The National Service (NS) Portal (www.ns.sg) is the first unified portal for all National Service personnel from MINDEF/SAF (Ministry of Defence/Singapore Armed Forces) and MHA/SPF/SCDF (Ministry of Home Affairs/Singapore Police Force/Singapore Civil Defence Force) to conveniently access all important e-Services and information online and for NSmen to connect with their campmates via community building features.

The predecessor of NS Portal, MIW.com ("My Internet World") was started with the intent of primarily providing convenience by availing services on the electronic platform. Since its launch in 2001, it had attained much of what it set out to achieve and the strategy for the NS Portal is now to look beyond providing online services/ convenience and shifting the emphasis to explore customers’ end-to-end needs to engage, bond and engender a positive NS experience for the NS community.

1 April 2001 – Launch of the first-generation MIW Portal (www.miw.com.sg) with 42 e-services. With the establishment of the MINDEF e-Service Centre (MeSC), eight previous hotlines were consolidated into one easy-to-remember number, 1800-eMINDEF (1800-3646333) that was manned round the clock by Customer Service Officers (CSOs). An additional channel, the Integrated Voice Response System (IVRS) application was also set up to provide added convenience for NSmen to transact with MINDEF without having to speak to a CSO. 

1 May 2006 – Successful transition to NS Portal (www.ns.sg). The new portal hosts 122 e-services, supplanted by attractive lifestyle contents, bundled offerings, personalisation and community building features to enhance the services brought to the NS community and foster closer bonds among the NSmen. Leveraging on new media and technology, the portal attends to the need for increased mobility by offering 34 services via the mobile channel. The new NS e-Services Centre 1-800-eNSNSNS (1-800-3676767) also replaced the MINDEF e-Services Centre. 

6 Nov 2006 – Launch of the unified NS Portal. With its launch, the portal now serves all members of the NS community from Singapore Armed Forces, Singapore Police Force and Singapore Civil Defence Force. This extends the possible user base of the portal to close to 300,000 servicemen.

The move away from manual counters to the online channel had moved the organization towards administrative excellence. On top of streamlining administrative processes, operational efficiency is also increased with most of the transactions made over the electronic channels, and manual channels being migrated over to the portal. This entailed an organizational-wide effort involving many entities to review, reengineer and dovetail existing processes. MINDEF/SAF process owners and service providers also leverage on the NS Portal as a means to innovate, review and enhance their processes and backend systems to provide a straight-through, efficient and integrated administration processes for the NSmen.

For the NS population, it is MINDEF’s imperative to provide convenience and enhance their every interaction with MINDEF. To this end, the portal provides basic convenience and ease of transaction by e-enabling its services, saving considerable time and efforts required to travel and queue up at counters. Especially with the rolling out of mobile services, it presents additional mobility and convenience to the NSmen for performing their required transactions. As a defence agency, it is also of strategic concern and interest to MINDEF to enhance its ability to engage the 300,000 NSmen forming the backbone of Singapore’s national defence in the bid to maintain the defence capabilities of Singapore. The pervasion of ICT technologies, particularly Web 2.0 and new media among the next generation of NSmen who are IT-savvy presents the opportunity to exploit such technologies to engage and interact with the user groups. A collaboration effort between MINDEF and the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), the NS Portal also presents vast opportunities for service integration and collaboration with other government agencies in the move towards greater citizen centricity.