Speech by Minister of Defence Dr Ng Eng Hen at the Ignite Innovation Symposium Awards Ceremony 2022

Permanent Secretary for Defence, Mr Chan Heng Kee,

Senior Commanders,

Distinguished guests,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Introduction

First, let me say that I am very happy that we can hold this IGNITE Innovation Symposium. It is important that we recognise award winners and their achievements, and I'm happy that despite the nearly three years of disruptions the COVID-19 pandemic has wrought that we can do this. I think all us have learnt lessons from the pandemic, the individual, or in your families and organisations and as a country. But one of the more important lessons MINDEF and the SAF learnt through the pandemic was that challenges or battles, whether it is biological warfare or with a potential aggressor, are dynamic. And we know that, we read about it. And when the situation is fluid and the assumptions keep changing, innovative processes to deal with security challenges are not just a good to have, but critical to our ability to achieve mission success. And we have seen this in our past missions whether it was in Iraq or Afghanistan; humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) missions for the Aceh Tsunami and whether it was the evacuation of Afghan refugees; and all our anti-piracy missions in the Gulf of Aden; or Search & Locate missions for people or planes. Across the spectrum of these many missions, there are countless stories from each of them about how unexpected problems or roadblocks occurred, that needed an innovative idea to overcome it. What we are doing today, IGNITE, speaks to the heart of our ethos of innovation. And IGNITE focuses on three enablers within MINDEF/SAF – building people as core innovators, establishing an innovation hub, and strong leadership to drive the innovation movement.

Innovation: IGNITE in Action

There are positive examples that this innovation culture is thriving in our organisation. In 2019, IGNITE reaped $200 million in savings from innovation efforts, the highest ever, but this was pre-COVID. Even in the last two years battling COVID-19, we saved $159 million last year, $6 million above the target we set. We use finance as a proxy, but as all of us know, that is not the only real value.

The innovative spirit was on display through MINDEF/SAF personnel assisting Whole-of-Government (WoG) efforts for this pandemic. When there was a surge in the number of new cases last October, MINDEF/SAF were asked to assist and we took over the Home Recovery Task Group (HRTG) to support MOH. The task group quickly stabilised the Home Recovery Programme (HRP) by improving the C2 system. The task group knew that time was the essence, because from the moment the patient is diagnosed with the infection, if there is a dropped case or the patient is unattended to, and he or she does not get transported to home recovery and does not get put on monitoring, bad things can happen and people lose confidence in the HRP. With many more thousands of infected patients added each passing day, should people lose confidence in the HRP, they would all march down to the Accident and Emergency department, it is only natural. And our hospitals would be overwhelmed, which would put our system at risk. Either that or patients were left at home with dropped call rates climbing. Quite a significant amount of frustration in the teething stage. And indeed confidence in our system was at risk. The task group quickly set up a cloud-based patient platform to track and route patients to relevant follow-on care centres. It turned the tide – patient workflow became more streamlined, all relevant agencies got a common picture quickly and this allowed further kinks to be identified and sorted out. On boarding of patients, in other words how quickly somebody from point of diagnosis to coming on board the HRP, was quickly reduced from three days to 24 hours. Just imagine the difference, your three days, you get symptoms, this was with the Delta, not the Omicron. Three days with symptoms and confidence in our system would be shaken.

The RSAF's Innovation Office, or SWiFT, developed an automated SMS software to remind patients to perform oximeter tests at home, and this freed manpower to focus on other duties; DSO pushed out a better method of PCR testing that cut the time required by half, from three hours to 90 minutes, and this was the time when our airports required PCR tests and they were coming in the thousands and this new method of testing made a big difference; and DSTA configured a mobile swab station that made it safe for operators even when dealing with potentially thousands of infected patients.

In all of these examples, situations and scenarios, there was no manual – "SOPs to respond to a pandemic". There just isn't such a manual. You can take out the manual from SARS, which was not long ago but that is completely wrong, not entirely useless. But remember SARS, the main instrument was the thermometer and thermal scans. This does not work for COVID-19. Many of you got mild symptoms, and many of you tested positive even before you had a fever. So we changed. All our personnel, during the pandemic, had to assess a rapidly evolving situation, meet time critical outcomes and deadlines, and evolve novel solutions including customised hardware and software that did not exist to meet the challenge. If these processes sound familiar to you, it should. It is otherwise known as we commonly call it the "fog of war" – the same challenges exist in battle and call for exactly the type of responses our people showed in dealing with this pandemic.

Sustaining the Innovation Spirit to Face Future Challenges

Dealing with the pandemic, was not MINDEF or the SAF's core purpose. But doing well there gives us the confidence and motivation to deal with issues that are indeed core to us. I am happy to report that there too, positive examples there exists. For example, the SAF Ammunition Command (SAFAC), 5 Air Engineering & Logistics Group (5 AELG), and HQ Fleet have transformed their processes to require less manpower and save $40 million annually.

SAFAC re-designed processes to cut the life-cycle cost of procurement, shipment and disposal of expired ammunition. Aside from the money saved, processes became safer for our servicemen and women, and more environmentally friendly.

5 AELG developed new procedures to repair defective Electronic Warfare Display of the F-16s by swapping sub-components. This reduced the repair time from nine months to a mere three days and avoided costly OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) repairs.

For the RSN, where ships were sent previously on individual exercises, HQ Fleet re-organised deployments to align multiple parties and countries from various exercises into a single deployment, slashing fuel costs by 42% and saving many man hours.

As always, strong leadership is necessary to keep up the momentum of innovative change. The Army, RSAF and the RSN are testing the use of bio-diesel fuel for their platforms which can achieve up to 7% reduction in emissions as compared to conventional diesel. The SAF will assess the use of eco-digesters for this year's NDP to break down food waste into compost for fertiliser, reducing the need to burn the waste.

To help more innovative ideas get translated into reality, Design Sprints, is a new innovation design workshop that has been introduced. Together with an updated IGNITE innovation platform portal that provides information on processes, Design Sprints encourages experimentation by allowing people to share ideas and to collaborate. There is another platform, the Digital Factory@Services has also been launched, available to all services to pilot their digital products and scale across the organisation.

This year, the Leadership and Innovators Conversation has also been added as a new segment for the IGNITE Innovation Symposium, so that we can provide both "top down" and "bottom-up" perspectives. I hope that these new measures will promote a vibrant community for innovation in MINDEF/SAF.

Conclusion

Let me congratulate all award winners. That spirit to innovate is critical for MINDEF and the SAF to deal with known and unknown security challenges. As winners, you exemplify and promote that innovative ethos that is essential for mission success. Thank you.

More Resources

Innovative Spirit Key to Maintaining the SAF's Operational Readiness and Transformative Edge

Fact Sheet: Award Winners for IGNITE Innovation Symposium 2022