Legal Design for Government

By Emilia Ojala

Legal design helped us face challenges and break down barriers

We had a challenge. We had to design a complex EU Commission accessibility statement that has to be filled out by many and read and understood by many more. What to do?

My colleague got an idea from social media. Let’s use legal design as a guide.

More questions arose. What is it? How does it help? How long does it take? What does it cost? What will the end result be? We already had the content required by law. Couldn’t we just modify the EU model a little and thus save time and money?

However, the idea was still interesting. An acquaintance of mine gave me more information about legal design and I became enthusiastic about the subject. Perhaps legal design could solve our challenge.

Before this, however, there were many other challenges including the not so small matters of securing project funding and the support of the management. Luckily, providing sufficient information helped to secure both.

Off to work!

We knew we were on the right track from the very first meeting with Emma Hertzberg from Observ Agency. The intense project was kicked off and the goal was to get the job done within 10 working days. The final product would be ready within a month.

This meant we had to start working right away. Emma’s approach to work was efficient. During every meeting, it was clear that things had progressed by leaps and bounds. Emma kept us updated all the time about what was going to happen next and why. We were in safe and very effective hands.

The results soon began to materialise. The end result was an easy-to-use tool that guides the user through the creation of an accessibility statement.

Working with Emma was flexible and she always had time to listen to our concerns, whether they were small or large. She paid close attention to our concerns and remembered incredibly well what we had said. From the outset, it was very clear that Observ Agency was fully and wholeheartedly involved in this project. It felt like our project was important to them as well.

The most rewarding part was testing the tool with prospective users. It was helpful that the testing was done as part of the project schedule, which allowed us enough time to work on important feedback and suggestions for improvements for the tool. User testing was useful but also momentarily emotionally exhausting. It is daunting to let your unfinished work be subjected to feedback and even criticism by others. Observ Agency’s professionalism was a great help and Emma warned us about how draining the user testing phase could be. The following day, we were able to work through the feedback and suggested changes to the tool became clearer.

User testing was an essential part of the project. Users’ involvement and feedback should not be left out or forgotten.

Learnings for the future

This type of project increased everyone’s understanding of the subject. In addition to the end result itself, the accessibility statement tool, we now know more about the background and requirements for an accessibility statement.

There are always things that could have been done differently. In retrospect, I would have given the staff at my unit the opportunity to concentrate solely on this project. As well as design work, the tool also required technical implementation so in the future I would make sure that this work is also included in the project scope. Even though the project itself would take a little longer, the end result would be ready right away.

I really hope that legal design will be used more in the future, including in government. It may not be suitable for all government activities, but everyone can bring a touch of legal design thinking to their own work. In the end, accessibility and legal design are not that far apart. The focus in both are understandability, ease of use and functionality. Functions and services are provided to users on an equal basis without forgetting or excluding anyone.

Written by Emilia Ojala, Head of Accessibility control Department at Finland Regional State Administrative Agency

Online accessibility enables everyone to participate in society on an equal basis, including in the digital world.