13 CHAPTER 5: Bolor-Erdene Battsengel What Was Your Journey to the Government in Mongolia and to Digital Government Leadership Like? Where Does Your Motivation for Improving the Government Come From? As the Prime Minister Asked You to Join, Did He or Anyone Lay Out a Concrete Expectation for You in Terms of What to Deliver? What Was the Digital Government Scene and Situation in Mongolia before That? What Have Been the Levers and Mandate of CITA to Bring Change to the Scene? If e-Mongolia Was the Deliverable, What Is Your Wider Mission? What Is the Objective You Have Set for Yourself and the Country in Digital Government? With All the Government Services to Digitalize, How Do You Prioritize and Sequence Them? What Are the Criteria for Selection? Given the Tough Context You Started From, How Did You Start in the Role and Gear CITA to Start Delivering from Your First Hundred Days? Still, How Did You Start Working with the CITA Team and Perhaps Changing Things There to Get the Speedy Delivery and New Approach from Them? Once you got e-Mongolia Up and Running, What Have Been Your Key Initiatives and Milestones since Then? How Have You Been Building the Team? How Do You Find People and Whom Do You Look For? How Do You Work with Your Team? What Are Your Methods and Style? What Type of Culture Have You Tried to Build into CITA? Where Does This Sort of Bravery Come From? What Have Been the Mantras You Have Kept Repeating to the Team? What Do You Think Have Been Your Biggest Achievements in the Role So Far? What Do You Think You Could Have Done Better? What Have You Learned the Most? What Are the Next Challenges Ahead for You, for CITA, for e-Mongolia? How Have You Managed to Make Sure That on Your Departure the Work Would Last—You Mentioned Standards, for Example? What Is Your Advice to Young Students on What Skills to Develop to Do This Kind of Job Well? What Are Your Key Recommendations on How to Reach Digital Government Progress? Note
14 CHAPTER 6: Cheow Hoe Chan You Have a Double Position: Government CDTO and the Deputy Chief Executive for GovTech Agency. What Is at the Core of What You Do? How Did You End Up in This Role—and in Government? If the Conversation Lasted Many Months, You Were Then Hesitating Quite a Bit at First? What Was the State of Digital Government in Singapore at the Time—Why Were the Leaders Seeking a Different Approach and Someone New? If This Was the Background, Were You Given Any Concrete Mission to Fulfill or a Deliverable to Reach? How Did You Then Carve Out a Plan or a Road to Follow? Were These Directions Easy to Start With? What Could Be an Example of an Early Small Project with Great Outcomes Like That, and How It Was Different? If Starting the Journey with Small Steps Was the Strategy, Did You Ever Set Yourself Any Time Frame for Longer Term? What Has Been Effective to Manage for or through These Inflection Points? Once You Had Started on Your Journey of Small but Impactful Projects, What Became the Core of Your Journey Thereafter? Besides Strongly Moving to Cloud, What Other Parts of Infrastructure Stack Did You Choose to Focus on and Why? What Have Been Your Priorities in This Sense? What Have Been Your Effective Routines or Methods to Evolve and Deliver Such a Strategy? How Much Has Your Strategy and Focus Pivoted or Changed through Your Term? How Have You Been Building Your Team Out? What Has Proven to Be Effective in This Area? You Said Yourself That Culture Determines the Delivery as Much as Talent, and You Have Wanted to Build a “Build Culture” in GovTech. How Have You Gone about It? You Were Afraid of Bureaucracy Yourself at First. How Have You Managed to Avoid Culture Getting Caught in It? What Have Been Your Mantras to Instill a Culture You Have Wanted to See in GovTech? What Have You Kept Saying to Your Team Over and Over? What Have Been Your Biggest Achievements in the Role? What Are You Most Happy With? What Are the Things You Think You Could Have Done Better or Differently?