M10:06
当你想到政府的时候，你会想到什么？
When you think about government, what do you think of?
庞大、缓慢、官僚。
Big, slow, bureaucratic.
最重要的是，你大概会想到的是挫败感。
Most of all, you probably think of frustration.
一个不好用的网站，一张你已经填了第三次的表格，或者某个流程，因为一条莫名其妙、根本说不通的规定，你卡了好几个星期。
A website that didn't work, a form you had to fill in for the third time, or some process you got stuck in for weeks because of some stupid rule that just didn't make sense.
你大概认识这样的人，他们发誓自己永远不会去政府部门工作。
You probably know somebody who swears they will never work in government.
而且你甚至不用再多问他们一个问题，你就知道他们是什么意思。
And without asking them another question, you know exactly what they mean.
但如果事情不一定非得是这样呢？
But what if it didn't have to be this way?
几年前，我在 Singapore government 里组建了一个实验团队。
A few years ago, I started an experimental team in the Singapore government.
想法很简单：不再用常见的自上而下决策方式，而是建立一支支由熟练实践者组成的小团队，赋予他们主动去公共部门各处寻找问题并解决问题的权力。
The idea was simple: rather than the usual top-down decision-making, we would build small teams of skilled practitioners and empower them to seek out and solve problems all across the public sector.
具体做法是，每年的一月，我们会把所有非紧急工作先放一边。我们会去学校、医院做实地走访，和社工见面，去了解他们的问题，并做出原型解决方案。
The way this works is that every year, for the month of January, we put aside all noncritical work. We go on field trips to schools, hospitals, meet social workers to understand their problems and prototype solutions.
到了月底，我们会看看哪些项目最有前景，然后用接下来一整年的时间把它们推进到正式上线。
At the end of the month, we see which projects are the most promising, and we spend the rest of the year bringing them to launch.
我们想解决的问题是，政府传统上是建立在军事结构之上的——一种自上而下、中央集权的决策方式，优化的是指挥和控制。
The problem we're trying to solve is that government is traditionally based on a military structure - top-down, central decision-making optimized for command and control.
这种结构是为了让少数人定方向，其他所有人快速而一致地对齐行动。
It's designed for a small group of people to set direction and for everyone else to align quickly and consistently.
当你已经知道自己要做什么，只需要执行的时候，这种方式很好。
This is great when you already know what you need to do and just need to execute.
可当你需要先搞清楚到底该做什么的时候，它就没那么好了。
It's not so great when you need to figure out what needs to be done.
在中央集权的决策模式下，你最后会遇到一种思想上的交通堵塞。
With central decision-making, you end up with an intellectual traffic jam.
想法一路往中心流动的时候会被卡住，等着那些时间不够、上下文更少的人来关注。
Ideas get stuck as they flow towards the center, waiting for attention from people with not enough time and even less context.
你的脑力真的会不够用，所以即使某件事得到了足够的政治关注，最后被推动通过了，那也只是意味着其他所有事情都被挤到一边去了。
You literally run out of brainpower, so even if something gets enough political attention to get pushed through, that just means everything else gets pushed aside.
这就是为什么政府可以搞几十亿的新加坡元建设项目，却还是得不停问你生日是哪天。
This is why government can do billion-dollar construction projects but still has to keep asking you for your birthday.
当决策者忙不过来的时候，你可以把政府做大。
When decision-makers are overloaded, you can make the government bigger.
但要把它做得更好，就真的很难。
It's really hard to make it better.
限制因素不是钱，甚至也不只是政治意愿。
The limit is not money or even political will.
而是我们分配注意力的能力。
It's our ability to pay attention.
如果我们有很多问题要解决，就需要很多人的创造力和主动性。
If we have a lot of problems to solve, we need the creativity and initiative of a lot of people.
这和指挥加控制正好相反，所以我们也得从相反的方向来切入。
This is the opposite of command and control, so we need to approach this from the opposite direction.
如果不是自上而下的结构，而是从下往上来设计政府，会怎样？
What if instead of a top-down structure, we designed government from the bottom up?
与其发号施令、确保服从，领导者会把重点放在支持大家去主动承担责任。
Rather than giving orders and ensuring compliance, leaders would focus on supporting people to take ownership.
这样会扩大我们的思维表面积，让我们有更强的注意力、能建立专业能力，也更能解决问题。
This would increase our intellectual surface area, giving us more ability to pay attention, build expertise, and solve problems.
所以，这就是我的理论。
So that's my theory.
它在实践中到底效果如何呢？
How well does it work in practice?
嗯，有一年，一个团队去了一家消防站，我们看到消防员每天要花那么多时间来清点消防车上的物资。
Well, one year a team visited a fire station, and we saw how firefighters had to spend so much time every day just taking inventory of their fire trucks.
他们得拿着那种很大的纸质记录本，在检查装备的时候随身带着，你知道的。
They had these big paper logbooks they had to carry around, you know, while they checked their equipment.
所以我们做了一个简单的 app，让他们能在手机上更轻松地完成这件事。
And so we built a simple app that let them do this more easily on their phones.
现在，Singapore 的所有消防站都在用它，每个月能节省成千上万个人工小时，不然这些时间就真的只是浪费在纸上逐项勾选了。
It's now being used by all the fire stations in Singapore, and it saves thousands of man-hours every month that would otherwise literally be wasted just ticking things off on paper.
又有一年，一个团队去拜访了一些 social workers，我们了解到，他们每和一个客户见面一小时，就得再花整整一小时把案例笔记打出来。
Another year, a team visited some social workers, and we learned that for every hour they met with a client, they had to spend another whole hour just typing up their case notes.
所以我们给他们做了一个工具，它不只是把对话转写出来，还能自动生成可用的案例报告。
So we built a tool for them that doesn't just transcribe conversations, but automatically generates usable case reports.
另一个团队和一些 ER 医生合作，实施了一个排队管理系统。
Another team worked with some ER doctors to implement a queue management system.
通过智能地给病例排优先级，它把急诊室的等待时间缩短了 20%。
By intelligently prioritizing cases, it's reducing emergency room wait times by 20%.
到现在为止，我们已经做了 40 多个不同的项目，每一个都是一个小而重要的问题，本来大概率永远得不到它应有的关注。
So far, we've done over 40 different projects, each of them an example of a small but important problem that would have likely never gotten the attention that it needed.
要解决这些问题，就得同时处理技术、设计和运营上的问题，才能真正回应真实的人所面对的痛点。
They required solving tech, design, and operation problems altogether in order to address real pain points faced by real people.
类似的政府项目通常要花好几年，成本高达几千万美元。
Similar government projects normally take years and cost tens of millions of dollars.
而我们能稳定地在短短 6 个月内，用只有 5 个人的团队就上线新的系统。
We're able to consistently launch new systems in just 6 months with teams of just 5 people.
因为这套做法在政府官员那里效果这么好，我们就决定把它开放给公众。
Because this worked so well for government officers, we decided to open it up to the public.
没有奖金，只有一些资金，用来把有前景的想法推进到实际产品。
There was no prize money, just some funding to bring promising ideas to production.
说实话，我们并不确定会不会有人感兴趣，因为我的意思是，毕竟作为一名政府雇员，我希望自己能被赋予能力把工作做好，这很合理，但一个普通公民为什么会在意公共利益呢？
We honestly weren't sure if anyone would be interested because I mean, after all, as a government employee, it makes sense that I'd want to be empowered to do my job, but why would a private citizen care about the public good?
结果我们收到了几百份申请，几百个想法。
Well, we got hundreds of applicants, hundreds of ideas.
用 machine learning 预测海滩清洁行动的最佳时间，帮助老年人和社区保持联系的工具，用音频录音和 AI 来追踪野生动物数量的系统。
Machine learning to predict the best time for beach cleanups, tools to help senior citizens stay connected with their community, a system to track wildlife populations using audio recordings and AI.
只花一个普通政府项目通常成本中极小的一部分，我们就给 Singapore 人提供了一种方式，不只是表达他们关心什么，还能真的去采取行动。
For a tiny fraction of what a single government project would usually cost, we gave Singaporeans a way to not only express what they cared about, but to take action on it.
人们是想这么做的。
People want to do this.
事实证明，想要做好事，这种愿望本身就很自然。
It turns out there's something really natural about wanting to do good.
我想，在座的各位都希望自己的人生能做点有意义的事。
I think all of us here want to do something meaningful with our lives.
我们只是需要一个机会。
We just need the opportunity.
政府之所以让人沮丧，是因为我们总觉得它本可以做得更好。
Government is frustrating because of how much better we wish it could be.
不管我们多努力，感觉都还是会卡住，因为我们对一个本来就被庞大职责压得喘不过气的系统，期待越来越多。
It feels like no matter how hard we try, we get stuck, expecting more and more from a system that's already choked by the scale of its responsibilities.
如果我们不换一种方法，公共服务就会落后，而我们会被新的问题淹没，比如 crypto scams、disinformation campaigns，或者说，纯粹就是 AI nonsense。
If we don't take a different approach, public service will fall behind while we get overrun by new problems like crypto scams, disinformation campaigns, or just plain old AI nonsense.
但其实不必这样。
But it doesn't have to be this way.
政府可以不只是控制更多，而是让更多人有能力去做好事。我们可以通过推动更好的结构、让问题更可见，以及在我们力所能及的地方采取行动，来扩大我们的认知覆盖面，解决我们看得到的挑战。
Government can be less about control and more about empowering more people to do good. We can increase our intellectual surface area by pushing for better structures, bringing visibility to problems, and taking action where we can to solve the challenges we can see.
我们可以拥有一个不受领导者注意力所限制的社会，而是由人民的想象力推动的社会。
We can have a society that's not limited by the attention of its leaders, but one that is driven by the imagination of its people.
谢谢大家。
Thank you.