In the digital.nsw Accelerator we're working to make the 'End of Life' journey a clearer process for people following a death in their family or friendship circle. The Life Journeys team have broken down the journey into smaller slices - with this blog exploring what we have discovered working on the 'Death and Ceremony' slice.
The team researched and interviewed a range of providers who assist people following a death, along with individuals about their personal experiences.
The discovery phase of 'Death and Ceremony' generated many opportunities, with two moving to the Ideation phase:
- How might we share data about a death in NSW, whilst protecting privacy, to make administration easier for individuals, agencies and services providers?
- How might we better inform people of what to do leading up to and after a death?
Thinking About the Opportunities
The Ideation phase of a project provides a forum for participants to imagine what a solution to a problem might be, regardless of potential barriers or blockers. This is done through a series of interactive, fun and collaborative exercises.
For the first, we invited representatives from various government agencies and the private sector to help us imagine ways to solve the 'how we might share data about a death' opportunity. For the second we invited the people we had interviewed in our discovery phase to share their thoughts with us.
The workshops provided the perfect forum for attendees to collaborate, brainstorm, think big and put a range of ideas on the table.
The Ideas
The workshops provided incredible feedback and a burst of innovative ideas, which were then collated by the team for further exploration. These included:
- digital register where people capture their intentions (important information including will location, bank and superannuation details, and funeral directions for next of kin)
- digitisation of the information passed from Police to the Coroner and onto Births Deaths and Marriages
- face-to-face service to support citizens through administration following the death of a next of kin
- centralised navigation service as a trusted source of information on what to do when someone dies
- automated notifications (where consent is provided) to notify agencies and service providers (triggered by the registration of death)
Many more ideas were pitched that have been captured in a backlog to be discussed by the End of Life - Journey Advisory Board.
End of Life - Journey Advisory Board
As part of the holistic all-of-government collaborative process, an advisory board was established to provide expertise and guidance to the team. The End of Life - Journey Advisory Board comprises representatives from:
- Births Deaths and Marriages
- Trustee and Guardian
- Coroners Office
- Supreme Court
- Multicultural NSW
- NSW Health
- Victims Services
- NSW Police
- Department of Finance, Services and Innovation (DFSI)
- Social Ventures Australia (Social Impact NGO)
- Old Ways, New (Indigenous Consultants and Technologists)
Idea Progression
The Advisory Board reviewed the ideas and assigned owners from the relevant agencies for further exploration with the Life Journeys team.
Our team are now working with each idea owner to understand and validate whether the idea has merit. This involves reviewing work already undertaken or learning from jurisdictions where similar work has already been done.
Watch this space for more updates as we progress through each 'slice' of the 'End of Life' journey and build a framework for solving some of the big challenges we face in government.