Scope K (SC-K) Card

Card Details - King of Scope

Abbreviation

SC-K

Card's focus

The focus of this card is proactive support

Threat to claimants

Bonnie puts into effect a service which does not attempt to identify the best choices for individual claimants, and/or does not optimise each individual's claim, and/or does not warn claimants about potential problems, and/or does not inform claimants of other services they are possibly eligible for, and/or other ways to improve claimants' lives related to the service's policy intent

Threat to claimants

Some examples of how this threat could lead to harms (negative effects on claimants)

The design recommendations and implications relevant to the card are listed below in the next section, but even those can be somewhat abstract and difficult to think about during practical day-to-day implementation. Therefore, some example harms are provided to complement the more formal research outputs. These examples are unique per card, and are only published on these web pages (i.e. in no other project outputs).

It is not suggested to claimants how they could receive some other relevant support for their particular situation
When something changes which affects claimant eligibility, and this is known to the government agency, the affected claimants are neither promptly informed, nor warned or given the opportunity to review, challenge or change the situation

The examples are to help understand the threat on the card, not to suppress thinking and innovation. Incorporating these examples exactly, or closely matching ones, should be scored down when playing DBD Cornucopia as a game.

Applicable design recommendations and implications

These are reproduced here from Research Briefing NO2. Multiple cards reference each design implication.

Acknowledge claimants as people in digital design

Prioritise claimants' interests over system efficiencies
All digital welfare design processes, methods and decision-making should prioritise claimants' needs to achieve best outcomes for individuals rather than system efficiencies. Organisational knowledge and resources should be utilised to this respect including intervening in advance to identify matters that affect claims or what claimants may have forgotten about.
Ensure system and state accountability to claimants
Equalise accountability between claimants and the state. Promote a sense of fairness by enforcing an expectation that service level standards for actions and response times should be similar to those expected of claimants, with related penalties not disproportionately, or only, affecting claimants. Provide tools/methods for claimants to easily check, query and challenge actions and decisions.

Embrace a wider ecosystem and fuller claimant activity viewpoint for digitised public services

Use claimant-related policy outcome measures to assess digitisation
The most relevant factors of success of digital transformation are metrics based on the intended purpose of the policy rather than focusing on state-incurred financial costs. The advantages of digitised policy implementation must be balanced with the gains and harms across the whole ecosystem from the viewpoint of claimants.

Design systems which support the division of labour with claimants' ecosystems

Expand claimant autonomy, control and choice, backed up by transparency of actions and activities
Enable claimants to better engage with digital welfare and empower them to make their own choices and decisions. Attribute information sources, other advice and decisions; build in logging and audit trail generation; provide access to records of what information was used to make choices/decisions and by whom; provide mechanisms for claimants to question, discuss and challenge actions, provide feedback, and make complaints.

Design to assist claimants across the full span of their own activities

Recognise and promote the synergistic effects wider ecosystems can offer claimants
Networks of actors and instruments contribute gains to claimants unrelated to the social protection payment public service, yet can contribute to improving people's lives. Ensure the integration of other actors is not purely transactional, but also provides opportunities to explore other beneficial aspects.

General Notes

Card values (i.e. 'King' for this card) are for game play and are not correlated with the severity of harm. This is because threats cannot be ranked directly since they can affect individuals in different ways due to situations and circumstances, or affect fewer or more claimants, or the harms can arise in claimants' support networks and wider society.

The threat description uses a person's name as the "attacker" (i.e. 'Bonnie' for this card), which can be thought of someone involved with implementation. They could have any role which influence digitisation. So they could be a database administrator, or a copy writer, or a quality assurance specialist, etc, or all of these. Everyone could have some influence on the claimant threat described. The names were randomly selected from those currently most popular as given names for boys and girls (UK Office for National Statistics).

The example harms provided are drawn from the research data (which explored not only parts of existing services but also the effects of possible changes to those), from the author's own knowledge of web application development and testing, the author's own experience of helping citizens to claim Universal Credit (UC) and Personal Independence Payment (PIP), and from suggestions submitted by other people (make a suggestion). The threats and example harms do not necessarily exist in the current UC or PIP deployments or in ecosystems around those services, but they might well do.

All the cards in this Scope suit are: 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 J Q K A

The other suits in the deck are: Architecture, Agency, Trust, Porosity and Cornucopia (plus Jokers).