National service In 2007, when serving his
national service as a
Second lieutenant, Li Hongyi sent an email to then Minister of Defence,
Teo Chee Hean, the
Chief of Defence Force, the
Chief of Army, and hundreds of military personnel alleging that one of his colleagues had been
absent without leave (AWOL) on two occasions. In his email, which exceeded 2,000 words in length, Li Hongyi criticised the "quality control of officers" in the
Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) and asserted that the absent colleague's continued service in the organisation was "an embarrassment". He further wrote that "the SAF is not a charity organisation and does not owe anyone a career". The
Ministry of Defence found that Li Hongyi had violated the chain of command by sending that email, and formally charged and reprimanded him after a summary trial.
Private sector Hongyi worked at
Google from 2011 to 2013 as a product manager before returning to Singapore and joining GovTech to serve his six-year bond.
Public service Li has held various roles within GovTech, including deputy director of the Government Digital Services Data Science Division, deputy director of product and engineering, and director of OGP. In 2017, a team within GovTech led by Li Hongyi released Parking.sg, a mobile application which allows drivers in Singapore to pay parking fees digitally instead of using paper parking coupons at all public car parks managed by the
Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) or the
Housing and Development Board (HDB) that do not have vehicle gantries. In 2019, Li Hongyi founded OGP, a new division within GovTech, with the goal of rapidly building and deploying software products across the Singapore Government. Some of the products produced by OGP include: • ISOMER, a tool which allows users to easily create secure, mobile-friendly, static websites. • FormSG, a tool for creating digital government forms. • JARVIS, a platform for the Singapore Police Force allowing users to rapidly conduct searches and aggregate information. • ScamShield, a mobile application which identifies and blocks scam SMSes and calls. == Personal life ==