Peter Ong
Distinguished International Alumni Award recipient 2023
Peter Ong Boon Kwee has dedicated his career in the civil service to advancing the interests of Singapore and Singaporeans. He spent seven years as head of the civil service, overseeing a workforce of 145,000 and now advises on economic strategy and policy via board positions across various government entities. For his dedication to civil service he was awarded the 2023 Distinguished International Alumni Award from the University of Adelaide.
As a child, Peter didn’t expect to spend his career rising through the ranks of the public service; he thought he’d become a lawyer, a dream he attributes to watching crime shows. “The decision to study economics actually came as a result of an application for a scholarship funded by the Colombo Plan. The Singapore government at that time was looking for more young officers who could be trained in economics to help in economic policy making, because Singapore was going through an intensive period of economic development,” says Peter.
“Economics is an excellent discipline for the training of the mind,” he says.
Peter graduated from the University of Adelaide with a Bachelor of Economics in 1984 and first-class honours in 1985. He went on to study a Masters in Business Administration at Stanford University, USA, where he was top of his class, and awarded both a Henry Ford II scholarship and an Arjay Miller scholarship.
Peter Ong
Bachelor of Economics 1984, Bachelor of Economics (Honours) 1985
“As the term implies, public service is really about service – service in pursuit of a higher, public purpose.”
He is grateful for the opportunity to study at the University of Adelaide, which he says encouraged him “to embrace a spirit of curiosity. To learn more, to go beyond the prescribed text and to really find out more about the world.”
Peter has helped guide Singapore’s policymaking through multiple critical economic moments, including the Asian financial crisis of 1997, the global financial crisis of 2007-2008 and the Covid-19 pandemic.
An adept leader, he measures his success not only by his ability to serve, but also by his contribution to the positive culture of those he leads. “Everyone wants to join an organisation where they can wake up on Monday morning and feel empowered and full of purpose, to go about their work knowing their work matters. If I can contribute in some small way at both the national level and the organisational level, I think that for me would be success.”