The Ministry of Manpower’s (MOM) internal Economy Drive Committee (iEDC) was set up barely a year and a half ago. Supported by Deputy Secretary (Manpower), Mrs Ow Foong Pheng, it has successfully driven ED initiatives and actively promoted awareness of the benefits of cost savings across the ministry.

One of the first things iEDC did was to embed the ED framework in its existing reporting and PS21 SSS/WITS structures. This way, MOMers could start contributing ED ideas and good ideas and projects could be implemented.

To raise awareness of ED amongst MOMers, iEDC made use of all its internal communication channels to ensure that the ED culture permeates the organisation. For example, success stories of how MOMers achieved ED savings in their day-to-day work were publicised in the internal Web-based publication, MOMentum.

MOM’s Permanent Secretary, Ms Yong Ying-I, also drummed up support for ED by highlighting it at MOM’s annual Staff Conference. Following that, she sent an email to all MOMers to communicate the ED philosophy and how it can translate into optimal resource management as captured in the tagline “Doing New, Different, Better with Less”.

Setting goals, developing strategies
MOM aims to achieve savings of 1.5% of its total budget or $5.6 million in FY 04 by conducting business model reviews and re-engineering.

It has conducted strategic restructuring and manpower management reviews, participated in the Energy Saving Companies Air-con project and formed cross-departmental WITs to streamline expenditure, work processes and activities. The areas that have been explored include IT and office resources, printing and publications, as well as the various modes for disseminating information to customers.

Effective outsourcing
The “star” of its ED efforts was the outsourcing of MOM’s IT functions to Hewlett-Packard Singapore (HP) in September and the Infocomm Development Authority in March this year.

MOM’s comprehensive three-year outsourcing agreement with HP, which can be renewed for another four years, will enable it to reap estimated savings of $2 million per year. The potential savings in applications maintenance, and infrastructure management and operations over the next seven years are 38% and 19% respectively.

But the best part is MOM is now able to tap on the huge intellectual capital and flexible resources of the HP team to support and service all its IT needs. The outsourcing arrangement has also created new and better career opportunities for MOM’s information service officers.