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Central Repository for social economy and population studies
Team 44
Unlike medical, science and technology fields with numerous public repositories and collaboration channels, social economics and population studies often have classified outputs due to national differences and sensitivity. The NBER, a US-based repository, offers some public data and publications, with internal collections restricted to its affiliates, co-authors, and students, primarily focusing on the US economy. WOG may establish its own repository tailored to Singapore's unique socioeconomic and population landscape, ensuring relevance and security while promoting local research, accelerating evidence-based policy-making, and provide knowledge retention.
A central repository with decentralized access management for social economics and population studies across the WOG. It enables officers to effortlessly search, upload and manage publications with robust access controls, leveraging both natural language and traditional keyword search methods. This innovative platform streamlines information discovery, ensure secure, efficient handling of critical resesearch publications.
Research findings are currently stored across intranet system, DCS, and bespoke record systems like ERMS. While some lower classification studies are published via EDM or Newsletter, there's no centralised channel for dissemination, often resulting in a 'fire and forget' approach.
When inquiries arise, analysts and researchers lack a systematic way to discover if a topic has been previously studied. They often resort to contacting individual agencies or officers to find relevant studies or datasets, a time-consuming process. This inefficient approach frequently leads to duplication of efforts, with similar or identical studies being conducted unnecessarily.
Often, researchers must start from scratch, even when given datasets or publications, to re-run analyses with different parameters or scenarios. Reproducibility is lacking in these situations.
Improve Transparency and Collaboration: The proposed solution allows agencies self-manage and securely share research findings, as full content or just metadata, improving research visibility across the WOG. This enhances transparency, facilitates cross-agency collaboration, reduces duplication of work, and enables building on existing knowledge. Ultimately, it promotes informed decision-making and evidence-based policy-making.
Cost Reduction: The proposed centralised platform for studies are possible to reduce IT costs by eliminating the need to maintain multiple document storage and record management systems, such as SharePoint and ERMS, across various agencies and ministries.
Enhance Knowledge Management: The proposed solution improves knowledge management across WOG by promotes institutional memory, ensures continuity of knowledge despite staff turnover. By streamlining the process of storing, accessing, and sharing research, it fosters a culture of continuous learning and collaboration within the WOG.