12 Life events
Armenia’s citizen centric service transformation project
The background to the ‘Life event’ service transformation project
Service delivery is a core component of the Armenian Government’s strategy on ‘Public Service Reform’. The strategy calls for introduction of improvements to citizen service delivery – with the goal of making government services citizen centric, including adoption of transparent mechanisms for collecting and evaluating feedback and accountable governance.
The Information Systems Agency of Armenia is supporting the reform project through managing the delivery of 12 pilot ‘life event’ digital transformation projects – working in collaboration with Armenian ministries to coordinate the projects, carry out research and deliver tangible results to citizens, in line with the digital architecture of Armenia.
From digitsation in silos, to collaborative service transformation
A life event is a significant event in a person’s life that can often have financial & legal consequences, for example, having a child, getting married or starting a business. It often requires citizens to interact with various government agencies and private companies. The service quality received during these life events can have a lasting impact on trust between citizens and government as a whole. For this reason, many governments around the world now digitise services using the ‘life event’ based approach.
A partnership model for digitisation of life events & adoption of behavioural science based ‘sludge audit’ technique:
The implementation of the ‘life event’ digitisation project is centred around two key goals:
- Holistic improvement of service delivery to citizens through true, end to end digitisation
- Building capacity and skills within Government agencies for design and implementation of digitisation projects.
To achieve these goals, we have adopted a partnership model for digitisation, which encompasses ‘user centric’ design principles of business process analysis, digital transformation, and digital system design. In addition, we have adopted the ‘sludge audit’ behavioural science model that focuses on reducing ‘friction’ for citizens when interacting with Government. This methodology is introduced through a partnership with our colleagues at USAID and the Government of Australia.
How the partnership model works:
For each life event, one Government Ministry is nominated as a leader – with the support of an ISAA product owner, and the support of other Government Ministries, following this:
- A detailed ‘sludge audit’ analysis of the ‘life event’ is carried out through interviews with citizens, analysis of business processes & legal frameworks
- The leading ministry and supporting ministries work together to produce a shared digitisation roadmap
- The biggest ‘pain point’ identified by citizens is implemented within 6-8 months as an ‘MVP’ for the project
- The shared roadmap is submitted to the Information Systems Management Board for approval.
Benefits to be achieved
Upon completion, the life event service transformation project will raise the bar for service delivery quality and burden reduction for Armenian public services. Including:
- Improved coordination of digitisation activity – from individual IT systems, to a user-centric model of service delivery
- Improved quality of digital products through implementation of tooling, standards and actionable user-feedback
- Introducing a culture of collaboration between multiple ministries, citizens, and the private sector.
Progress and timeline
There are currently 12 pilot ‘life events’ that have been chosen for transformation.
- December 2024: Commence analysis and ‘sludge audits’ for all 12 life events
- December 2025: Delivery working MVPs for at least 6 of the existing life events
- December 2026: Complete the delivery of the digitisation roadmaps for all 12 life events.
Cooperation and contacts:
For questions, comments, or if you would like to be involved in the life events digitisation projects, you can contact us via email at info@isaa.am.