SINGAPORE – 30 JUL 2020
Social services agency PAVE Integrated Service for Individual and Family Protection’s (PAVE) new app, Community Guardian, will enable it to expand its ability to detect domestic violence incidents, and provide help to victims more quickly.
Grassroots leaders and volunteers can use the app to report cases of domestic violence they encounter to PAVE. PAVE’s administrators will in turn be able to use the app’s location detection capabilities to quickly find trained first responders in the vicinity to investigate an incident. The first responders can also input the case details via the app, allowing administrators to immediately review the details of the case and assign appropriate additional support as necessary.
As of mid-June, the Community Guardian is being piloted across two group representation constituencies and five single member constituencies1 until December 2020.
“The social service sector is a high touch sector. But digital solutions can help to enhance the delivery of services. In addition, PAVE’s digitalisation efforts, through the Community Guardian app, help to rope in the wider community to play a part in the fight against domestic violence,” said Mr Desmond Lee, Minister-in-charge of Social Services Integration, Ministry of Social and Family Development.
The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and learning technology company Kydon Group collaborated to develop the app on a pro-bono basis. The app’s front end comprises user authentication, location detection and incident reporting interface was developed by Kydon. IMDA’s Digital Services Lab developed the back-end case reporting system that is critical to helping PAVE better track and manage cases.
“Over the Circuit Breaker period of April to June 2020, PAVE has seen to 516 cases of family violence, but there are many more cases out there that remain unreported. Domestic violence is more than a family issue, but a community issue, where friends and neighbours can play a part to help build safe home environments. IMDA and Kydon responded quickly to our call for a solution to help families experiencing abuse in the community. The Community Guardian prototype was ready for testing within two weeks. This partnership demonstrates a meaningful merging of the hard science of technology and the soft science of social services that we should leverage more on,” said Dr Sudha Nair, Executive Director, PAVE.
“COVID-19 has introduced new challenges for many organisations. We have seen how digital solutions can help organisations address evolving needs - scaling up their capabilities, improving operational processes and shortening turnaround times. By building common digital components our local tech partners can tap on, the IMDA Digital Services Lab has helped to accelerate the development of solutions such as the Community Guardian app. We look forward to working with the industry to build more new capabilities,” said Mr Lew Chuen Hong, Chief Executive, IMDA.
"We have the technical know-how and the people with passion to deliver high quality solutions quickly, even in complex environments. When IMDA approached Kydon about PAVE needing a solution for reporting community abuse and violence incidents, I agreed without hesitation because this initiative was important enough to improve PAVE's effort in protecting our vulnerable citizens. We have also worked with IMDA recently on other related projects, which made this a natural extension of our partnership," said Mr David Yeo, CEO, Kydon.
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