The Challenge
The Government of Alberta faced significant challenges with verifying the legitimacy of organizational accounts accessing government services. The existing manual verification processes for business entities were cumbersome, resource-intensive, and created barriers for legitimate organizations trying to access digital services.
Individual representatives of businesses, non-profits, and other organizations struggled through complex verification procedures that often required multiple touchpoints, extensive documentation, and lengthy processing times. This created frustration for users while straining government resources and impacting service delivery efficiency across multiple ministries.
Without a streamlined, user-centered approach to organizational verification, Alberta risked falling behind in digital service delivery and maintaining barriers that prevented efficient business-government interactions.
The Approach
Civiq Design embarked on a comprehensive exploration phase to deeply understand the needs and pain points of ministry clients, stakeholders, and end-users across the organizational verification ecosystem.
Research Methodology:
- Stakeholder interviews with government ministry staff, business representatives, and frontline service delivery personnel
- User research with organizational representatives who had experienced the verification process
- Subject matter expert consultations on the Pan-Canadian Trust Framework and digital identity standards
- Process mapping to understand current-state workflows and identify improvement opportunities
Service Design Process: The research revealed critical gaps between user expectations and system capabilities. Through collaborative analysis, the team identified opportunities to leverage emerging digital identity standards while maintaining security and compliance requirements.
Strategic Framework: The discovery phase informed the development of a future-state service blueprint that balanced user needs with technical feasibility and regulatory requirements, incorporating best practices from national digital identity frameworks.
The Outcome
Through iterative development and user validation, the project delivered a comprehensive transformation roadmap for Alberta’s business verification processes.
Key Deliverables:
- Future-State Service Blueprint mapping streamlined verification journeys for different organizational types and use cases
- High-Fidelity Interactive Prototype (Figma-based) demonstrating the redesigned user experience with clickable workflows for development team reference
- Strategic Product Roadmap outlining implementation phases, technical requirements, and organizational change management needs
- User Stories and Requirements translating design insights into actionable development specifications
Development Foundation: The high-fidelity prototype effectively translated user research insights into actionable user stories, integrating seamlessly into the development team’s product backlog for prioritized implementation. The service blueprint served as a strategic guide ensuring project alignment with human-centered design principles.
Implementation Impact: The comprehensive documentation and prototyping work provided the development scaffolding needed for Alberta’s transformational initiatives, enabling the technical team to move confidently from concept to implementation with clear user-validated direction.
The project established a foundation for streamlined business verification processes that would ultimately reduce administrative burden, improve user satisfaction, and enhance Alberta’s digital service delivery capabilities.