Staffing & Accelerating Innovation Across Seven Ministries
Scaling human-centred design capacity across a wide range of essential public services in Alberta.
Background: Digitizing and Streamlining Services for Millions
The Government of Alberta’s Digital Innovation Office (now Digital, Design and Delivery — DDD) in Canada is responsible for modernizing public services used by over 42,000 employees and millions of Albertans. Their work focuses on delivering services that are faster, simpler, and more human-centred.
Working at this scale requires practitioners who can step into complex environments, unearth the highest priority user needs and pains, and support teams in adopting human-centred design and delivery methods — often while navigating legacy systems, established processes, and shifting public-sector priorities. And as the pandemic increased reliance on digital services, the DDD’s teams were asked to move the needle across a growing range of initiatives.
Outwitly has been central to the definition and practice of our ‘modern digital methods.’ I know they take practice leadership seriously. They consistently supply us with ‘Black Diamond’ caliber designers.
Director, Federal Digital Service Organization
Roles Staffed
- Service Designers
- Front-End Designers
Challenge: Meeting Pandemic-Sized Spikes in Demand
The DDD engaged Outwitly’s talent solutions to help them increase capacity, as they confronted multiple challenges:
A surge in demand for digitized government services. The COVID-19 pandemic created new urgency, with Albertans’ use of digital services increasing by roughly 300% and creating the need for seamless virtual equivalents to services previously delivered in person.
An immediate need for changemakers who could transform longstanding systems. The DDD required specialists who could step in right away to digitize services that might have entrenched processes, without lengthy ramp-up periods. Those specialists would also need the experience and soft skills to navigate red tape and champion human-centred design in new and highly regulated environments.
Tackling multiple digital transformations while maintaining live essential services. Practitioners would be expected to conduct activities spanning discovery and validation research methods, solutioning, prototyping, and design implementation enablement, without interrupting or slowing existing services. Along with this, they would need the ability to quickly understand complex and highly specialized systems, and navigate jargon-filled communication and documentation.
The processes they would need to enhance or redesign spanned across services like:
- Court case processing
- Emergency services
- Affordable housing
- Driver licensing
- The Métis Settlement Land Registry
Solution: Finding and Embedding Specialized Talent Fast
Starting in 2020, the DDD partnered with Outwitly to place multiple service designers and front-end designers on their digital transformation projects serving the province. Since then, Outwitly has become one of their largest suppliers of these roles, having placed more than 50 successful candidates on projects across seven ministries.
These practitioners brought a mix of design expertise, public sector fluency and business acumen, integrating quickly into active initiatives and supporting teams as work progressed.
What made our approach to staffing different:
Specialization in UX and service design. Outwitly’s talent solutions are led by internal design subject-matter experts, which is why we’re called “Designers finding designers.™” This gave the DDD access to support with practice-informed role scoping and vetting, grounded in decades of design experience — avoiding any guesswork a generic recruiter might need to do, and helping ensure strong alignment to each role’s requirements and context.
High role-matching success rates, with 50% of presented candidates hired. With Outwitly’s 2:1 average interview-to-hire ratio, this meant that the DDD moved through an accelerated hiring cycle, allowing them to ramp up digitization initiatives quickly during periods of heightened demand.
Proactive practitioners vetted for strategic mindsets. Pre-vetted for key decision-making and interpersonal ability, designers came into their roles with what Outwitly calls a “consultant’s mindset” — stepping comfortably into complex projects and taking initiative to align stakeholders, fill process gaps, and create design systems, without waiting to be asked.
Practice advisory to support design strategy. Beyond staffing, Outwitly’s internal experts in design strategy were available to the DDD client team in an advising capacity, which they could leverage in their efforts to strengthen HCD methods and approaches.
Results: Enabling Rapid, Human-Centred Modernization at Scale
With embedded talent in place, the DDD was able to translate urgency into measurable progress:
40+ digital transformation projects advanced across seven ministries. The embedded designers supported immediate, impactful work for crucial provincial bodies, including the Ministries of Justice, Indigenous Relations, and Seniors, Community and Social Services, contributing to steady progress across a wide range of essential public services.
Measurable improvements in service efficiency for citizens. The provided talent contributed to meaningful change to a variety of processes that affect Albertans daily, from dramatically decreased service wait times, to reduced missing information requests, digitized streamlining of extremely sensitive and confidential processes, and saved costs to be re-allocated for other service improvements.
98% of placements renewed to the maximum contract length. High renewal rates reflected strong contractor integration within client teams and their clear value-add to the continued improvement of internal efficiency and citizen experience.
By placing trusted and highly specialized practitioners across ministries, the DDD helped more ministries shift from siloed or paper-heavy systems to services designed around people and their rapidly evolving needs. Modern, human-centred design practices gained more widespread traction in the provision of services that Alberta’s citizens rely on every day.
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