“This is great!” – the citizens’ verdict
This article includes an update on the project’s co-design work, thanks to the participation of citizens in Renfrewshire, the energy advocates who support them and the overall service managers.
We continue to meet with citizens and energy advocates, to discover what makes good energy advocacy journeys and to find out what they think about our first mock-ups of digitally enabled journeys. The mock-ups of these journeys have been produced as interactive wireframes that show how the journeys might look and function in a web-based app.
We have been delighted with the response to the three interactive wireframes we have created- for citizens, for energy advocates and for service managers.
Citizens liked the idea of having a web-based app that shows them how data collected in their personal data store is used by the energy advocates, who help them solve problems related to home energy. We have received some very encouraging comments about how what we are doing will make energy advocacy a truly person-centred service, reducing effort, empowering citizens, increasing service up-take and improving outcomes. We are also very grateful for the questions and ideas that people shared with us about how we can make the outputs of the project as easy to use and as useful as possible.
Making the energy advocacy journey smoother
Based on trying out the interactive wireframe, citizens said using a web-based app would help them keep a track of their data and their situation:
“It’s quite clever, it’s all at the touch of a button. It’s better than bits of paper and trying to remember.” Citizen
“This is great, it is working like it should. It is much better, because everything is here and you don’t lose the paper and if you lose the paper you lose the info. So it’s great; you are just making two clicks and there you go.” Citizen
Making services more accessible
Citizens and energy advocates agreed that it will make it easier for people who sometimes find it hard to talk on the phone, in some cases because they suffer from anxiety and depression, to get access to energy advocacy:
“I could absolutely see myself using it. Because I do everything online on my phone, my emails and text messages are all on there. I’m not very good at speaking on the phone, I get anxious, so that’s a lot more friendly for me, because I don’t need to worry about speaking on the phone or where my information is, so yes I would use it.” Citizen
“For some of the people we see I think it would be a great tool because they don’t want to… it’s not that they don’t want to answer the phone, sometimes they just can’t do it. And if you have someone who is very anxious and very depressed, a lot of debt and they are having a bad day sometimes just a text message is enough. That’s all they can handle…. (With this) we can speak to these people without giving them any more anxiety.” Energy Advocate
Empowering citizens
Citizens and energy advocates liked the features that enable citizens to review their own data and see action they can take, they said this could be empowering:
“It would help me to share new letters that come in with the Energy Advocate. It would be much easier to say ‘this is what I’ve got’ and she can see it and then I can discuss it with her. That would be my favourite feature. I could ask her ‘what’s this bit in the letter about’?” Citizen
“If you can send them that and they can do it themselves, it gives them a little bit of confidence” Energy Advocate
Building a digital record to enable better outcomes
Citizens also understood the value of the legacy of the project- the potential to build up their personal data store and choose who to share it with through further web-apps, designed to facilitate different journeys:
“The thing is it would be good because if you had to deal with different services, e.g. benefits. When I moved here my housing benefit took forever. I was handing in birth certificates and chasing things four or five times and it took forever to do it. You spoke to one section and they’re like ‘we don’t talk to benefits’ and you’re like ‘how can housing benefit not talk to another section?’. It was really confusing. This could be the platform to sort that out. It seems like a really good idea.” Citizen
We also received some really useful feedback about how we can improve the look, feel and function of the web-based apps that we will be testing in the final phase of the project. We are incorporating these insights into our next iteration of design for the apps, which will also build on the Government Digital Service’s Service Design Manual, other good practice, and research.
Making the service more effective
Based on the feedback we have received, we are confident that the apps we are building will enable citizens, energy advocates and service managers to work together to achieve better outcomes. The web-based apps will make a real difference by making it easy to import, store, update and share relevant data securely from individual citizens’ personal data stores, as well as enabling anonymised reporting. Like many services, Energy Advice Renfrewshire is relatively complicated, receiving referrals from a wide variety of sources, and referring on to many different services. Whilst there are some aspects of energy advocacy that apply to most cases, some cases are complex, long and therefore currently hard for the service to keep track of.
The following quotes from energy advocates and managers indicate the potential of the approach to improve performance and therefore to increase the number of citizens helped and the outcomes for them:
“This would make my job so much easier, all the information for reporting is there.” Manager
“At the moment we have to go through our records manually. Having instant reporting will make a big difference.” Energy Advocate
“I have to use five different spreadsheets at the moment. This will make a huge difference to me.” Energy Advocate
“As you’ve seen I don’t always have the right file with me. With this I’d be able to look up the information and it will save me a trip or making another phone call.” Energy Advocate
“It frees time up for us (energy advocates) to do a lot more work.” Energy Advocate
