[interview] the project story
Project Overview
TIS Online - interpreter bookings made easy.
The Translating and Interpreting Service (TIS National) is an interpreting service, offered by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP), providing interpreting services in over 160 languages to government and private sector agencies to communicate with their non-English speaking clients and for non-English speaking individuals to access essential services.
TIS Online revolutionises the way in which agencies and interpreters manage their interpreter bookings by allowing them to self-service their bookings online, reducing the time to service from weeks down to hours. Intuitive design has led to significant user adoption, with 90% of services being provided through self-service thus supporting the whole of government Digital First Strategy.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
TIS Online was delivered as a three-phase digital service-delivery project in collaboration between the Translating and Interpreting Service (TIS National), an interpreting service offered by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP), and the digital consultancy firm Adelphi Digital.
TIS National:
Since its inauguration in 1973, TIS National has been the industry leader in the language-services sector.
TIS National coordinates over 2900 contract interpreters to deliver over 1.4 million interpreting sessions per year in 160 different languages. TIS National provides telephone and on-site interpreting services for non-English speaking individuals to communicate with a broad range of organisations, including federal and state government and private sector agencies.
TIS National’s mission is to connect government, business and communities, through the provision of accredited, cost-effective and secure language services.
Adelphi Digital:
Adelphi Digital is an international digital consultancy at the leading edge of digital innovation, strategy and delivery. It’s unique in applying the principles of Agile software development into the landscape of consultancy as well as production, enabling clients to get to market faster and successfully. Adelphi Digital's mission is to help organisations take full advantage of the opportunities the internet has created.
Adelphi Digital is ranked as a Top 10 Interactive Agency by Forrester Research. Its clients include the Australian Government Department of Defence, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, BHP Billiton, Škoda, Philips Healthcare, Barclays, and HRH The Prince of Wales.
It works across continents and has offices in the UK, Singapore, Australia, Thailand and Hong Kong.
Project Brief
TIS Online has transformed the delivery of on-site interpreting services through an inherently innovative design incorporating core business rules unique to TIS National into a persona based bespoke self-service system.
Using responsive and user-centric design, TIS Online ensures that the three main persona groups - agencies, interpreters and TIS National staff - can easily self-manage their interpreter bookings anywhere, anytime, on any device.
TIS Online provides agencies and interpreters with real time functionality that is important to them including the ability to:
• Self-manage their on-site bookings online via desktop, phone and tablet devices.
• Remain informed, via SMS and email notifications.
• Finalise, confirm for invoicing or provide feedback about their on-site bookings.
• Self-manage account details.
Through extensive focus group and usability testing, TIS Online delivered a product that exceeds user expectations and needs. This is reflected by 87% of agencies self-servicing job requests and 90% of on-site interpreting assignments being allocated through self-service by interpreters.
Project Innovation/Need
The core innovation of TIS Online is a self-service booking engine that allows the most highly accredited interpreter available to take the job in a short timeframe, ensuring higher quality and faster service.
TIS Online is innovatively designed to generate efficiencies and service clients in the shortest possible timeframes while managing risk to acceptable levels.
The design encapsulates unique business rules and policies into a bespoke self-service system that automates the booking and allocation process while flagging high risk or complex requests to be exception managed by specialised TIS National staff.
Through automating the booking process, TIS National staff have been able to diversify their skill set by transitioning from booking and allocation function into an online support and exception management function.
As TIS Online interfaces directly with TIS National’s purpose-built job database and financial system, human intervention is rarely required and the time to fill service requests has significantly decreased, providing improved and more accessible services to clients and interpreters.
Design Challenge
The main design challenge for TIS Online centred around automating a completely manual business process and allowing clients and interpreters to self-service bookings while maintaining acceptable levels of risk for the government.
Additionally, the interpreter and agency cohort is a diverse group with varying degrees of experience in interacting with government services online. As such, from inception users have been involved in the design of TIS Online through focus groups, usability testing and piloting of the product.
TIS Online also faced an additional design challenge: to fully integrate with TIS National’s custom-built job entry system and to migrate over 0.5 million data records to TIS Online.
The TIS Online project team met these challenges through excellent user-centric design, innovative approaches to business processes and problems and stakeholder collaboration.
Future Impact
The design of TIS Online has been user-centric since inception of the project.
During all stages of design and development, the project team solicited feedback from a wide range of real end users through the following mechanisms:
• Feedback and service analysis
• Surveys
• Focus Groups
• Usability testing
• Accessibility testing
• Pilot phase
• Roadshow/promotional activities
Feedback from the three major persona groups, agencies, interpreters and staff was collected and analysed throughout to confirm that the platform met the minimal viable product that would be fit for purpose.
As a result of continuous collaboration, the TIS Online user experience features intuitive navigation, geographical validation, predictive text, account and job histories, multi-user accounts, role-based permissions and a customised administration reporting suite. TIS Online boasts a responsive design that meets and exceeds user expectations, as evidenced by the striking adoption rate and positive feedback from all user groups.
Tags
Service - Government
This award celebrates creative and innovative solution design for the successful delivery and provision of government services. Consideration given to system integration, user experience, product design.
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