SINGAPORE — Last Friday (Jan 31) night, Mr Shek Yu Hong had been home from work for barely two hours when he was told to head back to his Government Technology Agency (GovTech) office.

The emergency? Plans to set up a website to provide information on mask distribution had finally been given the go ahead.

The 30-year-old software developer, along with another colleague, worked through the night to get the website up and running.

And by Saturday 8am, MaskGoWhere.gov.sg was live.

Singapore residents just had to key in the postal code of their address to find out where and when they could go collect the masks that the Government was distributing to every household.

Amid the novel coronavirus outbreak, which started in the Chinese city of Wuhan and has spread to various places including Singapore, the Government decided to distribute 1.37 million masks to all households here — each getting a pack of four surgical masks.

On Jan 30, Trade and Industry Minister Chan Chun Sing announced that Residents’ Committee (RC) centres were to be turned into surgical mask distribution points from Feb 1.

From that point onwards, it was a mad rush for employees at the People’s Association (PA), the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) and GovTech, as they had only 24 to 48 hours to pack the masks, distribute them to the collection centres and come up with a plan to ensure that the collection process would be as smooth as possible.

Although some preparatory work on a possible website had already been done before Mr Chan’s announcement, things were confirmed only on Friday night, less than 24 hours before the mask distribution started on Feb 1 at 2pm.

“So I think there was a decision that it would take the form of a website and then now that we are certain that we want to set it up, so quickly another colleague and I went back to the office to set up,” said Mr Shek.

“He was doing up the front-end look and feel, I was setting up some of the infrastructure that was needed to probably serve the expected volume.”

The efforts of the GovTech team were highlighted by Dr Janil Puthucheary, Minister-in-charge of GovTech, in a Facebook post on Feb 1. He is also Senior Minister of State for Transport as well as for Communications and Information.

However, the GovTech staff TODAY interviewed were quick to point out that there was a lot of coordination required with other agencies, such as the PA.

Mr Jason Bay, 37, senior director of GovTech’s government digital services, said he was constantly in contact with PA representatives, such as Ms Cindy Goh, deputy director of resident network division, and Ms Audrey Ang, head of quality management division.

Information collected by Ms Goh and Ms Ang was instrumental to the effectiveness of MaskGoWhere.gov.sg as well.

That Friday, Ms Ang, 37, was gathering information from each community centre and RC centre on their collection schedules and passing on this information to Mr Bay.

The GovTech team would then input these data onto MaskGoWhere.gov.sg.

Whenever the masks were delivered by the SAF earlier than expected to the distribution points and there were changes to the schedule, Ms Goh, 44, would then provide the updated collection schedule to Mr Bay and this information would also be reflected on the website.

At times, some postal codes have been mapped wrongly and Ms Goh would provide such feedback to the GovTech team to correct them.

“I think the whole of Saturday (Feb 1), I communicated with him past midnight. He has been my past-midnight person I talk to every night,” said Ms Goh.

When the two agencies started working together, it took about one hour for new information from the ground to be reflected on MaskGoWhere.gov.sg.

After several days, the operation has now become a well-oiled machine and the process has been shortened to four minutes.

What helped streamline the timing was that some internal processes at GovTech were automated as well.

For example, the process to verify that the postal codes were mapped onto the correct zone was initially done manually, but this was later automated.

And GovTech had to make a last-minute call for volunteers on the morning of Feb 1 — the day the distribution started — to help with the manual verification. About 50 GovTech volunteers turned up that Saturday.

The coordination between the two agencies also took place in a context where Mr Bay and Ms Goh had never met before. In fact, representatives of the two agencies involved in the project met for the first time only because of this media interview.

Yet, they felt that the personal lack of familiarity was not an impediment to their jobs as they were united by a single cause, that is, to get the masks distributed to as many households as possible.

“For example in the past, if you work with someone you're not familiar with, you’ve still got to find out how is this person’s working style but for this case, no we don't have to,” said Ms Goh.

In fact, they have become so familiar, despite not having met before the interview, that Ms Goh calls Mr Bay “brother”.

When asked about their takeaways from participating in such a large-scale distribution exercise for the first time, Ms Ang said: “I think it’s really a whole-of-government effort. Everybody comes in together for this common purpose then we get things ready within like a short period of time, things get really going.

“And subsequently when we… provide accurate information, there's really less confusion on the ground,” said Ms Ang.

“I personally didn't expect the website to be so important to that effort but the overwhelming response I think goes back to, in times when people have reason to be anxious, it's important to get information out to them fast, and good-quality information, so that they can make their plans,” said Mr Bay.