New AI Assistant Desk aims to boost productivity, security across Singapore's public sector
The Singapore government is developing a suite of artificial intelligence tools for 150,000 public officers, including a dedicated registry to track autonomous agents, as the public sector accelerates its adoption of AI.
The Government Technology Agency (GovTech) is building the AI Assistant Desk, a platform designed to serve as a secure personal digital assistant for all government employees, The Straits Times reported.
GovTech chief executive Goh Wei Boon said the platform is being developed to give the government greater visibility and security as officers increasingly rely on AI in their work.
"We want to have a layer of customisable rules, sanctioned AI tools, and a registry to provide better visibility and security, so we can ensure that people use AI agents correctly," Goh told The Straits Times.
Among the suite's components is a registry of AI agents that will track ownership and activity to ensure proper use.
AI agents can autonomously perform tasks such as processing licence applications, conducting risk assessments, and navigating multi-agency administrative workflows with minimal human intervention.
According to The Straits Times, the AI Assistant Desk is still in development and being tested by some public officers, with a wider roll-out expected later in 2026.
Its other components include automated hygiene checkers to screen for offensive language in prompts and outputs, as well as security controls such as restricting agents from deleting files or e-mailing external recipients.
Goh said the platform's security layers remain intact even as third-party AI tools are added or swapped out, an important consideration as the government's AI toolkit continues to expand.
The AI Assistant Desk is part of a broader push to embed AI into daily government work. More than half of the 150,000 public officers are already regularly using Pair, the government's AI chatbot, for productivity and research tasks.
AI in Singapore's public sector
GovTech, which has grown from 1,800 employees when it was established in 2016 to 3,900 today, supports the technology needs of more than 50 public agencies, The Straits Times reported.
"It is about bringing technology closer to the ground, enabling teams closest to real-world problems to develop more agile and impactful solutions," Goh told the news outlet.
Some initiatives from GovTech include Markly, an AI marking assistant currently being trialled in 18 local schools to help teachers assess handwritten scripts in English and geography.
Another is LangBuddy, a voice-enabled chatbot helping students practise Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil, currently used by around 300 students from 10 secondary schools and junior colleges.
GovTech is also developing AI tools to address cybersecurity vulnerabilities. The agency has been building an automated penetration testing tool designed to run continuous security checks on some 2,000 government systems.
Since January, GovTech has been using automated penetration testing tools and plans to scale their use across the whole of government. Since October 2025, the agency has also been incorporating AI into threat detection systems to help identify traffic anomalies in public-sector networks.
The government's target is to have 100,000 AI-fluent individuals across all sectors by 2029.
