Embedded Files
Building Financial Capability for Vulnerable Customers
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Title: Place Based Income Management
Work: Strategic Service Design
Duration: Ongoing
WHAT IS INCOME MANAGEMENT AND WHY SHOULD WE CARE?
The Federal Government serves thousands of vulnerable users and aims to assist their financial capability through a form of welfare quarantine called Place Based Income Management. The implementation of this policy affects a disproportionately large population of Indigenous communities, particularly in the Northern Territory.
Income management is a politically sensitive topic because of its compulsory nature, and users with different backgrounds and different needs are placed under the same restrictions of welfare quarantine. This can have varying outcomes for individuals.
When the user experience is intertwined between different levels of government, involving a complex array of policy, program, and service delivery stakeholders, a gentle strategic approach is required to shift departmental thinking to be more user-centric, and influence top-down designed policies using bottom-up, user-centric services.
WHAT I DID
Change within the Federal government can be slow, and a gentle approach is needed, not only to understand the problem but also to understand why it was designed the way it was – just ask Elon.
As an external consultant working alongside program teams, I navigated the various teams involved in program design and service delivery to uncover not only how the program was delivered and the user experience, but also the agency's ambitions, and to align with their ways of working.
Through research, sharing, and co-creating design artefacts with the program teams involved, I uncovered pain points in the user and staff experiences, initiated feedback loops, and helped place the user closer to the centre of program and policy design.
My role as Service Designer served as a conduit between multiple program teams. It allowed me to draw on their expertise, test assumptions and break down organisational silos.
Using research methods including staff interviews, customer surveys, and quantitative data, insights were communicated, and design artifacts such as journey maps and blueprints were built.
To overcome the limitations around the lack of authority to complete user research within the organisation and to provide a voice to the user, I turned to call listening to capture their stories and user experiences. This proved to be one of the most effective tools in communicating the feedback and customer experience, and supporting the need for user research.
It was clear early on that there was a lack of options provided to users, and the cultural and technological accessibility needs of some users were not considered in the program's design. It became evident that users vulnerable to abuse who had volunteered for the program had very different needs from those placed on it without choice. A significant Indigenous/cultural component to vulnerability further complicated the policy's implementation.
OUTCOMES
My work effectively provided a voice for customers of Services Australia and helped program teams empathise with the pain points experienced by the users and staff servicing them. I championed a design-led approach to create incremental change within the program while providing the Department of Social Services (DSS), the policy owners of Income Management, with feedback on real-life impacts.
To influence policy change, I provided insight reports to the DSS and program teams with the findings to influence dialogue on the future of income management, including more options for exemptions and tailored features for vulnerable customers.
Tactical quick wins were delivered for program teams, which included updating operational blueprints to eliminate staff and user pain points, reducing manual handling for staff.
The work helped emphasise the need for increased co-ordination and consultation within the program by highlighting the knowledge possessed by other teams within the organisation, such as the Indigenous and Remote Servicing Branch.
I also identified knowledge gaps within Services Australia regarding their Income Management users and developed a proposal, currently under consideration, to conduct structured research with customers. This research aims to obtain sufficient qualitative and quantitative data to obtain insights into customer behaviour, cultural attitudes towards finances, their day-to-day interactions with the income management card, which could then be used to create the archetypes needed to develop a more customer-centric program, and more tailored features within the guidelines established by DSS.
REFLECTIONS
For a human-centred designer, the most challenging aspect of working on the program was seeing human needs overshadowed by political expediency. At the time of writing, the two major political parties have differing views and policies on PBIM. Academic studies have shown that PBIM is not effective in meeting its intended outcomes, and validating those findings firsthand through call listening was at times distressing.
This pushed me to advocate strongly for the targeted and structured research with customers to learn from the current iterations of PBIM and to conduct co-design exercises with users and advocates, as well as internal remote and Indigenous teams, not just program teams.
I also learned very early on that some customers have been left more vulnerable from one iteration of PBIM to the next. I raised this finding in multiple reports, stating that should PBIM be removed, safeguards need to be in place so vulnerable users are not harmed.
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