We thank Ms Lynne Tan Sok Hiang for her feedback on the National Steps Challenge registration ("Too much personal data required for fitness initiative"; last Saturday).

The National Steps Challenge is an incentive-based national programme to encourage Singaporeans to be more physically active.

Participants in the challenge can redeem rewards in the form of shopping and grocery vouchers for clocking steps.

We hope this will motivate Singaporeans to move more, sit less and incorporate physical activity into their daily lives.

For purposes of administering the challenge, including participation eligibility, collection of step trackers, incentives issuance and mailing of rewards, we therefore request information such as name, NRIC number and home address.

Participants may also collect their rewards in person, and for this option, home address details are not required.

To enable us to evaluate the effectiveness of the challenge in nudging healthy behaviour and to identify improvements that can be made to the programme, data obtained on height, weight and gender is anonymised to provide insights on physical activity levels and patterns.

We assure Ms Tan that the Health Promotion Board (HPB) takes the protection of personal data very seriously.

There are stringent measures in place to ensure that such data, when required, is properly collected and stored.

Should Ms Tan and our National Steps Challenge participants like more information on what data is collected and how it is used, they may find the terms and conditions we have listed at www.stepschallenge.sg useful.

Joanna Chan (Ms)

Director

National Steps Challenge Programme

Health Promotion Board