Design thinking: case studies and resources for local government

Curated case studies on how councils are preparing and responding to emergencies and building local resilience, plus selections of policy reports, podcasts and interviews. Examples this week come from the USA and Australia.

Have your own example to share, get in touch!

Case studies on design thinking in local government from our featured briefing

Australia: Mapping the death of a loved one to improve government services

The death of a loved one is one of the most difficult events in people’s lives. At some point it touches all of us, but individual experiences differ, shaped by socioeconomic backgrounds, geographical locations, and cultural and linguistic communities. There are a range of social and cultural needs of Aboriginal Australians; while Australians born overseas bring with them a set of expectations from the country of their birth. There are many opportunities for Governments to improve the experience of service users at what is often a traumatic time.

There is diversity and complexity in death, sometimes coming suddenly but in other cases after long periods of ill health. The government services that people need to access afterwards are delivered by different departments and agencies, with limited integration. This means that people who have been recently bereaved need to tell multiple public authorities, causing them distress on each occasion. Support they may be entitled to from counselling to financial assistance can be opaque. Mapping the ‘journeys’ of people who have recently experienced the death of a loved one can highlight opportunities for service improvement.

This project was commissioned by the Digital Transformation Agency, and carried out by Paper Giant. The journeys of 40 people who had recently experienced the death of a loved one were mapped. This was supplemented with input from medical staff, counsellors, lawyers and funeral directors. This is clearly a very sensitive topic, and the wellbeing of participants and staff involved was paramount. The findings of this work are being widely used by Government agencies at all levels to improve service design.
Paper Giant

Los Angeles County: making voting more accessible

Los Angeles County is the largest voting jurisdiction in the US with almost five million registered voters. The election process is overseen by the County Registrar-Recorder’s office. The administrative systems and voters experience on election days has changed little since the 1960s. Los Angeles County wanted to completely overhaul of its systems, but also build something that was flexible and could be adapted incrementally in future. It sought advice from the consultancy IDEO, but it was critically important that the new system was designed, developed, and owned by the County. Any new system needed to comply with a myriad election laws and policies, including the requirement to have a traceable paper ballot, which is still mandated by law.  As part of the redesign process, the experiences of a wide range of users was sought: those with disabilities including blind and wheelchair using voters; people who were not fluent in English; across different age groups; those who vote in every election and those who have never voted. Empathy was important here, and the design team undertook a number of activities to try and better understand the experiences of different users. In prototyping, they built several designs that incorporated a variety of decisions and trade-offs.

The end result is a voting device that can be readily customised for different user experiences. It has a touch screen which enables any voter to easily navigate the ballot; advancing through different screens showing lists of candidates and ballot measures. To assist voters with vision impairment and reading disabilities, an audio and controller experience supports them with a few simple buttons. For voters who prefer to read the ballot in a different language, with 13 currently supported by the County, they can choose their preference on the same device. Once they have tapped in their voting selections onto the device, they then receive a printed paper ballot that goes into an integrated ballot box.

The process was not quick, and it took from 2009 when the decision was taken to update the outdating voting practices, to 2020 when it was rolled out. It was also expensive, costing over $300M to implement. The roll out was not problem free, and at many polling stations there were too few machines, slow check in systems, and only English-speaking staff at the polling stations in primarily Spanish speaking neighbourhoods. The problems on roll out show that learning from users experience is an ongoing process, without a final end point.
GovTech

San Francisco: supporting homeless families in the private rental market

Like many cities, San Francisco has far more families experiencing housing problems than affordable public housing to accommodate them. In common with many other cities in a similar position, it seeks solutions in the private rental market. The Scattered Site permanent supportive housing program provides rental subsidies to house homeless families in private-market units. In the City, the Mayors Office of Innovation addresses two or three of the most complex or ‘wicked’ policy problems each year. Addressing homelessness through the private sector has significant barriers. Many landlords hesitate joining the program due to fears of potential property damage and challenges with tenant compliance, fuelled by limited data on risk mitigation. Lack of publicly available data on damage costs and eviction rates for subsidised tenants increases landlord concerns. Design thinking sought to address the following questions. What is the Customer Journey for Landlords? Where in the engagement process are we losing landlords? How can we improve landlord engagement?

Conventional methods such as surveys were supplemented with apartment walk-throughs and A/B testing of landlord facing messaging. This approach revealed valuable qualitative insights, that most landlords very much want to help someone who is down on their luck, especially families. But reservations about potential problematic tenants creates huge friction. The City of San Francisco offers mitigation funding for damage to rental apartments caused by tenants using city housing vouchers. However, up until now it has not published data about how many times (or how much) this funding has been needed. This reinforces the view that voucher tenants are more damaging to apartments than their market-rate counterparts. This led to recommendations that the City develop a Landlord-facing website that more clearly describes the Scattered Sites programme. It should be a place where landlords can sign up as good destinations for subsidy holders. The city should also publish on its website mitigation spending and eviction data.
City of San Francisco 

Resources on service design thinking and implementation

Resource: Service design, local government, sharing the load
In this event summary, Essex County Council explore common local government design challenges and creating the right conditions for service design innovation.

Resource: Local Government Service Design Maturity Model
Newham Council explain that their Local Government Service Design Maturity Model “has been developed for service designers in local authorities to use with council staff. It helps councils to explore how well they support and grow service design practice. Councils can use the model to ascertain where service design approaches are already adding value or could add more value, and to identify opportunities to develop the capabilities and conditions for service design to thrive.”

Resource: Digital service design playbook
The Queensland Government has developed a series of “plays”; workshops and activities that you can use to help you and your council overcome challenges in design thinking implementation and design and deliver better products and services. These plays range from design critique to stakeholder mapping for a product or service.

Resources: Design thinking (New Zealand Government)
The New Zealand Government has collected a series of guidelines on design thinking for policy, tackling its benefits, limitations, and ideal circumstances for implementation, alongside further resources.

Article: Creating an environment for successful service design in local government
Emma McGowan, Head of Corporate Transformation at Hackney Council, has pulled together this article setting out three recurring themes for successful service design in local government.

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