Skip to main content
CUSTOMER STORY

Optimizing Singapore’s government agencies with data insights

GovTech uses Databricks to democratize data insights and empower self-service analytics

3x

faster dashboard creation, from 90 to 30 days

50%

data democratization across corporate divisions in the first year

8,000

hours of labor resources saved annually with Databricks

INDUSTRY: Public Sector
CLOUD: AWS

The Government Technology Agency of Singapore (GovTech) employs 4,000 professionals to enhance public sector digital transformation. Facing limitations with their on-premises data analytics and visualization system, GovTech migrated to the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform on AWS. Integrating Databricks as the data backbone for GovTech’s data strategy has improved data security, governance and collaboration, allowing the organization to support use cases in recruitment, finance planning, procurement and more.

Struggling to distribute insights from decentralized data

As the lead agency driving Singapore’s public sector digital transformation, GovTech handles vast amounts of public, internal and sensitive data. However, their decentralized data structure posed significant challenges. According to Deputy Chief Data Officer Sachin Tonk, “Efficient data management is critical to adding value to our data. Previously, on the legacy structure, stakeholders were not comfortable with our access to the data, so we couldn’t use it. That barred us from applying data in decision-making and innovating data science.”

GovTech’s data journey started with an on-premises dashboarding server and building dashboards was the only way to serve data to stakeholders, but this process could take up to three months and licenses were costly. The architecture created data silos due to embedded data sources and made data validation labor-intensive — especially when inconsistent transformation logic is applied across dashboards. The absence of centralized data storage further hindered data sharing and collaboration, leading to redundancy and stifled innovation.

To enhance data-driven decision-making and elevate data maturity, GovTech recognized the need to modernize their data infrastructure. Data consolidation is essential for enabling visualization, understanding and leveraging automation and seamless workflows for efficient dashboard generation. Modernization was crucial for GovTech to effectively address internal use cases, drive smart business decisions and confidently lead the digital transformation of Singapore’s public sector.

Unifying and securing data to facilitate democratization with Databricks

To strengthen data maturity and unlock new use cases, GovTech needed a scalable data platform to ensure reliable data access across the organization. The team selected the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform for its efficiency and built-in tools that improve data reliability and analytics.

“Databricks separates compute and storage so we can build our lakehouse in Delta Lake, while allowing engineering teams to focus on data-driven products rather than specific BI tools,” Tan Qing Yang, Data Engineer from the CDO team at GovTech, explained. Using Databricks’ medallion architecture and Tableau integration, GovTech created automated end-to-end pipelines to deliver data without requiring extra licenses or developers.

With data now centralized and accessible in Delta Lake, GovTech implemented Unity Catalog to manage data governance and security with fine-grained access controls. This level of security is crucial in a tech-driven environment like GovTech, where managing data entitlements and access requests is essential for oversight. To facilitate collaboration and development, GovTech uses Databricks Notebooks to test script functionality and Databricks SQL to accelerate insights through efficient querying.

To promote self-service analytics and embed a data-driven culture, GovTech’s engineering team drives data literacy through Databricks Academy. The comprehensive training plan developed by the team empowers current and new users to competently utilize the Databricks Platform while simultaneously reducing reliance on the engineering team for help.

Accelerating productivity while embedding organizational data and analytics

Since migrating to the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform on AWS, GovTech has transformed their data management and collaboration processes, drastically reducing the time required for dashboarding from three months to less than 30 days. Within their first year on Databricks, GovTech saved 8,000 labor hours by leveraging automated data pipelines, efficient workflows and templated data processing. Scalability has enabled GovTech to democratize data across 50% of corporate divisions, while the Databricks integration with Tableau has resulted in six-figure savings through BI tooling consolidation.

Databricks’ built-in dashboarding features have allowed GovTech to build end-to-end pipelines for visualizing master finance data without incurring additional costs or needing extra resources. This capability has been a game changer for data engineers and BI developers, who can now roll out dashboards immediately after pipeline completion or updates, meeting stakeholder needs faster. Additionally, GovTech has implemented an HR master table with access controls to support a comprehensive staff directory dashboard for HR, ensuring secure data management and accessibility.

As GovTech continues to expand their internal analytics capabilities, the organization is exploring Databricks’ latest ML and AI tools, including Databricks Assistant for self-service problem-solving, attribute-based access controls (ABAC) for enhanced access controls and LakeFlow Connect for monitoring and integration with external data sources. According to Tan Wei Hao, Senior Manager, Chief Data Office at GovTech, “With Databricks, we can achieve what was previously impossible — secure access and control, enabling faster deployment of use cases, increased productivity and cost efficiency without the need for additional manpower resources.“