Using Research Findings to Set Our Project in the Right Direction
Discovery work for the Alberta Children’s Services project has kicked off
Alberta Children’s Services has partnered with us and our new vendor to begin a redesign of the child care lookup and childcare subsidy application platforms. The discovery phase for this project has launched.
We started with child care because access remains a problem in Alberta and across the country. We know that childcare costs continue to rise, and as they do, it keeps parents, and particularly mothers, out of the workforce. And if labour participation falls, this represents a real drag on economic growth.
There are several parts of the childcare system that need updating as well, but with affordable childcare understood as a priority, the team has started with the childcare subsidy program. Given the DIO commitment to user-centred and service design, it means we start with gathering the evidence. At its core, this process reflects a commitment to ensuring that the users have a central role to play in the digital service we build for them.
In the last few weeks, the team has worked on gathering a meaningful account of how the child care system looks to those who use it and who interact with it. We started by identifying the various types of child care users: parents, child care providers, application assessment staff and call centre employees. We watched how they work and interact within the current childcare subsidy system. We asked parents to recount their experiences applying for subsidized daycare. We asked the child care providers what happens when parents renew their subsidy. We saw first-hand the immense workload that faces the assessment staff and call centre employees.
We’ve learned a lot. Parents actually don’t typically use the GoA lookup tool. They use Google and then they talk to trusted friends, family or other parents. They balance off the needs of the family budget for subsidy support with proximity to work or extended pickup hours. We learned that the people that run child care centres actually spend a lot of time helping applicants navigate the application system, and that they often prefer to complete paper version of the application. There are many people who need child care in Alberta for whom English is a challenge. We also learned that there are lots of calls to the Alberta Connects call centre, and they get asked every question you can possibly imagine.
We’re now at the point in the process where we start to take stock of what the users say they do and don’t actually need. Parents are often overwhelmed by daily life, and sometimes finding missing paperwork, or filling out a paper form just isn’t possible. As we begin to synthesize what the users have told us and start mapping out what our best options are, we decide whether we build a better lookup tool or just integrate it into the application process. Can we move to an entirely digital system? How do we deal with more specialized forms of child care? Can we retire older software systems or will we integrate them with the new features that we design?
Check back in soon for some of the answers…
