We all claim to be proactive to change. Or at least that line appears in my appraisal every year!
Truth be told though as dyed in the wool civil servants we are always a little sceptical when someone promises to improve the way we do things.
As a result of this some of us were unsure of the potential benefits to be had when Government Digital Service (GDS) contacted Carer’s Allowance (CA) and suggested they provide us with a new e-service.
In a former job I worked on the testing for the original e-service way back in 2003 and always felt a sense of pride in what we delivered but time stands still for nobody and the e-service looked old and decrepit, rather like me these days! Still it was our product but I curious about what could be done to improve it.
Having long since left my business analyst role behind to return to front-line operations at CA I was grateful to be asked to take part in the initial brain storming sessions (those that know me might ask "what brain?"!) held by GDS where we decided what was required and perhaps, more importantly, what could be achieved in the short to medium term. It was strange at first dealing with people unbounded by the traditional civil service mentality of "that'll do" especially with their Macbook Pros and various pieces of stationery long since banned from our own meagre catalogue!
A useful but intense three days were spent mapping out the future journey for customer and staff alike.
It was on the second day that things became a little bit too much to bear for some as we were introduced to the "UX man". Who and what was UX? User Experience as it turned out and he surprised us by saying it was his job to take the trial product out to test on the general public. This almost seemed like witchcraft as usually the public would only get to see the product after it had gone live. He then showed us some video footage of what people thought about our present product and it wasn’t good. What we saw as logical and straightforward the public saw as complicated and unnecessary. Some slight tinkering required then!
One of the main points we put across was that in some circumstances it could actually be easier and quicker to submit a claim via "snail mail" rather than use the e-service due to all the information that may have been subsequently required. A lot of work has gone on behind the scenes prior to go-live to ensure the customer journey is much smoother than previously.
Valtech, the company tasked with delivering and maintaining the new e-service, have been actively committed to simplifying the claim for both the public and staff. The continued involvement of front-line CA staff in the development has been a breath of fresh air when compared with the past.
One of the main areas we wanted to simplify was that previously we had to obtain the consent of the person being cared for prior to awarding a claim. We now let them know about the claim at the point we award it. In many ways this minimises the chance of fraud still further as we write directly to the person being cared for. Various periods of monitoring have proved this new process to be a success. The staff appreciate this new way of working as it simplifies the processes involved and I appreciate anything which improves my section’s clearance times!
And so what does the future bring? Hopefully the e-service will continue to deliver improvements to all users. Certainly from the staff’s point of view there are a number of things that they would like to see in terms of layout etc. but the fact that the developers are listening to what they have to say is heartening. So far, so good!
David Heaps, Department for Work and Pensions
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2 comments
Comment by Phil posted on
Those of us who have been around for a while have seen any number of shiny-faced fast streamers, touting their pet IT projects as the answer to our problems. They were all wrong, because nobody ever asked us what we needed, which we still don't have: that is, a stable network and applications which don't fail without warning, with a file structure which makes sense, running on full bandwidth with enough storage space to hold useful documents. Instead, we got DII, which has so far cost over 10 billion pounds, fails unpredictably ( frequently losing whiole projects ) is restricted to one tenth of its' capacity, running MOSS, a flaky, confusing and third rate file storage system. As far as I'm concerned, DII is a vast piece of malware, designed and operated by Atlas to generate a continuous stream of billable repairs and fixes- and there is no alternative that we've been told about.
Comment by Gary posted on
I agree with Phil!