Section One - Exercises

Exercise: Motivate your Colleagues to Contribute

Description

This exercise asks you to think about a personal life event, or time in your life, when you needed to contact a government agency (or agencies), in order to receive a service(s).

It then asks you to take an elderly person's point of view, when looking at government services.

Part One

1. Pick a life event of your own, and describe it to the person sitting next to you. Choose a situation where the agency that you have to contact is not your own - in other words, you know as much as a member of the public. Talk about:

• the service you needed from the government

• the agency(ies) that provided the service

• how many agencies you had to contact before you found the correct one

• how you found the agency that provided the service (phone book, internet, word of mouth, etc).

2. Write this information down on the following diagram.

Part Two

Stand in an elderly person's shoes....

...and imagine their needs.

What type of needs might an elderly person have, that would be met by government services?

List the services (and agencies) that they might need.

Exercise: Vision for the Future

Description

This exercise builds on the previous exercise, where you described a time you had to contact a government agency, to receive a service.

What do you see as a better way of receiving this service from the user's point of view? Describe your future vision for this service. (An example of a future vision for immigration is on the following page.)

Future vision of:

Service user requirements

Future vision - integrated government services

Future Vision - Doctor Immigrating to New Zealand

Service user requirements

As a frequent visitor to New Zealand, Jamahl has always dreamed about moving here permanently. He is currently a doctor (general practitioner) in India, and has recently discovered the New Zealand Government Portal, using it mainly to plan his next holiday. Out of curiosity, he decides to look at immigration information.

Future vision - integrated government services

Jamahl clicks on the icon Immigrate to New Zealand. The system displays information about the requirements for immigration, and asks him whether he would like to take a test to determine whether he is eligible to be considered.

He agrees to fill out the form. Jamahl supplies personal details about himself and his young family, including the ages of his children, his occupation, and where his qualifications were attained.

At this point, a pop-up box appears, and tells him that it is checking with the New Zealand Qualifications Authority to see whether his qualifications are accepted in New Zealand. A few moments later, it tells Jamahl that his credentials are accepted, and that he has enough 'points' to be eligible to immigrate. It also tells him that current industry standards require him to re-qualify as a GP before he can practise in New Zealand. The system then displays the tasks that Jamahl must complete, and gives him the option to complete some of these tasks online.

He opts to take a written test online. This test ensures he is able to read and write English. Once he has completed this task, a number of links are displayed on-screen for Jamahl to choose from:

View tasks needed to complete re-qualification

Apply to immigrate

View requirements for citizenship

View primary schools

Jamahl chooses to view the information on primary schools. He searches for suitable schools in the area where he is likely to be to do his re-qualification, and requests a report on each school. These are made available to him within moments. The system also displays a map showing the applicable zone for each school.

Finally, Jamahl prints a list of the tasks he will need to complete before he qualifies to practise as a GP in New Zealand.

Exercise: Brainstorm a List of Services for Your Agency

Description

This exercise helps you to define and name the services list for your agency.

Remember that to define a service, you must make sure that the service has value to the user. From a user perspective, a service must be something that the user will need or want.

Read over the following two sections, which cover rules for identifying and naming services.

Is it a Service?

To determine whether you have identified a potential service, ask yourself the following questions:

• Is it something that the user would want or need?

• Does it add tangible value to the user?

• Does it result in exchange of useful information, advice or money?

• Does it provide a meaningful outcome to the user?

If you answered yes to at least one of those questions, then it may be a service.

Naming a Service

You should always describe a service from the user perspective. It should always be something that adds value to the user.

Generally, a service is not a goal, objective, outcome or output of an agency.

Good description	Poor description	Reason description is poor
Obtain a student loan	Apply for a Student Loan	Interaction not service
Pay/claim tax	Submit a tax return	Interaction not service
Renew a car licence	Send a license notification	Agency perspective
Pay fine	Collect fines	Agency perspective
Learn about protecting New Zealand flora and fauna.	Protect New Zealand flora and fauna.	High level goal - agency perspective
Find a literacy program	Ensure a high level of literacy for New Zealanders	Outcome - agency perspective

A list of recommended verbs to use, when naming services and interactions, can be found in the booklet e-Services Project, User Guide for Collecting the List of Government Services.

Creating the List

When you are compiling the list of services for your agency, you will have access to a number of resources that you do not have in this training session. These include your agency web site, brochures and information resources, and the public facing groups within your agency.

For the purpose of this exercise, you will need to rely on your own memory to create a preliminary list of services. You do not have to have a Service Group - however, it may help you identify the services that your agency delivers.

Service Group (Optional)	Service Name	Service User	Resource Name
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-

Hint: If there's no end user (service user) for a task, then it is not a service!

Exercise: Define a Service

Description

This exercise will help you to understand what a service consists of, and the level of detail you will be describing.

Interactions and Component Services

A service is made up of a number of interactions between a service user and an agency, an agency and another agency, and/or an agency and a service provider. (The service user can be an individual, business, or stakeholder.)

A service may also contain a number of component services. These component services may be services in their own right (i.e. stand alone services).

The example below shows that the principal service "Obtain a passport" is made up of a number of interactions, and the stand alone service "Obtain proof of citizenship". It is considered to be stand-alone, because a person may use this service even if they are not applying for a passport.

Pick one of the services from your original list, and break it down into interactions and component services.

Transaction Type

The transaction type element will allow us to find similarities between the technologies that underlie services, and enable us to reuse service components across many agencies. For example, if a number of agencies accept online payments, then a single "Pay Online" option can be created, then adapted and used by all of those agencies.

Go back to your list of services, and service interactions. Identify common transaction types for them.

Exercise: Describe a service

Description

This exercise helps you to practise filling in the Services List form. The forms are in a separate handout, that your trainer will give you now.

Describing an Agency

The Agency form is used to collect generic information about the Agency, and the cluster(s) to which it belongs. Much of the information in this section will be reused in the service and resource parts of the form, in the web-enabled tool set.

This means that you should be as thorough as possible when describing channels, service delivery units, and audience at this level. It will save time and effort in the long run.

Describing a Service in Detail

Pick one of the services that you wrote down in the first exercise. You are going to describe this service, using the appropriate terminology and language.

Describe the service you have chosen by filling in the Service Description form. Note that each heading has a grey example box, showing the type of information you should include.

Where you are told to choose from a list, write the most appropriate word(s) you can think of, to describe that field. For example, for a service that is delivered in English, write 'English' in the Language field.

Describing a Resource

Once you have completed the exercise "Describing a service in detail", move on to the form for a resource.

Choose one of the resources you identified in the previous exercise, and enter details about it on the resource form.

Exercise: How Your Service May Be Accessed on the NZGO Portal

Description

This exercise will help you to understand the relationship a service has with users and life events.

Portal views for the service

Services can be grouped in different ways, according to user needs. An example of this is getting a passport - you might be a student heading off on your big O.E., a retired person thinking of travelling the world, a parent applying for their child's first passport, or someone just thinking of taking a holiday.

One service could be associated with multiple views.

Use your list of services from the first part of this exercise, and determine the portal views that your services could fall into.

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