Child Care Operators Enjoy Faster Turnaround Time And Increased Productivity With Child Care Link Portal

Dealings between child care operators in Singapore and the government used to be a pen-and-paper based system. Today, it has gone completely online. The move to the electronic medium has resulted in a huge reduction in laborious manual processes, faster turnaround time and a significant boost in staff productivity.

With the Child Care Link portal, child care centres now receive subsidies 10 days earlier compared to the previous manual system. With 48 different subsidy rates and over 690 child care centres in Singapore, processing the subsidies used to be an extremely cumbersome process. But with the new electronic system, it has become fully-automated, enabling fast, efficient and accurate processing, with automated disbursements to the operators' bank accounts.

This electronic system called the Child Care Link (www.childcarelink.gov.sg) is a one-stop website for communication between operators and the government. It has established a highly responsive network which enables timely communication between the government and child care service providers. For example, during the Sars outbreak in 2003, the decision to close all child care centres was communicated within minutes to all child care operators via the online bulletin board at Child Care Link.

But it was not smooth sailing all the way. When the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports started the process, over 75% of the child care centres did not have PCs and their staff did not use PCs for their business needs. With top management support, lots of ground preparation and buy-in from the operators, changes in mindsets were finally achieved. Hands-on training was also given to child care centre staff before the system was launched.

Another significant effort was the integration of Child Care Link with the Online Business Licensing Service (OBLS) at www.business.gov.sg . It provides those who are interested in setting up a child care centre with a one-stop service to apply for all their childcare licensing requirements. Not only did the operators save numerous counter trips to different agencies, they also saw a reduction in the time taken for the approval of their licence to only two weeks!