What happens when a person dies? While families or friends sort out funeral arrangements and cope with the loss, there are administrative tasks which must be addressed. The process hasn't always been straightforward, but the Life Journeys team in our Digital.NSW Accelerator Lab has been looking to make various life journeys, including 'end of life,' a clearer process to navigate.
What are Life Journeys?
The project team is taking an in-depth look at significant life journeys experienced by NSW citizens. We are committed to bringing together government and non-government agencies, the private sector and not-for-profits. The outcome is to get a common understanding of citizen pain points, which allows agencies to collaborate and design seamless, holistic services for citizens during major life events.
Why start with end of life?
The NSW Government's Customer and Digital Council (CDC) identified âend of life â loss of a loved oneâ as a priority area for the Life Journeys team. While it can be difficult to think and talk about such an emotive topic, the goal is to make this distressing time less complicated for NSW citizens to navigate.
Breaking down the project into slices
Given the complexity and size of a life journey like 'end of life,' the team started by looking at the different components around the 'end of life' journey. Breaking the journey into slices, ensures the team can work through the project in logical and manageable segments, as follows:
- Death and ceremony
- Estate management, and
- Planning, grieving and support networks.
Discovery phase
The team started with the 'death and ceremony' slice and commenced the discovery phase, researching and interviewing the agencies and providers that provide services to citizen following the loss of a loved one, along with interviewing individual citizens, including:
- Government agencies - Births Deaths and Marriages, Coroners Court, Trustee & Guardian, Victims Services, Organ and Tissue Authority, NSW Health and Multicultural NSW
- The private sector - funeral directors, nursing homes, doulas/celebrants and banks
- Individual citizens about their lived experience
Showcasing findings from the discovery phase
During the discovery phase, insights emerged around specific pain points which the team then expanded and worked into the following 'how might we' statements:
- How might we better inform citizens of what to do leading up to and after a death?
- How might we share data about a death in NSW whilst protecting privacy to make administration easier for individuals, agencies and service providers
Where are we now?
The Life Journeys team has now moved into the Ideation phase of the 'end of life' journey. Ideation sessions will be held to brainstorm solutions around the 'how might we' statements highlighted above.
The Ideation sessions will involve various stakeholders and citizens to collaboratively find solution options.
Where to next?
Flowing on from the Ideation phase, the team will move into prototyping the solutions, which will then be tested and validated before potential funding and development.