Ensuring Singapore’s security, now and in the future
DSO National Laboratories is Singapore’s largest defence research and development (R&D) organisation, with a mission to develop the technologies and solutions that will ensure the country’s continuing security.
Its 1,600 research scientists and engineers work to protect Singapore from current and emerging threats from land, sea, air, space and cyberspace, as well as acting as a centre of excellence for innovation and inspiration to the wider R&D community in Singapore.
Launched in 1972 with just three scientists, DSO National Laboratories is now a 1,600-strong organisation, enjoying international collaborations with renowned research institutions and defence industries in Asia, Europe and the US.
Secured IT support across the organisation
DSO faces numerous challenges. It must keep data safe and secure at the heart of its ground-breaking activities, at the same time giving its talented scientists and engineers the necessary tools, technologies, systems and best practices to deliver world-class solutions.
DSO must also show that its operations and processes are efficient and cost effective, maximising its investment in IT infrastructure, people and the vital tasks they perform. A digital transformation project also aims to deliver new capabilities and provide a one-stop service to its corporate and R&D divisions.
“The Digital Division is transforming the way we work and the capabilities we deliver for the security of Singapore,” explains Hui Han CHIN, DSO’s Chief Digital Officer. “The highly secure nature of our work means we have many segregated networks, both on premises and online. Our challenge is to ensure secure IT service support while providing accessible, fast and seamless support to our users.”
Dramatic reduction in ticket resolution times
DSO’s legacy IT service management solution was increasingly difficult to use and maintain and could not provide the minimum level of security the organisation required.
In recent years, government agencies in Singapore have been increasingly deploying the ServiceNow platform, for its robust inbuilt security provisions. As a result, Hui Han decided to investigate the suitability of ServiceNow for DSO and identified a managed, three-phase roll out of ServiceNow platform solutions.
Phase one was rolled out in October 2022. “We have begun with an initial roll out of ServiceNow IT Service Management (ITSM), a process supported by our partner in Singapore, Activeo,” says Hui Han.
“Phase one of the ITSM deployment was completed in February 2023, with the service available to all 1,600 DSO employees and a version available on mobile devices. Workshops were also conducted to introduce DSO teams to ServiceNow and to demonstrate its key features.”
A comprehensive self-serve service catalogue with a library of knowledge articles is instantly available for users, in order to find answers to common inquiries and access the services they need to ensure that they are as productive as possible.
For Hui Han and his colleagues, a single unified view of management dashboards and analytics is enabling tickets to be prioritised and forwarded to the DSO colleagues best placed to resolve them.
“The visibility of tickets is already resulting in much faster resolution, which colleagues really appreciate, with tickets being visible and approved by IT team members on their Apple watches,” he explains. “The time required to generate management reports has been dramatically reduced too. Previously it would have taken about seven hours, now they can be produced within 30 minutes—that’s over 92% time saved. So very quickly, everyone is on the same page sharing the same information and looking at the same Visual Task Boards.
“Most importantly, our scientists and engineers now have more time to devote to higher value or more urgent tasks that require their immediate attention since their IT requirements are being delivered faster and more effectively in ServiceNow. With automation, everything can be done efficiently and remotely with pre-built workflows, without the need for colleagues to leave their desks to seek help. It’s too early to see changes in colleagues’ satisfaction levels, but I’m confident that they have gone up!”
Phase two started in April 2023 and will see an expanded deployment of ITSM to use it to its fullest, for complete IT service delivery. Hui Han adds: “This will include introducing additional features, such as an AI-powered Virtual Agent and integrating with Microsoft Teams to bring everything together in DSO’s Microsoft 365 ecosystem. We are also looking into extending the ServiceNow platform into additional business functions, such as HR for employee onboarding and offboarding.”
Scheduled to complete by December 2023, Hui Han expects to achieve even higher efficiency and employee satisfaction by then.
Future improvement plans designed with the user in mind
Hui Han describes ServiceNow as a key component of DSO’s digital transformation, with HR Service Delivery, IT Operations Management and Strategic Portfolio Management next on his list of priorities.
“We want to take advantage of as much best-in-class automation and secure data integration as possible and ServiceNow provides that. ServiceNow lives up to its name: everything is service centric and designed with the user in mind.
“ServiceNow offers huge potential for DSO. For those willing to embrace the platform and the automation it offers, it’s a major improvement with many time-saving features. The process of taking on ServiceNow has been streamlined too, with very targeted engagements enabling us to make very rapid progress with our deployment. It’s been a very efficient process,” concludes Hui Han.