Power to the people: Shifting public behaviour to resolve civil disputes
by Matthew O’Neill
When we started working with the New South Wales (NSW) Justice Department and Service Reform Team, the only thing we knew was that the way in which disputes were handled and then escalated (either to the NSW Fair Trading or through a Tribunal hearing, both parts of the civil justice system in NSW) needed some help. The Tribunal was receiving more than 31,000 applications per year, and the team wondered if alternative ways of resolving disputes — ones that enabled people to solve their own issues — might be cheaper, easier, and faster for everyone involved.
With a system spread across multiple agencies and touchpoints, it was hard to figure out where to begin and where it would all lead. So to get a better handle on the situation at hand, we turned to the numbers.
We started with the data
What do citizens use the civil justice system for? It turns out the largest proportion of disputes brought to the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT) are tenancy related — 42% of the Tribunal’s total workload, to be exact. (A tenancy dispute is typically between a landlord or real estate agency and a tenant, and relates to things like unpaid rent, damaged property, or termination of lease agreements.)
Armed with this information, we decided to focus on experiencing how citizens interact with the Tribunal during tenancy disputes.
We talked to tenants and landlords
Like most problems, the best way to begin moving towards a solution is to start talking about root causes. Only by getting out and talking to landlords and tenants involved in housing disputes did we start to find our focus.
Through our research, we found that many tenancy disputes occur when tenants are behind in their rent and when something needs fixing at the property. We also learned that people utilising the Tribunal were confused about what was required of them or how to tell their side of the story in what can often be tense and difficult situations to navigate.
Those two pieces of the puzzle — that the issues were rent and repairs, and that both tenants and landlords alike didn’t understand their rights or how to submit claims — gave us an idea of what we wanted to develop. A tool that explained legal information in everyday language and provided clear steps to submit a claim, we thought, could result in a shift that ultimately puts the power to resolve the dispute back in the hands of those involved. Our hope was that this new tool could reduce the need for a Tribunal hearing at all.
We prototyped solutions with users
So we had our hypothesis, and now we needed to test it. How might we enable tenants and landlords to quickly resolve issues such as rental arrears and repair requests in a way that minimised tension between the two parties? And, if we could do this, would we effectively be relieving some of the strain on NCAT resources by reducing the need for Tribunal hearings?
Those questions lead to a lot of possibilities. To begin exploring them, we designed and created two working digital prototypes to test with NCAT users. These potential solutions focused on enabling a tenant and a landlord to enter into a constructive negotiation process to resolve their dispute themselves. The approach was twofold: firstly, the information needed to be easy to find and written in everyday language; and secondly, the tool used to submit a complaint or response needed to be clear, let users know where they are in the process and what the next steps would be.
“It will really help when you are getting nowhere with your [real estate] agent.” — Tenant
Users’ reactions our prototypes demonstrated for us, and the NSW Justice Department and Service Reform Team, that a digitally-enabled tool could drive behavioural changes from both tenants and landlords that would effectively help resolve disputes but also reduce the reliance on resolving them through NCAT hearings.
We only scratched the surface
The beauty of a prototype, and even a working digital solution for that matter, is that it’s not static. It doesn’t have to be working 100% from day one. It can evolve over time, and it is essential to take a continuous improvement approach through working with NCAT users and administrators to ensure the platform meets the needs of all stakeholders. This made us think more broadly about how a digital platform could enable people to tell their dispute story and be empowered to manage the dispute process online in a way that suits them and their life.
At its core, technology is just a tool — something that is used to solve a problem. In this case, we believe technology can support both tenants and landlords in their tenancy disputes and if we design a solution that makes the dispute process clear and easier to manage it could easily mean that NCAT can start start thinking about how to offer an online alternative. And what starts as an online solution for housing disputes need not stop there. It could be expanded to include other dispute types such as commercial product and service disputes, and ultimately assist the NSW civil justice system to provide and timely alternative to dispute resolution that puts the power back in the hands of the people of New South Wales.
The NSW Justice Department and the Service Reform Team as part of the the Department of Finance Services and Innovation were co-sponsors of this work in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW). FutureGov was engaged to complete a ‘discovery’ analysis of the service experience in the NSW Civil Justice system which involved government agencies such as NSW Fair Trading, the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT) and other tenancy related support agencies. The aim of the work was for FG to help all the agencies involved to find innovative ways to make it easier, quicker and cheaper for people to resolve their disputes and provide recommendations for new opportunities and improvements.These recommendations are currently being assessed by the department with regards to solution feasibility and resourcing requirements should they be implemented in the future.
