Crisis Management in Singapore: Insights from COVID19

ETHOS Digital Issue 14, Dec 2025

Singapore’s COVID-19 response has been acknowledged as among the most effective in the world. We were among the first to begin vaccination, achieving one of the highest vaccination rates in the world within a year, and ended the pandemic with one of the lowest fatality rates globally.

In a conference paper presented at the International Political Science World Congress in Seoul, Korea, on 13 July 2025, CSC’s Principal Researcher James Low documents the crisis management approach taken by the Singapore Public Service during the COVID-19 crises.

The paper traces the development history of the national crisis management framework from its early beginnings to the establishment of the pan-governmental Executive Group — later the Homefront Crisis Executive Group (HCEG) as the government’s central crisis coordination platform. When COVID-19 broke out, Singapore already had an inter-agency crisis management apparatus and emergency readiness measures, honed by the experience of the 2003 SARS epidemic.

In studying Singapore’s COVID-19 response, the paper also highlights three factors that contributed to its effectiveness:

For further details, insights, and candid perspectives from the frontlines of the COVID-19 crisis management team, please download the full conference paper.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr James Low is a Principal Researcher at the Institute of Governance and Policy of the Civil Service College. His research interests include administrative history, case study methodology, whole of government issues, public trust and crisis management. James is the author of Inception Point: The Use of Learning and Development to Reform the Singapore Public Service (2018) and "Singapore's Whole of Government Approach in Crisis Management" in ETHOS Issue 16.

The conference paper was presented at the International Political Science Association World Congress in Seoul, South Korea, 13 - 16 July 2025.

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