Do more good: supporting citizens' 'walk through life'

摘要

Society, and an authority's role in supporting its community, is complex and ever-changing. Shifts in demographics, coupled with increasing privacy concerns and greater awareness for at-risk communities drive the need to continually adapt services and to support a complex variety of individuals and life situations.Local government needs to move beyond the traditional one-size-fits-all approach to serving their citizens but may struggle to overcome traditional cultural and institutional barriers to change and innovation.Efforts to increase personalisation through empathetic, citizen-centred approaches run up against obstacles such as a lack of tools, trained personnel and investment capital. The question is: how can local government meet the demands of its challenging mission given its limited resources and capacity to serve?A good starting point is to focus on each citizen's life experience.While everyone's life is different, there are common stages, such as pre-infancy (pregnancy), infancy, early childhood, youth, working years and old age. As each person is born and passes through the many stages of life, their touchpoints with local government services will number in the hundreds, if not thousands.