way - like an aptitude test. | decafninja wrote: | I feel dictators/autocrats come in two flavors. | | The first genuinely feel they know what is best for the country | and how to best govern it. They might still enrich themselves | and their cronies in the process of course. | | The second are primarily out to enrich themselves and their | cronies. The country exists to support this selfish goal. | | Of course this is not black and white, but rather a spectrum | but various historical figures seem to strongly lean to one | side or the other. | dontreact wrote: | And history repeatedly shows that even if you get a dictator | of the first kind, it's an unstable equilibrium of a system | that eventually leads to a dictator of the second kind. | AnAfrican wrote: | And that can happen with the same person ! | javajosh wrote: | Yes, but it's not always true - see cousin comment. There | are examples of actually good dictators in history - but my | back of the envelope estimate is that its like 1 in 20. | skissane wrote: | Just over a week ago, Singapore executed by hanging an | intellectually disabled Malaysian man (of Indian ethnic | origin), Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam. His crime? He was caught | trying to import heroin - I think it very likely the | traffickers exploited his intellectual disability in order to | talk him into becoming a drug mule. | | In this regard, Singapore is a rather extreme outlier among | developed countries - few of which retain the death penalty, | and those which do largely restrict it in practice to murder. | William Gibson's famous phrase, "Disneyland with the Death | Penalty", is as true as it ever was. | | So yeah, Lee Hsien Loong seems like a cool guy - wow, a Prime | Minister who can write C++. But, remember Nagaenthran, and | realise he's not actually cool at all, he's actually a rather | terrible human being. Whatever the Prime Minister's formal role | in decisions about executions, I don't think anyone doubts that | he had the political influence (even if quietly, behind the | scenes) to stop it going ahead, if he had wanted to. | unnouinceput wrote: | TLDR; It's a wishlist, not the current tech stack | | Title is misleading | dazsnow wrote: | Singapore's GovTech does amazing work. | United857 wrote: | Even their prime minister can code in C/C++: | https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/05/prime... | afr0ck wrote: | He was the Wrangler at the Univ of Cambridge (best Undergrad | in Math). | random314 wrote: | And it's no mean achievement. Here is the list of Senior | wranglers on wikipedia. Check out his peers to see what | mathematics possibly missed out on | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senior_Wrangler | djtango wrote: | I prefer to think of it as what politics and society | gained. | | It was pretty clear that most politicians, let alone | leaders, didn't know what "exponential" meant over the | pandemic. | | At a time where technological advance has vastly outpaced | politics (Joe Biden was around 65 when the first iphone | came out) I think it's quite remarkable to have a Maths- | CS major heading up a (small) nation. | 2143 wrote: | > most politicians, let alone leaders, didn't know what | "exponential" meant over the pandemic. | | Maybe they did and chose to ignore it. Lots of countries | (including but not limited to the USA) have people with | high credentials at the helm. Or they have advisors with | high credentials close by. | | > I think it's quite remarkable to have a Maths-CS | | _Math never gets old._ | | > a (small) nation | | They may be small, but they definitely punch above their | weight :) | whimsicalism wrote: | The qualifications of most people in politics are not | nearly as good in the US. | | In the US, the private sector eats the public sector and | leaves very few high quality candidates behind. | srazzaque wrote: | I believe that's precisely why the SG government choose | to pay extremely well. They gain candidates with great | credentials that otherwise will have gone to the private | sector. | | Also, having well compensated staff makes the ranks less | susceptible to corruption and bribery. | vira28 wrote: | Is there something similar to US Government. | gwbrooks wrote: | At least for the design system, the answer is yes. The US | Government Design System: https://designsystem.digital.gov/ | | Don't have the URL handy, but California has an amazing design | system as well. | justbaker wrote: | Something similar to what you mentioned, but for the state of | Michigan | | https://digitalguidelines.michigan.gov/ | [deleted] | mxuribe wrote: | I'm sure there might be because several years ago the U.S. | created the U.S. Digital Service with the premise being | recruiting professionals (yeah mostly from corporate but not | only) to spend time in the government and help modernize many | of its aspects and offerings...for the benefit of the citizens, | etc. Here's one example of their playbooks: | https://playbook.cio.gov/ | | ...While not exactly like the Singapore page linked in this | post, alot of the intent with the USDS - as i understand it - | is alos to be quite transparent with the hope of any other | government agencies/orgs such as state/province level, city | level, etc. benefiting from their ideas and hopefully | broadening the benefit at all levels. Here is the main site, | but of course (as the above playbook link denotes), there are | plenty of other related sites that might help better answer | your question: https://www.usds.gov/mission ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-05-07 23:00 UTC)