Building a resilient, future-ready Singstat.gov.sg with VISOR Powered by Optical

Background

Through SINGSTAT.GOV.SG, the Singapore Department of Statistics (DOS) delivers trusted statistics and services that support informed decision-making. The website serves public agencies, policymakers, businesses, researchers and the public in understanding Singapore’s economic and social trends.

To make official statistics and information more accessible and easier to use, DOS revamped SINGSTAT.GOV.SG with improved content, structure and visual presentation. A strong digital foundation is essential in delivering a website that DOS could manage efficiently and data users could rely on.

Xtremax co-created the website with DOS by delivering a strong digital foundation, re-architecting and re-platforming SINGSTAT.GOV.SG to give DOS greater control over how content is managed, updated and published.

Key Challenges

Building the Foundation Right

SINGSTAT.GOV.SG is not a static information site. It is a content-heavy, publicly accessible website that is regularly updated. Refreshing the website’s content and visual experience was only one part of the transformation. DOS also needed a foundation that could support frequent updates, complex information content structures, secure handling of embargoed content and high traffic during major releases, while remaining resilient, fast, stable and easy for content editors to manage.

Streamlining Time-Critical Publishing

DOS publishes time-sensitive information used by businesses, analysts and policymakers. Each update must go live accurately and on time, following the release calendar.

Under the previous platform, the release process was manual during the preparation and publication window. This made each major release operationally intensive and introduced unnecessary risk into a time-critical process.

What Xtremax Delivered

Designing an Unbreakable Dynamic Website

Xtremax re-architected and re-platformed the website onto Optical, a secure hosting platform and CMS built for enterprise government websites. To power the front end, Xtremax extended this foundation with VISOR, adding flexible page-building, content-authoring and publishing capabilities tailored to DOS’s revamped website.

Together, Optical and VISOR enabled an “unbreakable dynamic website” model, where content can be managed dynamically in the CMS while the public-facing site is delivered through statically generated pages. This keeps SINGSTAT.GOV.SG resilient, fast and stable during high-traffic periods.

Together, Optical and VISOR provide DOS a high-performance, resilient and editor-friendly platform that can support complex content structures and new content updates without repeated bespoke development.

Embargo-Ready Scheduled Publishing

Xtremax simplified the release process by enabling DOS content editors to prepare, review and validate embargoed pages in advance, while keeping the content restricted until the scheduled publication time. Through VISOR, Xtremax enabled restricted content to be prepared in advance and released automatically at the required time, without manual CDN clearing. This turned a manual release activity into a more controlled, more timely and reliable publishing process. What was once a demanding release activity is now less stressful, with a controlled and reliable publishing process.