Inside OGP’s startup-style gov’t team

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Hello reader,

If you’re Singaporean or have lived in Singapore, you’ve most likely used one of the products made by Open Government Products (OGP) – whether that’s an app for paying parking fees, one for redeeming government vouchers at the supermarket, or a web platform for booking public badminton courts.

An experimental unit within the Singapore government, OGP has developed over 40 products since it was founded in 2019.

A few weeks ago, I sat down with its director, Li Hongyi, after he took the stage at Tech in Asia Conference 2026. We spoke about a range of topics, from his philosophy when it comes to building to his personal journey that led him to start OGP.

Developing products for the public sector is like “fighting with sticks and rocks,” Li said candidly. What many people don’t see are the products his team has had to kill over the years to focus on those with a higher chance of success and the months it can take for its offerings to find their first user.

Today’s Top Story offers a rare peek into how products get built inside a bureaucracy, what Li believes the public sector can learn from high-performing private companies, and why, despite the challenges, he believes this is a job worth doing.

Melissa Goh, senior editor

Top Story

Inside Singapore’s government team that kills its own products

Digital collage by Ulla, photo courtesy of Open Government Products

Li previously worked at Google, and his description of the differences between product management at the tech giant and the government was instructive. He said product managers at a company on the scale of Google solve tiny problems with the best resources in the world, while at OGP, he solves big problems without the same arsenal.

That’s something founders everywhere can surely relate to.

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