Social security institutions should design, review and update social programmes from the perspective of the users they serve.

It is now become an accepted norm for any service delivery organization to actively engage with customers, consumers and stakeholders to improve the quality of the good and services they provide. This also includes the setting and managing expectations of quality and service performance. The same principles apply to public sector organizations. For social security administrations this is particularly relevant as they are dealing with people at some of the most vulnerable moments in their lives.

The traditional approach of service delivery treats the public and other stakeholders as passive recipients and participants in the system. Design traditionally comes from the central administration, the head office and is largely contained within the organization. A trend of recent years, the citizen centred approach has given participants a voice through satisfaction surveys however these are a lag activity. An emerging trend, co-design, involves participants in each stage of the production process and is therefore a lead activity.

Social security administrators are finding that by engaging participants in all aspects of the design (or review and update) of a social program, they are gaining access to a vast pool of expertise that helps solve problems, generates new ideas and inspires innovation.

By involving and listening to participants, social security administrations will:

• Design, implement and deployed better benefits and services;
• Make savings on design and implementation costs by eliminating design and deployment errors;
• Set and maintain expectation levels of service performance within the capacity and capability of the institution.

Organizations take a big risk when a final product such as a new social program is presented to the public without consultation. If people are involved along the way, administrators gain a level of assurance that mitigates the risk that people will assess a product as poor quality.