Service Design Excellence in Governments

A trendsetting government in the Middle East wanted to drive customer-centric service design that would result in proactive, seamless, and integrated government services across 27 different entities.

The Challenge

How might we set the benchmark for the most customer-centric government services in the world?

Government services have always been designed from a siloed perspective. While citizens look to the government as ‘One Government’, the user experience is often quite fragmented across different forms, portals, and service centres. The result is long processing times, numerous redundant actions, and frustrated customers – the very citizens government serve. 

In 2022, a directive from the highest level of government initiated a government-wide program across 27 entities to improve Service Design excellence with the following goals in mind:

  • 1,000,000,000 AED savings in the next 5 years
  • Eliminate 9 million visits to customer service centres
  • Save more than 300,000 working hours annually

Our Approach

Design and roll out a common Service Design methodology for service designers across all  government entities.

The first step was to establish a unified Service Design methodology that all entities would agree with as the standard to follow. 

Next, we designed a 4-day Designers training program which included a real integrated service project to work on. These were selected from a list of over 100 priority services targeted to be redesigned. 

Finally, we ran a 3-day Facilitators program (similar to a Train-the-Trainer program), to support selected government service designers who have had gone through the base Designers program. This additional program was needed to support Service Design masters that would advocate, train and support Service Design projects within each of the entities.

The Results

To date, 80 people have been through the Designers program, and 37 of them have completed the Facilitators program. There are three more training cohorts being planned to build the competencies across the government entities.

13 integrated service projects initiated in the training program are also currently being implemented with full accountability.

Additionally, the client has retained CEP’s key Managing Partner in an ongoing advisory role to support, coach, and push project teams for the highest priority government initiatives.

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