Visibility at Scale: Streamlining Leave Management for MSF’s Family Life Group

From fragmented spreadsheets to a secured command centre managing 3,000 monthly enquiries.

Impact at a Glance

3000 Enquiries

Monthly volume of public submissions handled within a single platform.

Seamless Integration

Multi-Platform enquiries automatically captured and managed centrally

Data Driven Insights

Real time dashboards with precise statistics and trends.

The Challenge

Fragmented Data and Manual Tracking

The Family Life Group (Leave Unit) at the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) handles a high volume of government-paid leave enquiries. Previously, the team relied on a combination of Outlook folders and multiple Excel files to track internal referrals and public feedback.

This legacy approach created significant operational bottlenecks:

Lack of Auditability: With no clear history of edits or deletions in spreadsheets, maintaining data integrity was nearly impossible.
Reporting Blind Spots: Categorising enquiries and identifying trends (e.g., surges in specific leave types) was a manual, error-prone process that yielded unreliable data.
Security & Integration Hurdles: Third-party tools raised concerns regarding overseas data residency, while alternative internal platforms faced lengthy onboarding delays or narrow functional focus.

The Solution

A Centralised Operations Hub

MSF piloted Ownself Gather (OG) as a flexible, secure case management platform to bridge the gap between public submissions and internal processing, bypassing the security risks of commercial vendors.

Seamless FormSG & Email Integration

Public enquiries are now routed directly from email and FormSG into OG. This eliminates manual data entry and ensures every case is captured in a unified queue.

Vendor-to-Agency Collaboration

MSF’s processing vendor triages and assigns cases within the platform, escalating complex issues to MSF staff through internal comments for faster resolution.

Self-Serve Configuration

The team utilised OG’s flexible field settings to build a custom workspace tailored to their specific operational needs without needing a dedicated developer.

Secure by Default

Unlike third-party alternatives, OG provides the data residency and security assurances required for handling sensitive citizen enquiries.

The Results

From Chaotic Sheets to Clear Visibility

While the transition required hands-on training to move staff away from familiar Excel workflows, the long-term benefits are clear. The team now possesses exportable, high-fidelity data that allows them to pull trends and report to leadership with absolute confidence. Today, the platform handles 2,000 to 3,000 enquiries per month.

“The main value of Ownself Gather is the improved tracking, categorisation, and analytics. Being able to pull counts and trends that were previously unreliable has fundamentally changed how we view our operations.”

Mr Chng Seong HuatOperations, Product and FinanceFamily Life Group, MSF

“The flexibility to add fields and configure the system ourselves was a key positive. It allowed us to pilot and expand incrementally, seeing visible results almost immediately.”