Making Policy Matter - SeaVoices - Singapore Maritime Officers’ Union (SMOU) Publication

Thank you for subscribing to Seavoices’ updates!

Please take a moment to check your email inbox and confirm your subscription to start receiving the latest news and updates.

18 Sep 2026

6 mins

Making Policy Matter

Ms Gho Sze Kee describes herself not as a policymaker, but an observer with vested interests.

As a maritime lawyer and former senior claims handler at an IG P&I club, her career has been shaped by the maritime industry at its core. Now, as a first-term Member of Parliament, she sits where policy intent is scrutinised, debated, and translated into legislation.

“And my profession is where these implementations meet the real world. So, just like SMOU, you can say that I have skin in the game,” she points out.

To her, a policy should never be assessed simply as a success or a failure. Trying to shoehorn every policy into being a success is also a mistake.

“The real outcome,” she says, is whether a policy “actually produced a better outcome for the people, organisation or society it was intended to serve.”

Start With Listening

The most important ingredient in effective policymaking, Ms Gho argues, is proactively engaging stakeholders, particularly those on the ground who will experience the policy’s effects firsthand.

Meaningful engagement serves two purposes: It builds buy-in and creates a feedback loop. While policymakers may communicate big-picture strategies, these can often feel distant or abstract to those responsible for implementing change.

Consider the Maritime Singapore Decarbonisation Blueprint. Climate change is an existential threat, and the Blueprint supports Singapore’s commitments under the Paris Agreement and the IMO’s longer-term environmental objectives. Yet for a harbour craft operator, the concerns are often more immediate and practical.

How will the transition affect my fleet? Will the technology work? Is financing available? Will supporting infrastructure be in place?

“These are practical issues that engagement addresses. The larger policy intent and strategy have to translate into something the stakeholders directly affected can understand and relate to. This is where you get your buy-in,” Ms Gho points out.

Feedback is a two-way street. Ms Gho cites a saying from military strategy that “no plan survives first contact with the enemy.” Once a policy encounters real-world conditions, unforeseen challenges emerge during its design. Technologies shift. Operational constraints surface. Assumptions can prove wrong.

She notes that policymaking is necessarily conducted at a macro level, focused on setting direction and objectives. Implementation, however, takes place on the ground where circumstances are more complex and consequences more immediate. That gap is not always a failure of design; it is a structural reality.

This is why policymaking must be iterative. Ms Gho refers to the common joke that the Government responds to every issue by saying it will “continue to monitor the situation.”

“Monitoring means actively listening,” she says. “Behind the scenes, you study the issue, review your assumptions, and prepare to tweak. That is good governance and good leadership.”

Rather than a one-time consultation exercise, engagement must be an ongoing conversation between policymakers, regulators and industry stakeholders. “That is how you move from policy intent to effective execution.”

The Resource Gap

Even the most well-designed and well-communicated policy can falter when those expected to implement it lack the resources to do so.

Returning to the harbour craft example, Ms Gho notes that an operator may fully understand and support the shift towards cleaner fuels, but still be unable to act if the technology is not readily available, the necessary infrastructure or alternative-fuel bunkering support is not in place, or financing support is insufficient.

“Policy intent without sufficient resourcing becomes just an aspiration,” she remarks.

Implementation therefore requires more than communication. Businesses must have access to the tools, infrastructure and support necessary to comply, while workers need opportunities to acquire new skills and adapt to changing industry requirements.

At the same time, there is the need to manage real-world trade-offs. The sector must decarbonise, but also remain competitive throughout the transition. A policy that pursues a worthy objective without accounting for the industry’s resilience could undermine its own purpose.

“There is no point in implementing the policy if we kill ourselves doing it,” Ms Gho remarks. “There are such contradictions and trade-offs that need to be managed continuously. It’s a balancing act.”

The answer is not to use complexity as an excuse for delaying action, but to recognise that implementation requires continuous adjustment as circumstances evolve.

Unions as Transceivers

Singapore’s tripartite model provides the maritime sector with a strong foundation for doing this well. Government, employers, and unions each contribute different perspectives. Government establishes the regulatory framework and strategic direction. Industry understands operational and commercial constraints. Unions bring ground-level insights to conversations where sectoral decisions are made.

Ms Gho describes unions as the partnership’s “transceiver”, receiving and transmitting signals between stakeholders. They collect and amplify feedback while helping workers understand the reasons for change and prepare for it.

She commends SMOU for its long-standing role in this wider capacity. In addition to advocating for maritime officers, the union works closely with employers, government agencies, industry partners and training institutions such as the Singapore Maritime Academy.

This collaborative approach becomes increasingly important as the sector adapts to new technologies, evolving skills requirements and changing operating models.

The strength of Singapore’s tripartite model, she emphasises, extends far beyond industrial harmony. “The various stakeholders are bound together in a close, trust-based, collaborative relationship, which makes engagement between the stakeholders much easier than elsewhere,” she comments.

The Courage to Change Course

There is always pressure to demonstrate that a policy has worked as intended. Ms Gho believes the true measure of success lies elsewhere: “Real outcomes from the perspective of policy should never be about whether we can get a particular policy to work, but whether a policy actually works for the people.”

She warns against “mistaking the means to an end for the end in itself.” A policy is a tool; its purpose is not to prove that policymakers were right, but to create a better outcome.

That requires humility and the willingness to adapt when evidence suggests a different approach is needed.

“We must have the courage to step away if something is clearly not working well,” she says. If a policy is unsuitable or has become irrelevant, abandoning it should not automatically be viewed as failure. “We learn from it, and we move on.”

Ultimately, Ms Gho believes good policymaking rests on three principles: engagement, continuous review and adaptability. It requires listening closely to those affected, tracking outcomes carefully and changing course when necessary.

That is what moving From Policy to Practice, the IMO’s World Maritime Day theme for 2026 and 2027, ultimately demands. Policy must remain anchored on its purpose while staying responsive to the realities of implementation.

“This year being SMOU’s 75th anniversary, I would take the chance here to congratulate SMOU for this milestone, and for all the good work they have done.” – Ms Gho Sze Kee