3 Tips for Creating Value-Driven Government Services
You don’t have to be a senior public servant to recognise that the best government services put people first.
No citizen should have to navigate unnecessarily complex bureaucracy to complete straightforward tasks, wait on hold for hours to clarify an issue, or struggle to locate information about essential services on a government website.
Unlike the private sector, which focuses on maximising profits, government agencies have a different value proposition: to prioritise the needs of the public over private gains.
While that might sound simple, it’s probably safe to assume that you’ve experienced similar difficulties accessing government services to those listed above. Value-driven government services aren’t just created out of thin air. They take strategic planning and design thinking to get right.
As a human-centred designer who works extensively with government agencies, here are my three top tips for creating value-driven government services that:
Meet the needs of citizens
Prioritise the customer experience
Put people over profits.
1. Focus on the public interest
When designing government services, it’s crucial to keep the public interest at the forefront. Unlike the infamous Robodebt scandal, which wrongly accused vulnerable Australians of owing money to the government, services should be explicitly designed to meet the needs of citizens, rather than for profit or cost-savings.
A public interest-focused approach to addressing overpaid benefits, for example, could have been to improve the welfare system to prevent overpayments in the first place. This could have included:
Investing in technology and staff training to improve data-matching processes
Improving communication and transparency about welfare entitlements and overpayments
Conducting more thorough audits to ensure citizens weren’t unfairly targeted by a flawed algorithm.
By prioritising the public interest in government service design, citizens are treated fairly, and the services provided effectively meet their needs.
2. Use design thinking
Design thinking is a problem-solving approach that prioritises empathy, collaboration, and creativity. It’s also a powerful tool for governments to create value-driven services.
Governments that apply design thinking principles are better positioned to understand the needs and pain points of citizens when interacting with government services. They conduct user research, gather feedback, and prototype new service designs that may be more intuitive and responsive to the needs of the public.
Design thinking can also help governments to create more efficient and effective services by streamlining processes and reducing waste.
What does design thinking in government services look like in practice? The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) used design thinking to improve the experience of taxpayers using its website.
The ATO engaged with taxpayers through user research and testing to understand their website needs and pain points. The ATO used this information to redesign the website, making it more user-friendly and intuitive.
The new website design reportedly improved customer satisfaction and reduced calls to the ATO call centre, freeing resources for other tasks.
This shows that by prioritising the human experience, governments can create services that are efficient, effective, and user-friendly.
3. Plan for the future
Rather than focusing on short-term gains, value-driven government services plan ahead and anticipate what citizens will need. They don’t, for example, trade short-term budget savings with negative long-term public health outcomes by cutting funding for public health services during periods of budget austerity.
Instead, they use strategic planning to create government services that are sustainable over the long term.
One example of this is the development of the Australian Government’s Digital Health Strategy. It aims to improve access to digital health services, enable better sharing of health information between healthcare providers and support more efficient and coordinated care.
The Digital Health Strategy shows evidence of long-term planning, a forward-thinking approach, and a focus on delivering maximum value over time.
Where to from here?
There’s no denying that the value proposition in government services is more difficult to quantify than in the private sector. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth striving for. By adopting a design thinking approach that puts citizens first, every government can deliver programs that benefit citizens and ensure a smooth and transparent functioning of government services.
Want to know more about how design thinking can help your government agency deliver value-driven services? Let’s talk.