Speech by Minister Chee Hong Tat at the MND Family National Day Observance Ceremony 2026

Colleagues from the MND Family and friends from partner agencies, a very good morning and I would like to start by wishing everyone a Happy National Day in advance!

This year, we celebrate Singapore's 61st birthday.

Since gaining independence in 1965, Singapore has come a long way. Despite being a small island with limited land and no natural resources, we have built a distinctive global city, a liveable home, and a place where all of us as Singaporeans can be proud of.

This did not happen by chance. Generations of Singaporeans worked tirelessly, took ownership of our shared future, and found practical solutions to overcome our constraints.

The MND Family has played a key role in this journey.

Our work is wide-ranging - from housing and urban planning, to greenery, infrastructure, municipal services, the built environment, and many more.

Much of this work may take place quietly behind the scenes, so some people may not notice, but this work has a very direct and significant impact on the lives of Singaporeans every day.

As we look ahead, our challenges will only become more complex.

As our population ages, our land constraints tighten, and climate change brings new risks, the expectations on us, as the Government, are also rising. Businesses and citizens alike need services to be faster, simpler, and more user-friendly.

To meet these challenges, we must continue to innovate, to work across boundaries, and to keep improving how we serve Singaporeans and how we support our businesses.

Minister's Award Winners

This spirit of innovation and public service is precisely one of the things that we are celebrating today. We recognise 47 project teams who are receiving the Minister's Award - these are teams that have demonstrated exceptional teamwork, embraced bold new ideas, and delivered tangible impact in support of MND's mission.

I have spoken earlier about the importance of pro-enterprise rules review as an exercise to help our companies to save time, save costs and save manpower. This is also an exercise to build our muscles within the public service, to empower our officers to take calculated risks, to push the boundaries, to think out of the box, and this will become increasingly important in a fast-changing environment.

If our current rules or processes are no longer relevant, or sometimes even have become obstacles to innovation and progress, we must be prepared to review them, to simplify them, to change them. Don't accept the rules as though these are cast in stone and cannot be touched. Who sets the rules? We set the rules. So if the rules no longer make sense, they are no longer relevant - they may be relevant in the past because it was a different environment, different set of technologies, different needs - but in the current environment these rules might no longer make sense. Let's have a system whereby we support one another, we support our frontline officers, we support our officers who are dealing with these issues on a regular basis. Encourage them, empower them to surface their ideas. And those of us who are holding management responsibilities, give your top-down support for these ground ideas. Let our officers know, let our colleagues know, that these are ideas that we encourage them to put up. These are changes that we will support them to make for the benefit of Singapore and Singaporeans. Our focus is not just about changing rules, that is the activity that we are doing. But at the end of the day, what we want is to encourage all of us, to encourage the public service, to adopt an enterprising mindset, to be action-oriented and to see how we can make things happen.

I am proud to see that the MND Family has embraced this approach, and we must continue to press on, and I would like to call upon all of you for your support. We need to be able to make actionable changes that can benefit our stakeholders and we want to be able to encourage and empower our officers at every level to actively participate in coming up with solutions that enable us to achieve the same regulatory outcomes in a more efficient and user-friendly manner, as well as help people to save costs, save time and save manpower.

This is why we have enhanced this year's Award to celebrate and recognise pro-enterprise efforts more prominently across the MND Family.

In particular, we have introduced a new "Pro-Enterprise Innovation" category to spotlight ground-up initiatives that deserve recognition for making a meaningful difference to our businesses and our stakeholders.

These include efforts to reduce regulatory burden, simplify processes, give businesses greater certainty, and help our industry partners save time, cost, and manpower.

I won't be able to highlight all the projects but please allow me to highlight three of them, because these embody the qualities that I believe we need to cultivate, strengthen, and spread across the MND Family.

Taking Calculated Risks

First, let me talk about taking calculated risks and not be afraid of trying new ideas. I know this is not easy. I understand. Sometimes you try something new, some things may fail, so our officers may be worried. If I try something new and it fails, would I be blamed? Would I be penalised? I think these are very valid and genuine concerns which we recognise. But I want to assure all of you that what we want to do is not to just ask you to take calculated risk and expose you to the risk. What we want to do as a family, as an organisation, is to see how we can provide the support for you to take calculated risks. So that if something were to go wrong later, a genuine mistake, you tried and you didn't succeed, you do not have to worry. We will provide the air cover to enable you to try and to fail safely. Because if you don't try and you don't push the boundaries, how are we going to discover what will help us to make those breakthroughs? We will never find out. Dr Goh Keng Swee had this famous saying, which I am sure many colleagues are familiar with: "The only way to avoid making mistakes is to do nothing, but that in the end, is the ultimate mistake."

This is something that I want to convey across to everyone, and not just for MND family, I hope this can be for the entire public service. And in the MND family, this is what we hope to be able to do: support our officers to take calculated risks.

The example that I want to share with you is the Fire Code Relaxation for Long-Stay Serviced Apartments, and this is a joint effort not just by MND alone, but also involving colleagues from SCDF and MHA, and from MND family are MND and URA.

When URA first piloted the long-stay serviced apartment typology, these developments had to meet the more stringent fire standards meant for hotels because this is a new category, so they used the hotel fire safety code and apply it to these new long-stay service apartments. But agencies have received feedback that some of these requirements were onerous and they added significant costs for the industry.

Rather than standing firm and insisting on existing rules, URA and SCDF carefully re-examined the requirements. They identified a more calibrated approach - one that continues to uphold safety, while streamlining some onerous requirements. Today, developers and businesses can enjoy significant cost savings while managing the risks responsibly.

This is what calculated risk taking looks like. It is not don't care, that is not what we are doing, we need to pay attention to safety. And at the same time, we examine the trade-offs carefully, we make a considered judgment and take ownership of that decision. I know this is not easy because this will require us, in a way, to put ourselves forward, to have the courage to review established rules and accept that we cannot always eliminate every risk. But when we do so with clear eyes and open minds, I believe we can find better ways to achieve our policy objectives, and at the same time, benefit the stakeholders - have a win-win outcome. So this is what I hope we can continue to do, including deepening our collaboration with MHA and SCDF, because what we have done with the long-stay serviced apartment is one part of it, but I believe there are many more areas that we can apply the same approach. Working in partnership, respecting one another's regulatory concerns and objectives, while at the same time keeping an open mind to seek out new and better ways of working together for the benefit of our stakeholders.

Strengthening Future Capabilities

The second example I will share with everyone is how we strengthen future capabilities. We must plan ahead and partner the industry to build and strengthen our future capabilities. A good example of this is the Taskforce for Architectural and Engineering Consultants. This is a collaborative effort by BCA, BOA, PEB, MOF, MND, and our IHLs, alongside key industry partners like SIA and ACES.

To strengthen our talent pipeline and accelerate the transformation of the Built Environment consultancy sector, the Taskforce had put forward 11 recommendations.

One key initiative is the INSPIRE internship programme, which extends internships to at least 30 weeks, and offers structured learning, dedicated mentorship, and higher starting salaries for students who join their host companies after graduation. The internship counts. And we are looking at we can encourage more of this and provide additional support for them, through industry, bursaries and scholarships - with contribution from the industry and Government, to attract our fair share of young talent to join the Built Environment sector.

And I hope that through the internships and exposure to the industry, this will boost the industry-readiness of our BE graduates, while securing a steady stream of talent for our sector.

If we want to build the Singapore of tomorrow, we must make sure we build the capabilities, and we must be prepared to invest today. If you don't plough your fields today, you will not be able to harvest in time to come. So, this requires effort. It is not going to happen automatically. The fruits are not going to drop down without us planting the trees and caring for them. So, I think it is very important that if we want a future-ready BE sector that can attract bright young minds to join us and help deliver on our ambitious development plans, that we have got to invest in building this pipeline. This is what I hope to be able to count on all colleagues to work together with our partners, with our IHLs, with our industry, to be able to do so.

Working as One Public Service

The third example I want to share with everyone, is how we must continue to work as One Public Service. The BTO Coordination Committee is a good example. It is led by MND and HDB, but the Committee brings together many other agencies - MOE, MOH, LTA, ECDA, IMDA, PA and NEA, just to name some of them, there are many more. The purpose of doing this coordination is to deliver a seamless move-in experience for residents of new large-scale BTO estates, especially those that are located further away from the town centre. It is not so critical if you are talking about a BTO that is near facilities. Let's say in my constituency - there is the Toa Payoh West hawker centre and market, with coffeeshops. There is an MRT there - Caldecott MRT station. And then slightly further up, there is Braddell MRT station. In a place like this, there is less of a worry for residents when they move into the BTO, because the facilities are mostly there, as it is a mature estate. But if you are talking about a completely new greenfield site, in some of the newer estates, some of these BTO sites are further away from the town centre and we do need to make sure we coordinate in advance, we plan in advance, we work together with other agencies to provide a better move-in experience for our residents. We were not doing this perfectly previously. There were some gaps here and there, and that is why we formed this committee led by SMS Sun Xueling and supported by all our colleagues. To be able to do this better, it requires a whole of Government effort, because not everything is within MND. There are many other services, such as transport, education, healthcare and telco. These are also important for residents. So we do need to work together across the Whole of Government, with the focus of how we can make the moving in experience better for our residents.

This is what a One Public Service looks like in action. Putting residents' needs at the centre of what we do and working across agency boundaries to deliver outcomes greater than what a single agency can achieve on its own.

Conclusion

Ladies and gentlemen, colleagues, I would like to congratulate all recipients of the Minister's Award. Thank you very much for your hard work, your initiative, and your unwavering commitment to raising the standards of service for Singaporeans.

Beyond our awardees, there are many other good projects and many other dedicated officers across the MND Family. Your quiet commitment and your everyday contributions may not be so visible, but I want you to know they are deeply appreciated.

As we celebrate National Day, let us remember that Singapore's success has never been an accident or something that should be taken for granted. We fought hard to have the Singapore that we see today. Our forefathers started it. They handed over to the next generation who continued. Now it is upon us to continue this journey and do even better. We want to take Singapore even further. We are not done building Singapore. We want to make our country even better than we have inherited from our forefathers. Why? So that we can hand over to our next generation, something that they can feel proud of, and I hope they can then build on it, and take Singapore even further. This is what we want to do, generation after generation, make Singapore better and better, for our people.

Let us continue to work together as one MND Family, with courage, creativity, and commitment, to build a better Singapore for all generations.

I hope everyone will have a good National Day weekend ahead, and Majulah Singapura!

Thank you.