SCDF’s community involvement and technology investment – now that’s what I call a plan!

The SCDF is finally stepping out of the shadow of its bigger uniformed services brothers and flexing its muscles! In their new workplan, SCDF has unveiled its focus on community involvement and the development and deployment of new innovations as their strategy. Bravo!

In adopting a vision of “A Nation of Life Savers”, SCDF has answered a very fundamental question – how can we provide timely medical response for all? Faced with dwindling manpower resources, and an increasing population count, SCDF cannot simply rely on their own resources to attend to a medical emergency. They have therefore turned to crowdsourcing the solution. Community involvement helps overcome their limitations in the most cost-effective manner. It also helps bring people closer together.

The SCDF has also taken to mobile solutioning, launching the MyResponder app to notify trained community helpers to identify the nearest AED units, and be notified of who needed immediate medical attention.

Obviously the devil is always in the details, and there will be questions surrounding the sustainability of this model, yet with social support and continued community involvement, Singapore will be able to keep this initiative alive.

This is a positive step in crowdsourcing solutions and all businesses should look to how they too can use the power of the people to get their products and services out. The key, obviously, is to ensure that you are offering a product or service the will benefit people. The greater the benefit, the higher will be the participation.

Crowdsourcing and crowdfunding; these are two of the latest tools available to the innovator. But you need to know how to wield them; the key being your benefit to the people. If it whiffs of anything close to being self-serving, it will backfire on you, sometimes most spectacularly.

So well done to the SCDF! You have taken a giant leap for crowdsourcing solutions for a national solution. Thank you for showing us the way and keep it up!