【Overseas Event Introduction】Speeding up Singapore's COVID-19 response with the Jamstack by Kwa Jie Hao

The speaker for this session is Mr. Kwa Jie Hao, a member of Singapore's engineering team "Open Government Products".

 

"Open Government Products" is an innovative engineering team in Japan that develops systems and tools used on Singapore's public website, and is driving the country's digital transformation efforts.

 

In fact, in Singapore, there is already a track record of introducing Jamstack to public websites. It's also surprising that they have even developed their own website builder.

 

So, why did Singapore introduce Jamstack to their public websites, and how did these sites help during the coronavirus pandemic? Let's take a look!

Government-approved Website Builder

In 2017, the Singapore government conducted a survey on the performance of various public websites.

 

The result...

 

• Slow Page Loading: Some sites take more than 10 seconds to load...
• High management cost: estimated to be over 25,000 Singapore dollars per year...
• Low accessibility: Cannot be accessed from mobile, lacks consideration for people with disabilities...

 

It has become clear that there are serious issues.

 

So, the government has decided to prepare a new system. That is, the website builder "Isomer".

 

Speaker Kwa Jie Hao is a member of the team involved in the development of Isomer.

Building with Jamstack

The first thing the team did when developing a new system.

 

It was to investigate what is commonly used content on public sites.

 

As a result, it was revealed that the content is used to provide information such as news and policies.

 

From this, we have concluded that we should build our website with Jamstack!

 

■ Achievements with "Isomer" adopted Jamstack

 

・Improved page loading speed
Users (citizens) can browse without stress because there is no need to wait.

 

・Improved Security
　Peace of mind and safety from automatic monitoring. Do not give hackers and others a foothold for attack.

 

・User-friendly interface
　Suppliers (public institutions) can provide information quickly and easily.
　Users (citizens) can access information smoothly and quickly.

 

・Consistent design with consideration for accessibility
　Prepare design templates to ensure consistency as a public website.
　Also addresses accessibility issues.

 

 

Source: Our Users Isomer | Open Government Products
https://www.isomer.gov.sg/users/

 

By using Isomer's design templates, consistency in design as a public website is ensured.

 

Currently, Singapore's public institutions are using Isomer, over 120 of them!!

 

Amazingly, it continues to increase even now.

 

How many staff members do you think are operating these?

 

Wow, only 8 people!!!

 

It can be said that there are many benefits to adopting Jamstack.

 

Behind Isomer, GitHub operates as storage and Netlify hosts the backend.

 

This is the reason why this Jamstack configuration enables speedy editing and publishing of content with a small team.

 

Fighting Against Fake News

The coronavirus, which can be said to have changed the world.

 

The issue that the Singapore government faced head on in that battle.

 

That is fake news.

 

Rumors have been flying around and dubious treatment methods have been circulating. Many people have been taking misguided actions by believing in false information.

 

To overcome this situation, the government believes it is important to quickly disseminate accurate information through various channels.

 

That's where we started push-type information distribution. In addition to daily press conferences, we have been actively sharing the latest information from applications such as WhatsApp (similar to LINE) and Telegram (short messages).

 

However, even with these applications, while the speed of information delivery may have been covered, there were limitations to the depth of information that could be handled... To convey deeper information, longer sentences were necessary.

 

That's where the idea of guiding users to the website came in.

 

As an example, this shows a link from Telegram to a website.
In this way, a link is placed on the application side, leading to more detailed information on the website.

 

By adopting Jamstack, we were able to create a website that can be updated in real-time at the same speed as the application, without sacrificing speed.

 

We will introduce two case studies.

- Success Stories -

 

① Corporate Support Website

At that time, it was an urgent requirement for the government to establish a support scheme for companies.

 

Isomer solves the following challenges here!

 

• Support cannot keep up with hotlines and the like.
• Even if you launch a website, it won't withstand the traffic.

 

By adopting Jamstack, we were able to build our website in just one week. We were also able to handle a large amount of traffic.

 

Gobusiness（https://www.gobusiness.gov.sg/）

② Website for sharing citizens' experiences

At that time, a website was established to share information among citizens during the pandemic period and to overcome the crisis together as a nation.

 

The time it took to build the site was only 36 hours.

 

Only 3 steps.

 

1. Enter information into the form
2. Input data from 1 into the template
3. Click the publish button on the site

 

 

By the way, the back side is structured as follows:

 

1. A repository is created on GitHub and Netlify is launched.
2. When changes are made on GitHub, Netlify automatically builds.
3. When the publish button is clicked, the KeyCDN API is called to quickly propagate the Netlify site.

 

This sense of speed was achieved by focusing on the content without worrying about the underlying mechanism on the back side...! As mentioned before, this is thanks to adopting Jamstack!!

 

Singapore Together（https://www.singaporetogether.gov.sg/）

Finally

At the end of the presentation, Mr. Kwa Jie Hao stated, "Jamstack is a force multiplier."

 

With traditional website construction methods, the administrator needs to control all of the infrastructure. As a result, resources will continue to be taken for a long time even after the site is completed.

 

On the other hand, with the Jamstack site construction method, the backend is entrusted to professionals such as GitHub or Netlify, so resources are not taken up. As a result, it enables small teams to operate websites.

 

The Singapore government's initiatives and success stories have provided a convincing answer to the question of "Why Jamstack?"

 

Speed, stability, and small team operation..., all of these achievements will be a big motivation for adopting Jamstack.

 

Thank you for reading until the end.

 

Human Science Co., Ltd. offers unique solutions for web content and platforms using the combination of "document creation know-how" and "the latest web development technology (Jamstack)" that other companies do not have.

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https://www.science.co.jp/document/jamstack.html

 

Source of this document: https://youtu.be/08WujrMhqi8