We had a packed agenda today, with colleagues talking about their experiences, passionate about using user centred design and agile delivery approaches to improve services for the people of Dorset.
It was great to have our Regional Government Digital Service advisor with us, especially to help accessing content that had only been made available on central government channels!
Improving how we communicate
With help and through speaking to parents, schools and young people we are changing the way we write content in the Special Educational Needs team. It’s quite a different way of writing, but we are learning that you can present legal and complex information in a less formal, friendly and accessible way.
The project team have learnt the importance of:
- understanding the need and drivers for communication,
- the need for ongoing customer feedback,
- being open to throwing away what isn’t right for the customer even if we like it
- bringing together a team with different skills and experiences to deliver change
Using what we have to improve the way we work
Who knew a system we built to support advertising on roundabouts could be reused to help the brokerage team find care homes for people that need them!
This is what has happened following work to understand the problems being experienced by the team and trying out ways we might solve them. We learnt how we were working in a way that catered for failure demand, but have now designed a solution to avoid it and save the team time.
2 weeks to 2 minutes
Significant work has been completed in our customer contact centre over the last few years to redesign services to improve customer satisfaction, reduce failure demand and cost.
A recent example is the re-design of our blue badge process to put it online. Enabling people to upload their own photo and pay for the badge during the application process has reduced it from 2 weeks to 2 minutes, we currently have 50% uptake online with no real marketing. We are hoping an API will be made available for us to link with the new national system.
The team talked about how they are not constrained by existing systems, policies and processes, taking them apart like a car engine before deciding the best way to put it back together.
It was fantastic to hear from colleagues about the great work taking place #digitaldorset #servicesweek
