Understanding citizen needs is a critical step required for the effective planning of social services, the design of public policy and prioritisation of investment decisions. Even though there are specialist research centres or government agencies in charge of specific domain areas, it is challenging to have a robust oversight of all information relevant to a social issue.

Through partnerships between a think tank and a technology-based social enterprise, an open collaboration system—in the form of a wiki platform—was developed to allow mass participation in the mapping of social needs and community assets. This platform allows users to insert and edit information about disadvantaged groups such as people with disabilities, youth-at-risk and ex-offenders etc. They can also provide information on community assets who are keen to be part of the solution—community artists, civic tech groups or game designers willing to apply their skills to social good etc. Users can provide basic information on existing services, programmes and resources available, or venture to provide more evaluative assessments of service or policy gaps.

This session provides an overview to socialcollab.sg and invites anyone who is interested to participate in populating the pages, join or start a community network or interest group.