Designing on the inside | Snook and Cork County Council

@servicerepublic @kmackfitzgerald @charleypoth @wearesnook
Designing on the inside
Charley Pothecary from Snook
Karen Fitzgerald from Cork County Council

What are we going to talk about today?
● Embedding design
● Case Study: Cork County Council
● Examples of how we embed design
● Things we have learned

Hands up who thinks
they are a designer?

Everyone can
be a designer.

We are an award-winning design agency
based in Glasgow & London, helping
organisations produce great services by
putting people first

Cork: User-centered
council@ainsleyalan @rufflemuffin
@wearesnoo
k@servicerepublic @kmackfitzgerald @charleypoth @wearesnook

‘Give a man a fish and he
will eat for a day. Teach
him to fish and he will
never go hungry.’

Ireland’s First Public Sector
Service Innovation Centre
Cork County Council

Centre for Service Innovation
URL of CSI | @twitterhandle or name

“The senior team at Cork County
Council wanted to improve
customer and staff outcomes
county-wide and set up a centre
to use and showcase service
design approaches.
With a council in the process of
‘going digital’ we saw an
opportunity to ensure services
were led by user needs.”
James Fogarty, Deputy Chief Executive

Building a user-centered
council for citizens and staff

3 days a week
Service RePublic team
Develop their design capability

Learning
through doing

6 Week Micro project
● Build confidence
● Break down barriers
● Work and learn on a
live project quickly
8 Week Macro project
● Cement knowledge
● Team take on more of a lead role
● Work across varying departments
Using micro and macro projects
to build confidence and break
down barriers

What makes a good
project?
Feasibility
Is it technically, operationally and financially feasible?
Measurable impact
Can we achieve easy to measure impact in a short
period?
Capability building
Will this support the building of design capabilities and
skills?
Good news
Will it be a good news story to win hearts and minds in the
council?
Building a movement
Will it build momentum and bring others on board across
other departments?
Political persuasion
Does it fit a political stream of work we can attach it to?
User experience
Does it make an obvious improvement to the user
experience?

Housing Representations

250
Reps a month
15 minutes to process
each one
5
Hours to process the
reps daily
3
Day acknowledgement
KPI with a
10 day response time
wasn’t being met
The situation was ….

Stakeholder
and journey
mapping
Session
User
Research
and
Interviews
Persona
Development
and user
need
Blueprinting
user stories
High level
prototyping
of the service
Co-designing
detail of the
form and
service
Usability
testing and
research
Review
Meetings
Discovery
Alpha

Discovery Workshop

Customers meet
directly with Public
Rep or with staff in
their office
Liaise with reps
1:1, over
phone/email to
offer advice and
answer and
questions
Email confirmation 15 mins per
application
Scanning
paperwork
System very slow.
Checks info
available
Norma emails user
to advise query is
waiting for them to
answer. Chases
user to answer.
Further information
sought through Norma
or system updated
Not everyone updates
system
Councillor gets
acknowledged for
work done
Norma checks
data on CCS and
ihouse
Email,
Post,
Face to Face
Clinics/Office
Phone
Email
Post
Face to Face
Telephone
Email
Face to Face
Email
Post
CCS System
Scanning documentation
CCS System
Internal Post
Email
Excel Spreadsheets
iHouse
Phone
Email
Email
Post
Clinics/Office
Phone
Email
Post
Face to Face
STAGESTORYBORADFEELINGTOUCHPOINTINTERACTION
Local Rep meets
Constituent
Local Rep
Contacts CCC
Norma confirm
receipt
Norma inputs
data into
System
CCC forwards
query to relevant
department
Dept answers query,
looks for further
information & updates
system
Dept advises
Norma of
updates
CCC advises
local rep of
updates
Local Rep contacts
constituent

It seemed really rather
complicated...

We had to compromise
For this project we couldn’t
speak to the citizen to see why
they were engaging the elected
members on their behalf.

This is not the first time this has
happened
Councils can be scared
You have to prove the importance

Research:
User interviews
Shadowing Staff
Observation
We interviewed users - local and
national elected members and
analysed how staff ran the service and
the existing data we had collected

“It is time consuming to document, scan and upload
an original correspondence onto the CCS system. It
takes approx. 15 mins. This excludes the time
involved chasing staff for answers, sending
confirmation and other correspondences”
- Norma, Housing Department

Lack of clarity on what
information is needed and
useful in order to submit a
representation
Elected representatives send in
everything they think is relevant.
Lack of clarity around what is
and is not required to process
a representation.

TD’s (which is the Government elected
member) make a higher amount of
representations than local councillors
Councillors (Local Elected Members)
can ‘shine a light’ on individual cases
of citizens

The service
re-design

Moving from a lift and
shift attitude.

Learning Lunches build
capacity and confidence

Great engagement from
elected members and staff
Ran prototyping workshops to design
what information is needed
Breaking down the content
Co-designing the needs across
different users

The key improvements
Standardised data collection
Further supported elected members
Developed a workflow for staff

Language was important
Senior management recognised how
important the language was when we
walked through the service visually in
the co-design workshop

Prototyping straight into live
Prototyping on our customer
experience platform allowed us to
tweak continuously and go live
immediately

Usability Testing:
Testing our design with
elected members
Usability testing on the YourCouncil.ie
(Firmstep platform) allowed us to
quickly test our designs and find out
what worked and what didn’t before
going live

What are the outcomes

Processing Reps
The processing of documents by
housing policy reduced from 15 minutes
to less than 2 minutes per rep.
86%Decrease in time spent processing

Instant Response
The reps are getting instant
acknowledgements – they
were previously waiting
weeks despite having a KPI of
3 days.
Nearly 75% of responses can
be answered straightaway
once they’re in the system.
100%Decrease in time spent waiting for
acknowledgement

“Getting an immediate
response for us and our
constituents is a huge
improvement … Well done!”
Sean Sherlock’s Office,
Elected Member of Government

Data Dashboard
A Dashboard is now always available which
saves ½ day a month (6 days a year) in
preparing a report for the Development
Committee
½Day a month saving in
preparing data

€1Saving on every acknowledgement
and response
Cost savings in postage
There is a cost saving in postage of
€1 per acknowledgment and
response.
This is a saving duplicated for the
council and the elected members.
We think this is roughly €12,000 a
year in savings for the council and
elected members.

Cost savings in staff
We’ve cleared the backlog so much
that the staff member we had been
working with has been freed up to
work on other projects and initiatives
two days a week.
2Days a week for staff
member now free

How do we
know this?

We’re now collecting
and analysing data on
what works
We can follow transactions by
service users to continuously
tweak our services and we are
in control.
Data is our new material.

We’re creating the
business case to feed
upstream
We’re analysing our
performance against
Government Digital Standards
(GDS), and producing reports
contrasting service
performance and maintenance
possibility pre and post design.

The real value of the service
emerged through this work
Elected members are service
co-producers in supporting some of the
most vulnerable and marginalised people
in our communities.

Winning hearts, minds and
changing culture
Our short intervention created an appetite for
more Service Design. The team are now
looking at repairs, enquiries and grants.

This service has helped to
create design patterns for
future services
The team are looking to use these
patterns for Roads and Municipal
services.

What have we learnt about
embedding service design
in organisations and
government?

Homes in
Development
We worked with Thames Valley Housing Association
to understand future resident needs from services
when living in a high-density environment and to build
in-house service design capabilities.

Improving the experience
of landlord and tenants in
the Private Rented Sector
Enabling the Cabinet office to quickly prototype
and test concepts
E

Think Forward
This project focused on helping ThinkForward to
design a new programme that focuses on providing
further educational support for young people people
with Special Educational Needs (SEN) aged 13-18.

Internal Service
Design teams
Working with Tesco on a suite of projects to show
potential of Service Design and build internal
user-centred products.

The value of using live
projects to learn
This highlights the actual reality of
scoping, designing and delivering a
live service.

Finding the right people
If Senior Management put people onto
projects, they have to be the ‘right’
people for the job. Find the people who
really want to make change happen.

Allow the time and space to learn
Ensuring that the team have the space
and time to learn as they go. Setting
out capacity needs at the start.

The projects need to land
We need ownership through
service managers or product
owners to ‘own’ the service.
Find who these owners are.

Support from throughout the
organisation
You need senior level buy-in but nurture
a grassroots agenda to grow the
movement.

Use projects to inform the
strategy
It is important for the team to
have an idea of where they
are heading.

Speak the right language
Speak in the terms and use the systems
that people feel comfortable with.
Don’t complicate it, keep it simple.

This is only 1 of 600 services,
and a snapshot of what Service
Republic will do.
The reality of delivering services in local government is
tough but this start has been transformational for
Snook and Cork County Council.

Where now?
Wider strategy for
embedding design
Taking a holistic approach to
developing the capability inside the
organisation.

Questions?

Thanks!
www.yourcouncil.ie
@servicerepublic
@wearesnookTo here more from this have a read of our
blog ‘You create it. We facilitate it. Let us explain…’
at wearesnook.com

Designing on the inside | Snook and Cork County Council

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