About Us - Singapore Statutes Online

Legislation Division of AGC

Singapore Statutes Online ("SSO") is a free service provided to the public by the Legislation Division of the Attorney-General's Chambers of Singapore.

The Legislation Division is Singapore's central law drafting office. It is responsible for drafting legislation for the effective implementation of Government policies and public sector programmes in Singapore. The Legislation Division also advises the Government of Singapore and other public sector agencies on the development and translation of public policies into legislation and the initial implementation of legislation.

Singapore Statutes Online

SSO is a Singapore Government website managed by the Legislation Division. SSO provides the public free online access to Singapore legislation, and contains the following:

(a) Current legislation;
(b) Historical versions of legislation;
(c) Revised editions of legislation;
(d) Legislation and Bills as published in the Acts, Subsidiary Legislation and Bills Supplements of the Singapore Government Gazette;
(e) Repealed/revoked/spent legislation.

Please note that legislation and Bills prior to 1998 in categories (b) to (e) are not fully available on SSO. SSO only displays pre-1998 legislation and Bills in categories (b) to (e) where digital records of such instruments are available.

SSO's logo

The red and black bars in SSO's logo signify the traditional red binders and black binders used in Singapore for the official print versions of Acts of Parliament and Subsidiary Legislation, respectively.

SSO's development

15 Nov 2001

The Attorney-General’s Chambers, together with the Ministry of Law and the Ministry of Finance (Managing for Excellence Office), launched SSO (at http://statutes.agc.gov.sg). The website provided the public with free online access to current Acts of Parliament.

15 Oct 2011

SSO was upgraded to include current Subsidiary Legislation.

12 Nov-12 Dec 2013

The Legislation Division carried out the first “Plain Laws Understandable by Singaporeans” (" PLUS ") public survey.

2014-2015

Interim enhancements were made to SSO in response to the PLUS public survey feedback. Notable enhancements included:

access to historical versions of legislation;
access to Bills tabled in Parliament;
access to PDF versions of legislation and Bills; and
better printing options.

2016

The Legislation Division started on a complete overhaul of SSO to more fully implement feedback received during the 2013 PLUS public survey.

2 Sep-1 Oct 2016

A second PLUS public survey was conducted to give the public a say in the design and features of the new SSO.

7 Jul 2017

A beta version of the new SSO was rolled out (at https://sso.agc.gov.sg) to give users time to transition to the new SSO and to obtain users’ feedback on the new SSO.

15 Dec 2017

The new SSO was launched.

The new SSO contains a number of new and enhanced features and functions, including the following:

Cleaner design and intuitive user interface;
Compatibility for use on mobile devices;
Ability to copy and paste legislation text without losing format;
Features for quick access to legislation;
Prominent display of key details of legislation;
Ease of searching for legislation;
More search options;
Option to print/retrieve legislation in Word, PDF and HTML formats;
Shorter URL conventions for legislation.

April 2018

The Government Technology Agency (GovTech) conducted a review of about 700 Government websites to assess whether the websites were easy to use and understand. In the course of this review, GovTech identified the new SSO as a user-friendly website. The new SSO was included as a case study in GovTech's article on user-friendly public sector websites published in the Challenge magazine on 16 April 2018.

Disclaimers

SSO provides an unofficial version of Singapore legislation. The legislation content of SSO is not and should not be relied upon as the authoritative text of Singapore legislation. Section 48 of the Interpretation Act 1965 does not apply to anything printed, downloaded or copied from SSO. See also FAQ B1 on obtaining the official text of Singapore legislation.

While every reasonable effort is made to keep SSO accurate and up to date, the Government of Singapore makes no warranty or representation as to the accuracy, completeness or reliability of SSO.

The Government of Singapore does not accept any responsibility for any loss, damage or liability of any kind (whether actual, anticipated, consequential, special, economic or otherwise) that may arise (directly or indirectly) from the use of or reliance on SSO (or any of its contents) by any person.

The contents of SSO are not a substitute for independent professional advice. Users of SSO should obtain appropriate professional advice as to the content, application and interpretation of Singapore legislation that may be relevant to the users' particular circumstances.