Name: 從零開始想像政府 | 李鴻毅 | TEDxSingapore (Imagining Government from the Ground Up | Li Hongyi | TEDxSingapore)
Uploaded: 2026-03-25T21:40:50.000Z
Duration: 6 min 17 s

When you think about government, what do you think of?

Most of all, you probably think of frustration.

最多的，你可能會想到挫敗感。

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.

或是因為某個愚蠢又不合理的規則，讓你卡了幾週的流程。

You probably know somebody who swears they will never work in government, and

你可能認識有人發誓再也不要在政府工作，而且

without asking them another question, you know exactly what they mean.

不用再問他們，你大概知道他們的意思。

But what if it didn't have to be this way?

A few years ago, I started an experimental team in the Singapore government.

幾年前，我在新加坡政府裡成立了一個實驗團隊。

The idea was simple: rather than the usual top-down decision-making, we will build small teams of skilled practitioners and empower them to seek out and solve problems all across the public sector.

我們的想法很簡單：與其由上而下的決策，我們將組建由熟練的實踐者組成的小團隊，賦予他們尋找並解決公共部門問題的權力。

The way this works is that every year, for the month of January, we put aside all non-critical work.

運作方式是，每年一月，我們會暫停所有非關鍵工作。

We go on field trips to schools, hospitals, meet social workers to understand their problems and prototype solutions.

我們會去學校、醫院進行實地考察，與社工見面，瞭解他們的問題並測試原型解決方案。

At the end of the month, we see which projects are the most promising,

月底時，我們會看看哪些專案最有潛力，

and we spend the rest of the year bringing them to launch.

然後花一整年時間將它們推向市場。

The problem we are trying to solve is that government is traditionally based on a military structure.

我們試圖解決的問題是，政府傳統上是基於軍事結構。

Top-down, central decision-making, optimised for command and control.

由上而下、中央集權的決策，以指揮和控制為優化目標。

It is designed for a small group of people to set direction,

這是為了讓一小群人設定方向，

and for everyone else to align quickly and consistently.

而其他人則能快速且一致地配合。

This is great when you already know what you need to do and just need to execute.

當你已經知道該做什麼，只需要執行時，這點非常棒。

It is not so great when you need to figure out what needs to be done.

當你需要釐清該做什麼時，這就沒那麼好了。

With central decision-making, you end up with an intellectual traffic jam.

有了中央集權的決策，你就會遇到知識的交通壅塞。

Ideas get stuck as they flow towards the centre, waiting for attention from people with not enough time and even less context.

點子在流向中心的過程中卡住了，等待著沒時間又更沒背景的人關注。

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.

你真的會耗盡腦力，所以即使某件事獲得足夠的政治關注而得以推動，這也只代表其他所有事情都被擱置了。

This is why government can do billion-dollar construction projects but still has to keep asking you for your birthday.

這就是為什麼政府可以進行數十億美元的營建工程，卻還是得不斷問你的生日。

When decision-makers are overloaded, you can make the government bigger.

當決策者不堪負荷時，你可以讓政府變得更大。

The limit is not money or even political will.

限制的不是金錢，甚至也不是政治意願。

If we have a lot of problems to solve, we need the creativity and initiative of a lot of people.

如果我們有很多問題要解決，就需要許多人的創意和主動性。

This is the opposite of command and control, so we need to approach this from the opposite direction.

這跟指揮和控制正好相反，所以我們需要從相反的方向來著手。

What if instead of a top-down structure, we design government from the bottom up?

如果我們不採用由上而下的結構，而是從下往上設計政府呢？

Rather than giving orders and ensuring compliance, leaders would focus on supporting people to take ownership.

領導者不再是發號施令並確保服從，而是會專注於支持人們承擔責任。

This would increase our intellectual surface area, giving us more ability to pay attention, build expertise,

這將能擴大我們的知識領域，讓我們有更多能力去關注、建立專業知識，

有一年，一個團隊參觀了一間消防局，

and we saw how firefighters had to spend so much time every day just taking inventory of their fire trucks.

我們看到消防員每天必須花很多時間清點消防車的庫存。

They had these big paper logbooks they had to carry around while they checked their equipment.

他們有這些大本的紙本紀錄簿，在檢查裝備時必須帶著到處走。

And so we built a simple app that let them do this more easily on their phones.

於是我們開發了一個簡單的手機應用程式，讓他們能更輕鬆地完成這項工作。

It is now being used by all the fire stations in Singapore,

現在新加坡所有的消防局都在使用這個程式，

and it saves thousands of man-hours every month that would otherwise literally have been wasted just ticking things off on paper.

每個月為他們省下數千個人力時數，這些時間原本會浪費在紙本上逐項核對。

Another year, a team visited some social workers,

另一年，一個團隊參觀了一些社工，

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.

我們得知他們每與一位客戶會面一小時，就必須花另一整小時來打字記錄個案筆記。

So we built a tool for them that does not just transcribe conversations,

所以我們為他們開發了一個工具，不只轉錄對話，

but automatically generates usable case reports.

還能自動生成可用的個案報告。

Another team worked with some ER doctors to implement a queue management system.

另一個團隊與一些急診室醫生合作，實施了一個隊列管理系統。

By intelligently prioritising cases, it is reducing emergency room wait times by 20%.

透過智慧化地優先生級案件，將急診室的等待時間縮短了 20%。

So far, we have 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.

到目前為止，我們已經完成了 40 多個不同的專案，每一個都是一個小型但重要的問題的例子，這些問題很可能永遠得不到它所需要的關注。

他們需要同時解決技術、設計和

operation problems altogether in order to address real pain points faced by real people.

營運問題，才能解決真人面臨的實際痛點。

Similar government projects normally take years and cost tens of millions of dollars.

類似的政府專案通常需要數年時間，花費數千萬美元。

We are able to consistently launch new systems in just six months, with teams of just five people.

我們能夠持續在短短六個月內推出新系統，團隊僅有五人。

Because this works so well for government officers, we decided to open it up to the public.

因為這對政府官員非常有效，所以我們決定向大眾開放。

There was no prize money, just some funding to bring promising ideas to production.

沒有獎金，只有一些將有潛力的想法付諸實踐的資金。

We honestly weren't sure if anyone would be interested because, after all, as a government employee, it makes sense that I would want to be empowered to do my job,

說實話，我們不確定是否會有人感興趣，畢竟作為政府員工，我希望能被賦予權力來做好工作，

but why would a private citizen care about the public good?

但為什麼一般民眾會關心公共利益呢？

We got hundreds of applicants, hundreds of ideas, 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.

我們收到了數百份申請，數百個想法，包括用於預測海灘清潔最佳時間的機器學習，幫助長者與社區保持聯繫的工具，以及利用錄音和 AI 追蹤野生動物數量的系統。

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,

以往單一政府專案通常花費的一小部分成本，我們讓新加坡人有辦法不僅表達他們關心的事，

It turns out there is something really natural about wanting to do good.

結果發現，想要做好事其實是很自然的。

I think all of us here want to do something meaningful with our lives.

我想在座的各位都希望人生能做些有意義的事。

Government is frustrating because of how much better we wish it could be.

政府之所以令人挫敗，是因為我們希望它能做得更好。

It feels like no matter how hard we try, we get stuck, expecting more and more from a system that is already choked by the scale of its responsibilities.

感覺不管我們多努力，都會卡住，對一個已經被龐大責任壓得喘不過氣的系統，我們卻期望越來越多。

If we do not take a different approach, public service will fall behind while we get overrun by new problems, by crypto scams, disinformation campaigns, or just plain old AI nonsense.

如果我們不採取不同的做法，公共服務將會落後，同時我們也會被新的問題淹沒，像是加密貨幣詐騙、假訊息宣傳，或是單純的 AI 亂象。

Government can be less about control and more about empowering more people to do good.

政府可以少一點控制，多一點賦予權力，讓更多人做好事。

We can increase our intellectual surface area by pushing for better structures, bringing visibility to problems,

我們可以透過爭取更好的結構來擴大我們的知識廣度，讓問題變得更透明，

and taking action where we can to solve the challenges we can see.

並在我們力所能及的範圍內採取行動，來解決我們看得見的挑戰。

We can have a society that is not limited by the attention of its leaders, but

我們可以建立一個不被領導者注意力所侷限的社會，而是

one that is driven by the imagination of its people.

一個由人民的想像力所驅動的社會。

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從零開始想像政府 | 李鴻毅 | TEDxSingapore (Imagining Government from the Ground Up | Li Hongyi | TEDxSingapore)

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