How The Swedish Council for Higher Education Lost Sight of the User

Frustration, anger, resentment and disappointment are just a couple of feelings that people in line to do the Swedish Scholastic Aptitude Test (Högskoleprovet) are feeling.

This year is special, there are less than 30.000 seats to do the test which greatly outweighs the number of people that want to do it. The Swedish Council for Higher Education (Universitets- och högskolerådet) knew upfront that the pressure on the signup would be high and took action for the signup system not to collapse.

The solution the council implemented is based on a queueing product. It throttles access to a page and puts people in line — it replicates the behaviour from the physical world. The biggest issue? We are not in the physical world!

The solution is yet another failed governmental digitalisation initiative, where unwitting agencies fall for charlatan vendors. I wasn’t there in the discussions. I don’t know why this route was taken and I admit there might be parameters I don’t understand. However, the impression from an onlooker perspective is that a quick-fix solution was applied as a patch to the existing system. The council fell prey to a vendor promising to solve all their problem with minimal effort — without actually understanding the underlying issue.

As I write this the latest update is that there are roughly 100.000 people in the queue. This is probably because a choice was made to close queueing during the night, kicking everyone out from their spots. The reasoning behind this was that people shouldn’t queue during the night — a compassionate reason.

If this same compassion was applied from the start; if the user journey was mapped and the signup procedure reconsidered the people wanting to do the test would be in a completely different situation.

Allowing hundreds of thousands of people to signup for something is not hard technically, keeping track of who loaded a site first is not hard technically, releasing signups in a scheduled way (hourly or daily) is not hard technically.

But all of them require effort. The real effort, however, is to map out the user journey, understand the problem, and build a system that fits the needs of the user.

It’s hard to understand that the same patterns that apply in the physical world don’t work well in the digital world if you don’t have experience. It is hard to admit sunk cost and realise that the solution in place can’t be fixed or patched. It’s hard to think of designing and building something under pressure when you know you need to go through public procurement — which can take forever.

What isn’t hard to understand is that nobody likes queueing.

I don’t blame anyone in particular here. I’m sure everyone did what they thought was right at the time given what they knew and their skills and abilities. The unfortunate result is that many people feel angry and unfairly treated. The people signing up are the ones that should have been considered first when a solution was chosen — not how much load a server can take — technology is here for people, not the other way around.

I am genuinely curious to explore how we can improve digital thinking and processes in government, I want to learn what I can’t see — I want to learn what lead up to this and how it can be prevented in the future. If you were involved in the process at The Swedish Council for Higher Education (Universitets- och högskolerådet) I invite you to an open-hearted chat where we can learn from each other; I would love it if you reached out to me!

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.