GovTech cuts 93 jobs: what it really means
Inside the agency's move from vendor management to product ownership.
GovTech's retrenchment is the talk of the town. Is the iron rice bowl truly gone? Here's my simple explanation of what happened.
You have probably heard of it by now. GovTech has cut 93 jobs and will let go of up to 300 more over the next two years. Here's what it is about.
Who is GovTech
Short for the Government Technology Agency of Singapore, GovTech is the statutory board leading Singapore's Smart Nation initiative and public sector digital transformation.
It has built more than 100 digital products spanning citizen services, business platforms, and internal government tools. These include Singpass, LifeSG, Parking.sg, and TraceTogether, among many others.
The news
GovTech retrenched 93 people yesterday in the "first phase" of a transition to a new operating model. Another 7 to 9% is expected to go as it shifts from a "one-off project-delivery model" to "continuous product-ownership."
This made the headlines because public sector layoffs in Singapore are exceedingly rare. The last reported retrenchments in the civil service date as far back as 2010.
Those retrenched will receive a six-week notice period with salary and benefits, one month's salary for every year of service, and a three-month ex-gratia payment on top.
A deliberate move
GovTech was quick to disavow any relationship with the current spate of AI-related retrenchments around the globe. Even so, the move had some wondering whether civil service jobs are no longer secure.
Here is a paragraph from a letter by GovTech chairman Chng Kai Fong: "GovTech is changing shape, not shrinking. We need more software engineers, product managers, designers, data specialists and cybersecurity professionals. We expect to employ more people at the end of this transformation than we do today."
What is clear is this: GovTech is transforming from an agency that does a substantial amount of outsourcing and vendor management into one that designs, builds, and maintains its own systems. Indeed, the roles affected this round include project delivery and vendor management.
What now?
What does this development mean for the rest of us? It reminded me of a May opinion piece that Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince published in the WSJ.
At that time, he had just laid off 20% of his workforce in a bid to reinvent his firm, despite having strong free cash flow. To be fair, I am not claiming parallels to what happened here. But his philosophy struck a chord with me.
In his worldview, engineers or "builders" are always highly sought after. The same goes for "sellers". The ones he would let go are the "measurers", the employees who do everything in the middle: finance, legal, middle management, operations, and more.
So where does that leave the iron rice bowl, and the rest of us who work somewhere in that middle?
