Wanna be on top? Read this book to be Singapore's Next Top Civil Servant

The "Nudge" book will the new "10-year-series" for all civil servants.

Martino Tan| June 27, 10:03 PM

Thinking of applying for a civil service job to get your SG50 bonus?

You better know this civil service buzzword — nudge.

Peter Ong, the head of civil service, said in a recent speech ("Frontiers of Behavioural Economics: Choice and Well-Being in the Asia Pacific”) that a right "nudge" can cause large behavioural changes, and there is great scope for this to be applied in the online space.

The 53-year old civil service boss also gave a few examples at Thursday's behavioural economics conference about how Singaporeans sheep were being manipulated "nudged" by the government. 

Peter_Ong_Challenge Source: Challenge magazine

Nudge example 1:

HPB_million_kg Source: Millionkg.sg

The Health Promotion Board's the Million KG Challenge: a weight-loss programme where participants are rewarded for taking steps towards achieving a healthier body weight. The challenge nudges each participant towards their weight-loss goal by making goals achievable at each stage.

Nudge Example 2:

Travel_Smart_Rewards Source

The Land Transport Authority’s Travel Smart Rewards scheme: Commuters making off-peak trips can earn points that can be used in an online game that rewards cash to commuters.

From its inception in 2012 until July of 2014, the scheme managed to shift 10% of its participants’ weekday morning peak period trips to off-peak periods.

Nudge Example 3:

IRAS_logo

The Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore's text message reminder: Using an SMS reminder increased the percentage of people who paid overdue property taxes before a penalty was imposed from 16% to 47%.

Simi si Nudge? Similar to poke ah?

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="200"] Source: Wikipedia[/caption]

These insights are inspired by the 2008 book, Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness, by University of Chicago economist Richard H. Thaler and Harvard law professor Cass R. Sunstein.

The book draws on research in psychology and behavioural economics to effect active engineering of choice architecture. To know more about the book, you can either read the Wikipedia summary or get a copy from Kinokuniya, Popular or Times.

And let's pay tribute to MP Baey Yam Keng for suggesting a "nudge" initiative a year ago (so Bae!):

In Baey's kickass speech in parliament last year, he called for the government to apply psychology features in the practice of policy formulation.

He highlighted the UK government, which has a Behavioural Insights Team, also known as the ‘Nudge Unit’, applies “insights from academic research in behavioural economics and psychology to public policy and services”.

Nudge Units in government

According to The Challenge, the Singapore Public Service magazine, ministries, including Manpower (MOM), Finance (MOF), and Environment and Water Resources (MEWR), have started their own nudge initiatives.

For instance, the newly set-up Behavioural Insights (BI) team in MOM achieved an improvement of 3 to 5 percentage points of employers who paid their foreign domestic worker levies on time, when they send the employers the pink letter instead of the regular letter.

One last thing... A "light-touch nudge" approach towards online regulation? 

Ong also mentioned in his speech that "there is great scope for behavioural interventions to be applied" in the digital space.

Light-Touch regulation Source: SMU Apolitical

Ong noticed that "the first few comments on a new article may have a disproportionate influence on the tone of the subsequent discussion" and wondered how the silent majority can "be nudged to speak up in the online space".

If the first few comments have a disproportionate influence on the online tone, will the civil service experiment with getting civil servants to be paid Internet commentators (like China's 50 cent party)?

Let's hope the government's "light-nudge" approach does not evolve into getting poor civil servants to be the "Internet Brigade" of the government.

Internet Brigade Ahem.

As Ong concluded, the public sector "must be careful not to overreach", for the behavioural insights approach "is but one tool that policymakers can rely on".

Top photo from here.

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