Vital is Singapore’s largest back-of-house shared services centre for the government’s public sector provides centralised travel insurance programme for its public officers.
This Whole-of-Government programme is currently subscribed by about 80 public agencies and more than 20,000 government travellers from Ministries, Organs of State, Departments, Statutory Boards, Polytechnics and Schools.
The coverage includes official overseas travel, training, study trips, postings, secondment, international relief efforts, overseas studies of government scholars as well as students’ overseas educational trips and student exchanges.
Vital Chair Clarince Ti told FutureGov Asia Pacific that prior to the implementation of a shared managed travel programme for Singapore Public Sector in April 2008, there was no centralized travel management function to oversee the overall government travel and related expenditure.
Public agencies bought travel services from a panel of travel agents which were appointed.
“The absence of a single point of reference to oversee the whole travel management needs of the Public Sector had resulted in, amongst others, lack of data consolidation for effective contract negotiations and benchmarking, ” he further said.
He added that there is a lack of reporting to public agencies on their expenditure and savings, absence of structured client engagement platform via online travel portal, travel sharing or user education sessions, one-to-one meetings on travel service review, travel surveys among government.
“Compared to walk-in rates, a demand aggregated contract can command in excess of 70 per cent discount. For the government, this could mean absolute dollar cost savings in terms of cost avoidance in excess of $1m over 3 years. ”
Ti noted the importance of having centralised travel insurance program to enhance government purchasing power, facilitate travel insurance cost tracking and control, improve compliance, facilitate traveller tracking in times of crisis, streamline travel arrangement processes including filing travel insurance claims.
“Having Government agencies on a common system come together and be supported by Vital, reduces costs and brings about economies of scale within the whole of Government. This will translate to a more efficient public sector in Singapore.”
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Pia Rufino
Quelle/Source: futureGov, 14.08.2011
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