Problem Statement

Users

IDSC Secretaries — senior officers coordinating Infocomm Digitisation Steering Committee meetings across ~80 WOG agencies (1–3 secretaries each), with an estimated 120–320 meetings annually.

Use Case

Every meeting cycle (monthly to quarterly depending on agency), the secretary manually coordinates a 4-12 week pipeline: send invitations, chase for agenda submissions, consolidate agenda items, route through CIO and Chairman approval chains, collect presentation materials, consolidate and summarise for leadership, distribute the final meeting pack 3 working days before meeting, then draft minutes from recordings, route through approval, and circulate. All coordination happens via email, with tracking done in Excel spreadsheets.

Pain Point

• The #1 pain point, identified independently by all 6 agencies interviewed, is manually chasing stakeholders for submissions, involving multiple reminder emails, Teams and WhatsApp follow-ups, and inbox monitoring to track responses
• The full cycle requires ~20 hours of manual effort per month at WOG modelled average**.**
• Junior secretaries find it particularly stressful to chase directors and CIOs
• When secretaries rotate (annually at PSD and MSE), institutional knowledge is lost as the process resides in the outgoing person's memory rather than a system

Consequence

• Cost: Across ~80 agencies, the manual effort costs an estimated SGD 40,300/month in officer time (based on a loaded cost of SGD 89/hour for Level 4 officers)
• Scheduling errors arise from manual date calculations that fail to account for public holidays
• Inconsistent communication quality due to the process being person-dependent rather than system-driven
• Late material distribution has led to complaints from IDSC members
• Secretary burnout and inability to take leave during critical periods
• Loss of institutional knowledge during annual rotations, as the process lives in individuals rather than a system

User Research and Market Analysis

User Research

We conducted 6 structured interviews (20–30 April 2026) with IDSC secretaries across agencies spanning different meeting frequencies and team sizes, complemented by a survey to validate findings at scale. Survey results were aligned with interview insights, reinforcing automated chasing, status visibility, and effort reduction as key value drivers. During the interviews, we also demonstrated an end-to-end prototype of Astra. Participants responded positively and provided concrete, actionable suggestions, which informed subsequent product refinements.

De-risking

Adoption risk:

Data sovereignty:

Stakeholder Buy-in

All 6 interviewed agencies expressed interest in piloting:

•  Singapore Customs (High) — participated in POC; willing to pilot

•  MTI (High) — strong wish for automated chasing and status tracking

•  MSF (High) — explicitly open to full automation; already built workarounds

•  PSD (Moderate) — annual rotation makes them ideal for process codification

•  MSE (Moderate) — rotating model means success multiplies across 4 agencies

•  GDT (Moderate) — AI minutes generation is direct value

Solutioning

Problem-Solution Fit

Astra automates the end-to-end meeting coordination pipeline through 7 configurable workflows that mirror the exact steps secretaries already perform manually — but with AI-empowered  content validation, human like email communications, automated work-flow control, and a visual dashboard replacing inbox monitoring and Excel tracking.

Functionality

Pre Meeting: 

Meeting day:

Post Meeting:

User Experience

•  Email-Based: Participants reply to emails as before. System monitors inbox and surfaces status on dashboard, and feed back to the senders with findings from the material recieved (for information only).

•  AI Draft + Human Review: All AI content tagged '[AI Draft]', requires secretary approval before sending.

•  Holiday-aware scheduling: Milestone dates auto-exclude SG public holidays — zero manual calculation errors.

•  Configuration UI: Meeting list, email recipients, templates, workflow settings — all via dashboard.

User Validation

Impact & Next Steps

Success Metrics

North Star: 'Cycles Without Manual Chasing' — how many meeting cycles complete without the secretary needing to manually chase anyone. This directly measures whether we’ve solved the #1 pain point identified by 100% of agencies.

Supporting metrics:

Expected Impact

Short term (0-3 months):

Medium term (3-6 months):

Long term (6-12 months):