A detailed review was undertaken which looked at both Civil legal Aig in geneal and SLAB through lenses of (1) Transactions, (2) People - FTE, (3) People - FTE Costs, (4) Technology Licenses, (5) Grants
There are 3 main groups of users involved in the process. Each set of users have different epic needs as outlined below.
Citizens
Members of the public who need to apply for legal aid. (1) Find advice & guidance, (2) Receive legal aid support, (3) Provide evidence of financial.
Legal aid solicitors
High-street solicitors who determine legal merit and provide legal case information. (1) Provide legal advice, (2) Determine legal merit, (3) Capture legal case information.
SLAB
Admin, assessors & solicitors within SLAB who process and grant applications. (1) Determine financial suitability for legal aid, (2) Determine legal merit and suitability for legal aid, (3) Grant legal aid.
I began the service discovery by looking at the existing high-level process for civil legal aid. The initial scope being looked at by the SLAB team only involved the civil legal aid application (Form 2) and means admin check.
I took a holistic approach to the service discovery. I explored the end-to-end service delivery to identify all the relevant pain points and opportunities. This has allowed for identification of service pattern.
This is the service pattern of the civil legal aid service. A new user journey could be built around these common steps.
A business capability is what an organisation needs to do to delivery it’s services.
These are the types of business capabilities you need to deliver the legal aid service.
When looking at the technology landscape the following where researched:
(1) The cost and team compistion of internal helpdesk, (2) Infrastructure team, (3) Interal develpers, (4) Appication / system contracts, (5) Number of users, (6) Legistrative and cost of impact, (7) Who govern the upgrades, process and pain points, (8) Competing business user priorities and how they are managed, (9) Other IT contracts and their impact.
Systems / applications discovered and their appropriate technologies:
(1) Slab web portal: Solicitors record legal aid case information, (2) Case Management System: To record and process legal aid applications, (3) Document Repository: To store supporting documents for the case management processes, (4) Reporting: To produce reports for internal and external use
Based on the discovery, we would recommend the following business capabilities are prioritised for an alpha. This would mean the technology capabilities for each would need to be considered.
Based on the discovery, I recommended the following business capabilities are prioritised for an alpha. This would mean the technology capabilities for each would need to be considered.
People
Reduction in admin FTE for checking legal aid applications, reduction in assessor FTE for assessing applications and reduction in time spent on citizen phone calls
Data
Open publishing of legal aid information and performance, content redesigned around user needs and case information openly shared across all users
Process
Rejection rate greatly reduced from 25%, processing time reduced by 30%, and electronic proofs replacing paper-based process
Tech
Increased flexibility of systems to evolve to meet changing citizen and legislative needs and built or bought on open, modern standards
Increased flexibility of systems to evolve to meet changing citizen and legislative needs and built or bought on open, modern standards.
An alpha should lead to:
- Creation of a working prototype
- Increased understanding of the service
- Testing of the design approach
- Testing of some technologies
- Formation the digital team
- Understanding of the service at a coding and
integrations level
- Understand of what or who you will need to
deliver a beta
Based on the opportunities and scope outline above, we would suggest the following learning points should be the focus of this alpha:
- Reduce the in initial rejection rate of x%
- Reduce the number of phone calls regarding
information and advice
- Speed up processing of applications
- Reduce unnecessary correspondents back and
forth with applicant
- Eliminate paper proofs being sent to citizens § Deliver a consistent user-led journey into the
legal aid service
- Help citizens self-determine their legal aid
eligibility before application
- Create a citizen transactional journey on top of
the existing case management technology stack