AGO flags S$16.82 million in potential gaming in S$2.62 billion training grants audit

The Auditor-General's Office (AGO) released its Report of the Auditor-General for the financial year 2025/26 on Wednesday (15 July 2026), raising 136 audit findings across government ministries, statutory boards and government-owned companies, of which 29 were assessed significant enough to detail in the report.

Among these was a thematic audit of training grants managed by SkillsFuture Singapore Agency (SSG) and Workforce Singapore Agency (WSG), covering nine schemes with a combined S$2.62 billion disbursed between 1 April 2022 and 31 March 2025.

"We noted that in general, SSG and WSG had put in place processes and controls across the various grant stages to ensure proper management of the training grants," AGO said, while flagging several areas for improvement across both agencies.

SSG: erroneous disbursements under a small business grant scheme

Auditors' data analysis and test checks under the Enhanced Training Support for Small and Medium Enterprises (ETSS) scheme found S$4.32 million erroneously disbursed since November 2020.

Most of this, S$4.22 million for 691 companies, arose because a system logic error under-reported companies' total employment size, wrongly classifying them as small and medium enterprises; the error was resolved after SSG migrated to a new system in 2023. 

A further S$98,600 went to 15 companies whose appeals were wrongly assessed as eligible, after SSG used chargeable income rather than annual sales turnover to determine SME status. 

Separately, auditors flagged a possible further S$497,700 disbursed to 101 companies assessed as SMEs using financial data as old as 19 years, including 83 assessments based on turnover figures more than a decade old.

SSG noted that of the total erroneously disbursed, S$2.08 million would likely have been paid out anyway under a different subsidy scheme even if the companies concerned had not qualified for ETSS.

Potential gaming of course fee funding

Auditors also found 15 trainees who attended a combined 886 self-sponsored courses run by two related training providers that were their own employers, each attending between 31 and 71 courses, with S$232,100 in grants disbursed.

One of the two providers ran 17 courses where every attendee was an employee of either company or a spouse or family member of one.

"The above training arrangements raised concerns on the legitimacy of the training conducted," AGO said, noting it could indicate potential gaming to obtain course fee funding and boost attendance figures.

Progress reporting and funding agreement delays

Separately, auditors test-checked 24 funding agreements (FAs) and found lapses in monitoring training providers' progress reports in all 24, with reporting schedules absent from 23 of them.

Seven progress reports were never submitted and 92 were submitted between 6 and 554 days late; SSG's own service provider also failed to submit its required review of any of the 24 agreements.

Ten of the 24 agreements, covering S$262.88 million in funding, were signed between 3 and 522 days after their funding periods had already begun — a gap AGO said left SSG's interests unprotected in the event of a dispute.

WSG: grants disbursed to ineligible trainees

At WSG, a data analysis of 20,602 applications covering 20,425 trainees found S$1.67 million in grants disbursed to 110 trainees who were ineligible for the Career Conversion Programme (CCP) or Mid-Career Pathways Programme (MCPP) because of undisclosed ties to the participating companies: nine through shareholding (S$0.18 million), 84 through family relationships (S$1.26 million), and 20 through recent employment (S$0.30 million).

WSG said it was still investigating the cases, targeting completion by December 2026, and had by May 2026 recovered grants for 21 trainees worth S$0.31 million.

Potential gaming by companies and repeat trainees

A wider analysis of 6,853 entities behind 21,327 approved CCP and MCPP applications turned up 465 entities, involving 763 applications and S$16.82 million in grants, carrying red flags for potential gaming.

Of these, 395 had no local employees at all, raising questions over how they could have provided proper supervision and training, while 61 had an unusually high number of trainees relative to their local headcount, and six groups of 30 related entities showed patterns such as trainees moving between related companies.

Test checks on 71 of the 465 entities found only 16 of 125 trainees, or 12.8 per cent, remained employed three months after their funding period ended, alongside salary patterns and signs of possibly non-genuine employment.

Auditors also found 52 trainees with sequential MCPP and CCP training at the same company carrying one or more of four red flags: identical or similar job titles across both programmes (19 trainees), gaps of under six months between the two (50 trainees), salaries that dropped within three months of the CCP support ending (27 trainees), and CCP salaries more than 50 per cent higher than the preceding MCPP training allowance (9 trainees).

Three trainees showed all four flags and another 13 showed three. One trainee was found to have overlapping training periods of 75 working days across both programmes at the same company, resulting in double funding of S$14,900; WSG has referred that case to the police and recovered the grant.

WSG cautioned that some of the flagged entities with no employees might belong to larger corporate groups that centrally manage payroll, and separately found that 148 CCP trainees from 24 entities, involving S$9.13 million in grants, may have been wrongly recorded due to company registration number entry errors, which could partly explain the scale of the findings.

Lapses in claims verification and documentation

AGO test-checked 43 disbursements to 23 programme partners (PPs), worth S$178.87 million, along with a further S$2.66 million disbursed by nine of those PPs to 100 trainees.

Auditors found eight disbursements worth S$20.54 million made to three PPs despite incomplete document submission, such as missing invoices and payslips. WSG's own service provider also failed to carry out required sample checks before processing five disbursements worth S$3.67 million, could not produce documentary evidence of checks for a sixth worth S$0.77 million, and, once WSG extended its own review, was found to have skipped checks on a further 13 claims worth S$13.04 million.

Separately, four PPs had disbursed S$0.58 million for 23 trainees without maintaining required documents such as application and claim checklists.

Weaknesses in IT controls

Both agencies' shared Training Grants System (TGS) showed gaps in account management. At SSG, 19 of 35 operating system accounts were omitted from required reviews and all 82 database accounts were never reviewed at all; a further review found every one of those 82 database accounts carried weak password settings, including passwords that never expired and no lockout after repeated failed logins, a particular concern given one privileged account with access to grants data was used by an external IT vendor.

Seven vendor accounts were not disabled or had access removed for weeks to months after their authorised use ended, with one account logged into 130 times over 20 days after it should have been shut, while two vendor accounts also had access to both development and production systems, undermining segregation of duties. 

At WSG, nine user accounts were not promptly disabled, with two still not fully removed more than two and a half years past the deadline as at the time of audit.

SSG's response

SSG said it had completed a review of the flagged operating system and database accounts and found no anomalies, and had since aligned its account review procedures fully with government requirements. 

It said it would apply revised password security configurations by June 2026, and would implement a revised change-management process by the same month so that production deployments are handled by a designated vendor staff member without development access, with TGS to be onboarded onto a government platform by December 2026 to further strengthen segregation of duties.

On the ETSS misclassifications, SSG said it would complete a review of its policy on data recency for assessing company size by June 2026. On course fee gaming, it said its funding policy allowed self-sponsored trainees to attend courses run by their employers, but it would pilot a thematic analysis to study how prevalent such arrangements are.

WSG's response

WSG said it would continue investigating the ineligible trainee and potential gaming cases, targeting completion between December 2026 and May 2027, and had implemented automated checks on applications since January 2025 to detect false declarations.

It said migrating its application system to the Business Grants Portal in July 2026 would auto-populate company details and reduce the risk of the entry errors identified.

On the claims lapses, WSG said its service provider had since performed the outstanding checks and confirmed the disbursed amounts were correct, and it had lodged incident reports over the processing lapses.