Digital transformation — starting with the research
When you type digital transformation into Google, you can see people are looking for digital transformation definitions, trends and strategies.
Back in 2015, the Digital Engagement team in the Department of Premier and Cabinet (DPC) was asking similar questions about how it could improve the digital offering of the Victorian Government.
We had seen what was achieved by government digital transformation elsewhere in the UK, US and Canada. Inspired by their achievements, we wanted to create an approach that would build opportunities to collaborate across all three levels of government in Australia.
Three things stood out in our research:
- Victorians were increasingly choosing online as their primary source for finding information and completing tasks.
- We weren’t able to be as user-centric and innovative as we wanted to be because we kept spending our money on basic web builds or single-use features.
- Government content authors needed a tool that was easy to use, with a consistent experience across portfolios.
In 2015 DPC used 36 inconsistently branded and designed websites to deliver information. This fragmented our audience and created disjointed journeys. The websites were also spread across a disparate range of platforms, content management systems and hosting arrangements. It was hard for people to find the information they needed and complicated for us to manage.
We needed a new approach that allowed us to simplify web delivery and management in a way that also made sure government information was easy to find, understand and use. The vision was that the new approach would mean time and cost savings could be directed to creating more innovative digital solutions.
Understanding our audience
We engaged digital strategy and systems design agencies Huddle and Bienalto to begin a joint exploration of our audience and their needs. Our brief was a single question: ‘how do we design better government information and services?’
This initial process provided invaluable audience insights. We assumed we would need to create personas as part of a traditional user research approach. Yet we found that demographics did not provide a reliable picture of how customers behave during their interactions with us. That is because of the diversity of our users. The stage of the customer journey is more useful than demographics in determining behaviour and is consistent across age, location and technology preferences. This led us to develop a Need State Framework as part of a bigger service design toolkit.
The research also revealed that our audience is outcome focussed. They interact with government because they have to. As government services play a big role in their lives, users can get emotional when their digital experience is confusing or if tasks take too long to complete.
‘When all the information is there, it’s clear and you get what you need, you feel like they’ve thought about you, that you matter.’ (Dan, research participant)
Some results challenged us to take a step back from a position of ‘that is how we do things’ to ask whether we were unintentionally making it hard for people to connect with us. For instance, we found that our users do not always understand government structures and language. The way we had been presenting siloed information only made sense for us. It was confusing for the people we were trying to reach.
‘It’s almost like another language sometimes. If you’re not armed with the right language it can take a hell of a long time to get the information.’ (Suzanne, research participant)
How the research helped us
This research has helped us in three important ways:
- We now better understand our customers and their interactions with government.
- It gave us a framework to design information and services around customer needs.
- It provided a catalyst for starting a process of cultural change across DPC, so that we can put our customers first.
These results meant we had to take a long hard look at our online entry point to the Victorian Government, vic.gov.au. It was developed in 1996 as a link aggregator and portal to government services. We either needed to remove vic.gov.au from the market or redefine its purpose. Given its strong brand awareness, we are re-imagining the role of vic.gov.au as a place where people can start a journey across government.
Where we are now
In June 2016, we turned our vision for change into a business case for a project that would help customers find what they need from government online faster.
Other benefits include:
- simplified website management
- decreased operating costs.
This resulted in the Single Digital Presence project now being delivered as an action of the Victorian Government’s Information Technology Strategy 2016 -2020.
In late 2017, we started simplifying web for Victoria’s two biggest central agencies: DPC and the Department of Treasury and Finance. We are re-platforming and providing a consistent approach to user experience across approximately 50 websites. This process will take two and a half years.
We delivered a custom website in early 2018 for the Office of the Governor, to pilot our processes. Preparations are also underway for delivery of the alpha version of vic.gov.au in mid-2018. This will run in parallel with the current vic.gov.au to help us collect user feedback on design direction.
Throughout the life of the project, collaboration and co-design are core principles. This will take many forms including:
- an iterative user experience research approach
- learning from and contributing our knowledge to digital projects across other jurisdictions
Find our research Designing Better Government Information and Services and design tools here
Come back soon for more stories from our journey, which we will be posting every few weeks.
