About inclusion

Marianne van den Anker: Thank you. I didn’t know it was your hometown. Yeah, it is.

Randy Semeleer: Born and raised Rotterdammer. Also, listeners, Marianne has to leave a little bit early, but we’re happy for the time we have with her. Thank you. My next guest is Alexander Smit, researcher and lecturer at the University of Groningen, also in the Netherlands. Welcome, Alex.

Alexander Smit: Thank you for being here.

Randy Semeleer: Glad to have you. Finally, my guest is Priyanka D’Souza, senior user researcher and accessibility specialist working across the UK government. Of course, also welcome Priyanka.

Priyanka D’Souza: Thank you. Lovely to be here.

Randy Semeleer: Glad to have you. So Marianne, before we start, can you tell our listeners for those maybe who are a bit unfamiliar what is an ombudsman and what are the responsibilities of an ombudsman?

Marianne van den Anker: An ombudsman is someone citizens can go to when you have problems with the public services and not only about how they treat you but also about decisions and you can come to an ombudsman for complaints but what we do and what is our responsibility is not only to solve the claims but also to learn from the situations who are on our table to improve the government services.

Randy Semeleer: There you go. Okay thank you for that explanation. I want to start with a statement and please everybody feel free to chime in what you think and what your thoughts are. And the statement I want to start with is a government can never be completely inclusive. Anyone has any thoughts on that? Alex maybe I see you nodding a bit.

Alexander Smit: I think that is for the most part true. I think with political choices you always accept that a certain portion of citizens may not be fully included. However, I think that you will need to look at the periphery of society and by trying to include the periphery you will also automatically include more people at the center. So not start from the center but start from the periphery and then move towards the center. I think in that sense you can include as much citizens as possible. That’s an interesting approach. Priyanka?

Priyanka D’Souza: When you approach the design and delivery of public services by considering the needs of the people who could experience the most challenges, the most barriers, you’re often designing a better, more simple, clearer service than if you were not to consider those needs. But I think there are also assumptions on the capabilities of the people interacting with our services that teams will make, which doesn’t actually align with the reality of the needs of the people and the context that they’re in. Sometimes people can be under a lot of stress or they lack the digital skills or they don’t have the patience for the amount of time and effort it takes to access a public service, Especially if you’re in a vulnerable situation or you really need help, you often don’t have the time or effort or energy to complete all of these forms and all of these processes. But yeah, I think we are going in the right direction, but I think there are still lots of challenges.

Randy Semeleer: Sure. You agree that by designing products and services for the people that have the most challenges that you raise the level for everyone really?

Alexander Smit: Well, what we’ve seen in our research is that the most disadvantaged citizens are the most dependent upon public services, governmental services, and also the least capable of using them in most instances. So, I think in that sense it would be efficient to look at the needs, wishes, values and implicit norms there at the center of these communities, marginalized publics, and see what is needed in what sense and how can we design our systems to be related to those needs.

Randy Semeleer: Yeah, like I put that. Mariano, what do you think? A government can never be completely inclusive.

Marianne van den Anker: I think that’s one of the dangers right now in society because you can improve a lot of stuff by user needs and organizing with technology or personal contact, the services of the governmental organizations, but there are more and more people who don’t trust the organizations and especially not the governmental organizations. And when that amount of people becomes bigger, then inclusion is not only that people are not included is not the problem. People don’t want to deal with the government anymore because they don’t trust the government anymore. So then we have let’s say a lot of extras when people are poor but they’re not going to ask for it even when the forms are very simple or you can do it in personal contact and there are no barriers in digital services. People don’t trust it anymore because maybe they think they have to pay back. That’s what we have experienced in the Netherlands with the child care benefits scandal. People really lack trust so then nobody is included anymore because the people who don’t trust government anymore, will not use the services anymore.

Randy Semeleer: Yes, yes for the international listeners in the Netherlands there has been a child benefit scandal, you can read about it online on Wikipedia if you want, but that has put a big dent in trust towards government I would say. Well speaking about that trust, what can the government then do to gain that trust back?

Marianne van den Anker: I think what we already heard here in this podcast is very important that there is access to governmental services, that you understand it, that it’s comprehensive, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But it also needs a human way of dealing with people. We see most of the time when people come to governmental services that they come in and ask for help and there are just public servants, civil servants who are thinking by themselves, do you have any rights to this regulation? Do you can really access because you’re maybe not poor enough, maybe you can just deal with your own shit. So the next thing is what should be organized. When people come into and go to government and ask for help, they need help. The permission is that they need help. It’s not that you decide that they don’t need help, they need help in their full human being holistic integral way.

Randy Semeleer: Yeah, so I guess in that sense trust is also a two-way street. The citizens, it helps if they trust the government, but if the government trusts their citizens a bit more maybe that will also help.

Marianne van den Anker: That would also help, so that should be my second thing. And then when it comes to public organizations working together, then it comes to ownership. We most of the time see in our offices at the Ombudsman, the people come into our offices and they have been everywhere. And all these little organizations or big organizations deal with a part of the human being and not with the total. So it’s also about ownership with all the local bodies and governmental bodies and national bodies together.

Randy Semeleer: Well, we heard some different thoughts about the statement I started with. If I think you agreed with it most strong, so maybe you can start. If we take that a government can never be completely inclusive, how do you decide who is left out?

Alexander Smit: Well, that’s a difficult question. I mean, I hope it’s never a conscious choice. I hope you never explicitly state or think well this portion of the subgroup society can be left out. I think by making political choices, by making legislation, there’s always this implicit effect of excluding people. And I think if alongside those political implications, these regulations, you also think about social support structures, how if we exclude certain portions of society, how can we then strengthen social support structures to help marginalized communities when they possibly are left out. I think there’s this kind of relational approach is needed while on one front you focus on legislation on political decisions and on the other hand you focus and strengthen social support structures. Don’t develop new ones because there are a lot of in place and there’s a lot of time and energy to develop a whole new support structure. There are a lot of very wonderful bottom-up local support structures in society, but they’re often depending on volunteers. They’re often not structurally financed. They’re often very ad hoc and pragmatically structured. So while making decisions on a political level, also strengthen support structures from the bottom up and see how marginalized publics can be helped through these social resources. I think that will benefit marginalized communities while they are excluded and foster this kind of more inclusionary realm of policy and regulations.

Randy Semeleer: Okay. So, Alex, that first part that you said made me think about the idea of couldn’t it also be a benefit to actually consciously exclude certain people because if you are doing it consciously then at least you are aware and then they aren’t perhaps so reliant on those ad hoc solutions because you can take measures yourself as a government or as an institution. Priyanka, what do you think about that?

Priyanka D’Souza: Well I think if teams deliberately decide not to do research or not to do engagement with people with certain characteristics, all those lived experiences are still going to exist even if we don’t prepare for them. If we don’t design for inclusion at the outset, that cost or that impact is still going to be experienced by another part of the system if it’s not kind of considered consciously, you know, if it’s not considered within the main service, it still needs to be, those people still need to be supported. That need just doesn’t disappear. And I think if it’s not, it’s still, those people still deserve acknowledgement and if they are not sort of, if those needs are not surfaced or recognized, I think they will need even more help. They’ll need even more support. How are they going to find the support in the first place? I think for example, more reflecting on the UK but it might be a similar situation in the Netherlands, there are a lot of people who are not diagnosed with neurodevelopmental conditions but that doesn’t mean that those people don’t exist. It doesn’t mean that their needs don’t exist and because they don’t have those diagnoses, They don’t show up in official statistics, they don’t have access to support, they don’t have access to the peer support of other people who also know how to tackle those problems. So I don’t think consciously excluding groups from how we design things is a good idea.

Randy Semeleer: Well said. Mariana, if we talk about inclusion, inclusion is about everyone making sure everyone can participate at every moment. Can you say something from your point of view about the impact of accessibility and accessibility measures in general?

Marianne van den Anker: In general, I think it’s the roundabout that when people are excluded they don’t exist and when you don’t feel included you feel immediately excluded. I think the interesting thing about participation because you want everybody involved is that in our practice of the Ambassador Rotterdam Rijnmond, we see a lot of problems with participation. So what government, civil service are doing is they go out, ask people about their ideas, but people have no idea that they’ve been taken seriously. And then you do more harm than when you don’t let people participate in your legislation or policy processes. So it’s not something that governance, government bodies should take easily. We have this, oh we go for participation process and we ask the neighborhoods and we ask the people and we ask the homeless and we ask the families with big problems about their ideas but when you ask them you should be taking them very seriously. of think there is in our practice a lot going wrong when we see how Rotterdam and other municipalities deal with their own citizens.

Randy Semeleer: So are you saying that if they don’t deal with it correctly there’s a risk of the system becoming complacent?

Marianne van den Anker: It’s maximizing. So for an example when you have a group of people, let’s say families with disabled kids and you ask them how they deal with governmental services and they tell you we have a bureaucratic jungle we have to give our information on and on, it’s in different systems, you don’t speak to one another, there’s no ownership and then you are listening and say oh yeah we recognize that, yes yes yes we hear that a lot of times, we’re going to solve it and then you don’t solve it, then the distrust is just bigger and bigger and bigger. On the other hand, when you ask youngsters, for example, we have a new neighborhood area to design, just join us and tell what you want and you do it in a proper and a good way, then people are happy. Oh, this is a government who’s listening, we’re really feeling taken seriously and then the result and the process, they have a contribution to gain trust back again. So.

Randy Semeleer: There you go.

Marianne van den Anker: There you go.

Randy Semeleer: I think I’m going to build on that a little bit more. So you were talking also a little bit about this earlier, Mariana, but how do you actually maintain the humanity towards citizens in such a complex environment like local government or even national government?

Marianne van den Anker: I think it’s each and every time the same. Sometimes I feel like I’m repeating everything on each and every stage wherever I am and what purpose is I am. Some things are so important to ask your people. Yes, they will have this system reality which is bureaucratic, which is not designed for human beings and we have just our world, how we live as human beings, as people. And for the ombuds classes we can look through when we look to governmental decisions and legislation processes, we have human rights and kids rights. And a lot of civil servants have no clue that they even exist. They’re just in their own regulation, thinking, reacting, typing letters, giving services. So I think that’s also a way out. And I think user needs is a program and a movement where this is so sincerely taken and put into a central place that for me that’s very hopeful. So I feel that this community is the same community as the Amrits community. We want to make it better, we want the gap disappear between what society needs and how the system is organized.

Randy Semeleer: Do you feel like those two communities find each other enough these days?

Marianne van den Anker: I think within the governmental organizations and the departments and the municipalities there are a lot of good people working, a lot of good people working. But they also have problems to get their colleagues in the same line because their colleagues, most of them think in regulation, bureaucracy and how it’s organized on paper. So I think within the organizations there are a lot of people who want to do the same as the Amatman are trying to achieve, but also in society there are a lot of people who want to help because we all feel in the whole of Europe. We are just trapped in bureaucratic jungles.

Randy Semeleer: Now that you mentioned that, I thought about that. It seems like that government is often, and please chime in everyone, government is often quite focused on functionality when they are designing and people live complex lives, doesn’t always match or maybe it matches very little. What do you think about that focus of the government on functionality and should it maybe be different or should they maybe add on that? What do you think, Priyanka?

Priyanka D’Souza: I think people who have a variety of different needs and barriers and challenges, like different options might be better suited to kind of matching and being compatible with those different needs and by kind of shrinking the available options and the available channels that people can access, that can make those experiences much more difficult. You see a lot of news about automation and AI and making things more efficient, but decreasing the access to human contact and increasing the distance between citizens and like support from other humans in government can actually make the experience feel a lot worse. I don’t know, everyone here has probably tried to get support using a chatbot. You know when something goes wrong, the chatbot doesn’t understand your problem because it’s not a human. You’re just having to keep going in loops.

Randy Semeleer: Yeah, it’s very recognizable for most of us I think.

Priyanka D’Souza: Yeah, you’re sort of suggesting that people in the teams are focused on the features of solution provided, whereas if you’re the end user, you actually, I think, having a rich understanding of the problem that the user is having, the context that they’re in, like what their lives are like. This relates a lot to what you’ve been saying about putting on those glasses, actually getting into people’s lives, understanding what they’re like. I think those things are really important in order to truly meet people where they are and not where we assume them to be.

Alexander Smit: May I add on to that? Sure. Because I think we as a society, we as a government, we have a…

Randy Semeleer: One moment, Alex, before you continue. I think our time is done. Marianne, you have to leave for another meeting.

Marianne van den Anker: Yes, but I can just think I’ll stay for another five minutes because I want to make to the audience, my, maybe my biggest hope for the world and for the future. And I think that’s when we have to bring back the soul into the government. So, apps are nice and they’re practical and you can do it at night. And when they’re understandable, it’s also nice when the chatbot working out, it’s also nice. But the governance is, we only have one government. I can’t go to another government because there is only one government. And when we find, bring back there the brains but also the heart and the soul, especially the soul when it comes to human contact, human relationships and apps and websites are only helping structures but in the middle, in the heart of the public services there should be human treatment, human connection made. I think that’s very important and when it comes to functionality we see a lot of time that not only human rights and children’s rights are not let’s say co-designs, it’s like they doesn’t exist and the only thing what is existing there’s one regulation and we need this information from you and maybe you can have a right for an extra because you don’t have money to come to the end of the month. But when you have a conversation with this family it’s not only that there is a problem because they are poor, there’s also a problem with an addicted father or there’s a problem with the education at school and they live in a house full of problems because the door is not opening very well etc. And what people want is that their whole problem with all the boards and all the governments are taken into account and on the table and people don’t want to order, they want to be taken seriously. So when you just take the step of governmental as a community of very nice people working there, but also as a community of organizations, then it’s not my intention to tell to you working in the system that citizens can order. It’s listening, take into account what their capabilities are, what their situation is, and then sometimes it’s what I see, it’s not that it’s about functionality, it’s hard and harsh, it’s ugly. So how the collaboration between the governmental organizations is, it’s pretty hard. And therefore I have introduced the term of system violence, to really system can really hurt you. Like the end result of everything working very hard on your case can be that you are just in the middle of the shit and feel very isolated and there are from my point of view really cause it I can pinpoint to governmental bodies, you did wrong.

Randy Semeleer: Yes.

Marianne van den Anker: You really did wrong and all of you not working together and not taking any co-ownership brings people into problems and you know they’re into problems and you talk about them, not without them, but you talk about them and you make the problem even worse.

Randy Semeleer: And you feel like that’s more than systemic for that organization?

Marianne van den Anker: Yes, yes. I think that’s what all bureaucracies have and because we have also a lot of organizations funded by public money or not funded by public money, volunteering organizations, professional organizations, organizations in the democracy and they don’t work together. I think that’s so bring back the soul and make it easier, simplify and bring back the heart and the soul into the government.

Randy Semeleer: Well it’s clear that you feel very strongly and passionately about this specific topic. I think we’re going to leave it at that for you now. So thank you for those last comments.

Marianne van den Anker: Thank you so much for being here and good luck with all of us because it’s a job we have to do with the whole society.

Randy Semeleer: Completely, yeah. Exactly.

Marianne van den Anker: And let’s do it and let’s rock and roll because the amount of local democracies and national democracies is just declining.

Randy Semeleer: Yeah, it is. Okay, thank you so much Marianne and I’m going to continue with Priyanka and Alex. Okay listeners, Marianne has left the building, she’s on to her next engagement. I’m here with Alex and Priyanka. We were just talking about the statement I made that governments often quite focus on functionality and after Priyanka was talking I gave the word to Marianne because she was about to leave but actually Alex you had something to add to that so please do.

Alexander Smit: Yeah I think one of the major issues in society within governmental bodies now is what they told us is about this normative idea surrounding inclusion and participation. For example, what we mean for participation and I mean we institutional actors and with inclusion isn’t perhaps entirely different than what citizens mean with participation and inclusion. And to exemplify this, in one of my first years of my PhD research I had a conversation with a woman living in poverty, being low literate and I asked her a pretty stupid question if I look back at it in hindsight. How does it feel when you cannot participate in society? And she was kind of agitated and she looked at me and she asked me, “Why do you think I’m not participating in society? Because I live in poverty? Because I’m low literate? What do you mean?” And I thought, “Well, yeah, we had a conversation about your life and I assume that you are not really able to participate.” And she says or she asked me, “Do you know the names of your neighbors? Do you know the names of their children? Do you know the names of their dogs, their cats? Do you know who to go to when your car breaks down and you need to have it repaired without paying money, if your TV breaks down, if your refrigerator breaks down, who can repair it for you without taking money? I said no, I need to go to a shop, I don’t know all my neighbors. So then she asked me who’s participating more in society, you or I? And I think that exemplifies how we as society very normatively think about participation. When we talk about inclusion and participation we often mean economical participation, having a job, having an income. And for a lot of citizens this isn’t their definition of participation and inclusion I think there are a lot of struggles and frictions stemming from.

Randy Semeleer: So those are some major insights you got from that conversation. Maybe this is a bit of a personal question but how did you feel when you were challenged in your assumption by this participant?

Alexander Smit: Well, at the moment I felt really stupid and it really made me think about my own normative assumptions about participation inclusion. I’m really thankful I had that moment because it really helped me in the process of my research to be more reflexive and be more conscious of my own assumptions in society about people way more careful sensitive to assume things. It really made me think about my own positioning, positionality and I was really thankful that she kind of confronted me with my own assumptions.

Randy Semeleer: That sounds like it was quite the eye opener in a moment you think about from time to time or maybe even more often. Exactly, yeah. And it impacted the way you are working actually.

Alexander Smit: Yes, yes, still to this day. Often when I talk to people or when I analyze data or when I write a paper I’m still thinking about that moment, do I assume something here when I write this down, do I assume something when I present something, do I really kind of voice the concerns in a more relational manner or not. So it really gives me this depth in how I reflexively look at my own position.

Randy Semeleer: Well, it’s great that you had that experience then because that helps your research and that helps everybody.

Priyanka D’Souza: Can I add to what you said?

Randy Semeleer: Yes, please feel free.

Priyanka D’Souza: I think you made a really important point which reinforces the importance of valuing and respecting different lived experiences. And I think when you work in the government, you might have a perception of your colleagues as people that want to do the right thing. But if you kind of zoom out and take the perspective of a citizen who has never kind of been in those environments, who’s never kind of got to see all the well-intentioned people. They might see lots of faceless organizations which are not supporting them, which are not meeting their needs. You know, the real kind of raw feeling of I’m struggling and I feel like there’s so many things in the way for me to get help. And yeah, like the messiness and the complexity of people’s lived experiences still exists and isn’t going to disappear. And people who have all these challenges and barriers are, it might be easier for the government to kind of make these assumptions of like the characteristics of an ideal citizen that we would like to be taking part in our services, we often assume a certain level of digital literacy, digital skill, the willingness to give information to the government. Often to get any kind of help, you do need to reveal a lot of personal information about the situation of your life. And for lots of different people, for lots of different reasons, people may not want to do that. I remember doing research with people with various different accessibility needs and often in order to get any kind of support, you have to kind of reveal more to a complete stranger than what you feel is necessary or equal to that situation. You’re often giving up personal information. There was, there’s this app called Be My Eyes, which is, there’s some really great applications of it where basically a sighted person can help a person who is blind or low vision do certain tasks but it is really kind of putting your trust and faith in a complete stranger and it often kind of can compromise the autonomy and independence of disabled people and I think there are often assumptions made about the intelligence or the sort of independence intentions of people who have more barriers. People might think the way that I have chosen to live my life is a way that gives me more independence and more autonomy, but the way a lot of public services are set up can take away and strip that autonomy from people. For example, in the UK, the way that personal independence payment forms are kind of set up by default assumes that a carer will be filling in a paper form for a disabled person. But for example, if you are a screen reader user or an assistive technology user, a digital option is going to be much better for you than a paper form. So like there are still a lot of assumptions baked into how services are designed about the kind of needs and preferences of disabled people or people who have more barriers or more challenges and often those expectations of citizens don’t actually align with what the citizen actually needs or wants.

Randy Semeleer: Yeah, that makes me think about an interview I did for also earlier, an earlier episode this podcast feed with a blind person who told me that oftentimes if she rings an institution to get help with a letter that she got, the answer will be well maybe you can ask your neighbor to read the letter for you and she thinks okay this is a personal letter addressed to me and the solution is not to just ask any neighbor to read it for me. That’s not the solution I’m looking for.

Priyanka D’Souza: I don’t want my privacy violated. What if there’s something very sensitive in that letter? I think I’ve even heard for certain kinds of information, having it completely, you need to think about how the context and how that letter is formatted. If it’s all read out aloud, I think I remember hearing that people used to be able to be sent audio tapes of bank statements, but there’ll be so much irrelevant information. I think a lot of the time people are going to be looking, how much am I spending, what’s my balance? But it will have, when we read, we look for like the relevant bits of information. But if you’re kind of giving that to a complete stranger, how do you know that they’re telling you the right things?

Randy Semeleer: True, yeah.

Priyanka D’Souza: It depends like, do you trust your neighbor to give them, you know, would you trust your neighbor to read all of your WhatsApp messages or your mail or, yeah.

Randy Semeleer: Yeah, I totally agree on that. Any thoughts on this Alex?

Alexander Smit: Yeah, I think it’s interesting now to see that the digital world is kind of becoming this portal to access basic rights as a citizen. So through the perspective of governmental, institutional, agencies, organizations, the digital world or digital applications are thought of as making processes easier, more efficient, shortening the interactional lines and communication between state offices and citizens while in the perspective of citizens it makes their lives more difficult, more complex, adds additional barriers. And it’s interesting to see that the digital world, apps, smartphones, hardware, software in general are becoming this kind of portal to make use of basic human rights and basic rights as a citizen. So for example in Netherlands you have Digide, you need to factor authentication so there’s There’s an assumption there that people have two different devices and can afford two different devices and can use these two different devices. And it’s kind of interesting to see that with DGD you need DGD to kind of arrange all your personal matters in a governmental sense. Yes, you cannot function in a law without it. Exactly, and on the opposite side you have basic rights as a citizen which you need to access, but in order to access them you need DGD. So DGD is becoming this kind of gatekeeper towards your basic rights as a citizen. And I think we have all these digital norms in place that which are implicitly surrounding us and they’re all embedding this digital norm on the citizenry and ask them to become digitally literate, literate, have access, have access on multiple devices, know how to use the device in relation to one another and then if you’re capable of all these implicit norms, then you can access your basic specific rights and function as a citizen, which is kind of crazy in this sense.

Priyanka D’Souza: There are now so many assumptions about both, which almost increase the thresholds for what people need materially, as in like a capable modern smartphone that has access to the internet, the ability to have enough space to host all these different applications, the knowledge and skilled to actually use those apps, even something as simple as parking. I know the Netherlands is much more bike friendly than say the UK, but you can be in a very rural place with no signal at all and then in order to park you have to use an app to do that. And then that assumes that someone has a capable smartphone, that they have the ability to download the right app and kind of align it with the right parking place. And the expectations of citizens, even though we’ve digitized all of these things, but that also means that we require people to have the means to actually interact with them. And it’s like, oh, we’ve kind of leveled up or we’ve made all these digital things, but that means that the person’s skill and interaction ability needs to kind of match up and that isn’t always the case.

Randy Semeleer: Totally. So there is you could say tension between basically the rights of citizens and then the barriers that are created to, well I guess in a sense you could say to give them access to that right but by giving some access it also disallows access to others.

Priyanka D’Souza: I think in some ways if you fit the norms and expectations of the team or the government or the service have come up with, if you kind of meet the criteria or requirements of the happy path, that will be kind of streamlined and speedier and simpler for you. But if you have a case or your circumstances take you out of that happy path and you don’t fit neatly inside the expectations, that process might actually be much less convenient. It might take longer. It might be more complex because governments have shed a lot of those kind of support structures for like, “Oh, these, let’s say, oh, this service is only used three times a year. We’re just going to get rid of it.” But some people still really need to access that. There was a reason it was spun up in the first place. I think the move towards more automation, more efficiency can actually sort of exclude people out of a system who are not close enough to that norm and don’t meet those implicit.

Randy Semeleer: So there is this, I think it’s fair to say that there’s this public image that the government is not very efficient. Actually a government that works too efficiently is also a risk.

Priyanka D’Souza: Yeah, yeah. You can kind of automate people out of systems but who still need help but then they might be trapped in between systems where they don’t neatly fit. It’s like, oh, you are, I thought of the case of, let’s say there used to be 10 options and they’ve reduced it to three different options. If you did that with something like shoe size, can you imagine lots of people walking around in shoes that don’t actually fit them? And then people will be bunched in the same category with very different needs and they might think, oh, but my needs are completely different to this person. And then you’re not really actually meeting anyone’s needs properly in that instance.

Randy Semeleer: Yeah, one size or three sizes fits or fits very few.

Priyanka D’Souza: You might, I don’t know if efficiency is necessarily the right word, but if you’re, I think they mentioned one of the keynote speeches mentioned efficiency needs to be aiming towards a goal and it’s like providing value to users. If you’re not actually meeting user needs, you’d be like, “Oh, we’ve efficiently done something but we’ve not actually solved the problem of the people that need help.” You still have all these people that are still requiring help. And if they all need bespoke solutions, that’s going to be less efficient if you’ve taken away all those support structures.

Alexander Smit: I think the danger here is if you combine a digital first with a digital by default logic and you strip all the physical or social alternatives and support structures, then you kind of assume that people can manage their own affairs within that digital context, right. So and there are no alternatives. You can call to a help desk, but in practice you need to wait for half an hour often. And then the person on the other side of the phone is also partially knowledgeable about your question perhaps. So you ask a question, there’s also an assumption that people know how to articulate a question to an answer they need and often because they’re not knowledgeable about legislation, about digital affairs, they articulate a question on the basis of how they understand their problem and that issue often in practice isn’t actually how they articulate something and the answer they get isn’t answering their real needs. So I set up these conversations on the other side of the phone and then somebody hung up and I asked the person are you satisfied with that answer and then the person actually kind of thought for a couple of seconds and said no, I actually have three more questions now. And it didn’t solve my issue, it only worsened my issue. Because now I am forward to websites, I don’t have access, I’m forward to an app, I don’t know how to use that app, I am forward to a municipality in a different city, I don’t know how to get there. So then that person calls again, gets a different kind of answer, still isn’t answered in their needs, and then the problem only kind of worsens and worsens.

Priyanka D’Souza: There’s a mismatch between what people need and the service offerings. And like people’s needs are the thing that is unlikely to change. Like technology will modernize, it will keep changing, but there will still be I think a stable proportion of society that does need help in a way that is adapted and specialized to those specific needs. We can keep introducing new technology but that human aspect of humans understanding human problems is something that is integral and we can’t kind of automate away.

Alexander Smit: As long as we use these techno solutionist logics and we use technologies and innovations as these quick fixes on more structural issues, then we only create ten novel issues by implementing one new technology. So each new app, each new technical solution has potential to widen existing inequalities and create ten novel problems. And again ten new apps will be developed to solve these ten problems and then again new problems emerge. So as long as we keep seeing technologies and innovations as quick fixes we will not manage to solve these inequalities in society.

Randy Semeleer: I actually have an article I wanted to bring in from the NOS Dutch News broadcast that ties into this but I want to end on that one. So before we go to that there’s one more topic that I want to spend a few minutes on. So earlier we were talking a little bit about the impact of accessibility in general on public service, Marianne spoke about that. Priyanka, I wanted to ask you about the impact of accessibility specific for neurodivergence regarding public service, any thoughts about that?

Priyanka D’Souza: Yeah, so I think speaking as a person who is neurodivergent myself, who has lived experience, a lot of being neurodivergent is often invisible. Other people cannot see that your mind is processing the information in a different way, that the impacts of say executive function or working memory or difficulty processing the text. I mean there’s lots and lots of different ways that traits of being neurodivergent are expressed and also they will be interacting with how you have designed a service in the first place. But I think the population or the proportion of people that are going to be impacted and who are neurodivergent is so large that you can’t ignore these needs. I think often people who are in situations of stress can experience a lot of traits that are associated with being neurodivergent such as impulsivity, difficulty making decisions, working memory issues. These are not exclusive to being neurodivergent but actually a lot of these traits impact people going through challenging life circumstances. So by designing and doing research with people who are neurodivergent you’re going to have people who are often quite sensitive to these two parts of your designs or journeys which might be more challenging. So if you’re taking out journeys for research and you do research with neurodivergent people, they may be more likely to pick up on parts of the journey where there might be challenges or which might be ambiguous. Their pain points might be more apparent. So I think it’s a really, it’s a great idea to include neurodivergent people in your user research.

Randy Semeleer: So include them definitely you’re saying?

Priyanka D’Souza: Yes, definitely. I think also it’s something you can do at an early stage. I think people have different perspectives at what point to include different access needs, but I think at very early stages you can include people who are neurodivergent in your user research in order to try and get different perspectives on how those interactions might be seen through that lens.

Randy Semeleer: So I’m putting you a little bit on the spot here, but is that something that you were able to do in your research also?

Priyanka D’Souza: Yes, of course, yeah.

Randy Semeleer: Do you have any tips on maybe certain measures that should be taken if you want to?

Priyanka D’Souza: Yeah, so when I was working at GDS, the Government Digital Service in the UK, on OneLogin, GovUK OneLogin, I deliberately tried to have people with cognitive accessibility needs in every round of user research. It wasn’t like special research. It was just a normal part of each round of research because I thought a lot of the things we were testing were around navigation and remembering the route that you’d taken, remembering where things were located. And I thought that people who were neurodivergent or who were experiencing life situations where things like executive function and working memory were affected would be better at evaluating some of those features like our information architecture and navigation because of that interaction between their barriers and what we were investigating.

Randy Semeleer: Very interesting. Thanks for sharing that. Earlier we were talking about the humanity. Mariana was talking about putting the soul back into services and about complex government. Alex you also mentioned that one solution could maybe create ten more new issues that all need a solution then as well. So a while back there was this article written by the NOS, the Dutch National Broadcaster, It was last month and they were writing about an advocacy officer stated in the Dutch government. In Dutch we say ‘Belang-en-behartiger’, very Dutch words. So I’m wondering, I was reading this article and I was wondering to myself, is this now only fighting a symptom of a government that’s actually too complex, maybe way too complex, Or is something like an advocacy officer actually the solution for a complex government? What do you think?

Alexander Smit: I think it can be part of the solution. I think an advocacy officer can be kind of this representative of marginalized voices which aren’t heard otherwise, but it’s not the sole solution. I think if that will go hand in hand with an open government that wants to listen and wants to adapt and actually change and not only use those let’s say procedures in place to kind of legitimize their own behavior and their own exclusionary practices, then it could help. But I think it’s a very difficult process and by only having these advocacy officers in place to articulate the needs of people behind them without actually listening and acting upon it, it will not make a big difference.

Randy Semeleer: So it really depends on how the officers actually taking their duties and…

Alexander Smit: What kind of agency they have to actually affect change in that sense. If they’re only there to listen to or if they have the agency to actually advise and kind of steer policy in that sense. So if they have agency and a proper mandate it can make a difference.

Randy Semeleer: Yes, I think so. Okay.

Priyanka D’Souza: created a government or a system that is so complex and difficult for normal citizens to interact with, isn’t that, that’s like not a good sign? Like I know in the UK there are some processes that are so difficult for like citizens to do themselves that they need to like look for support from charities or organizations that have been spun up to help groups that are not being served by the government. And while it’s good that there are other options, I feel like it’s a sign that something is broken, like at the core, and that needs to be resolved rather than kind of outsourcing the problem.

Randy Semeleer: And any thoughts on that broken core issue, what that could be? Oh gosh. I know, it’s a good question.

Alexander Smit: I think it’s part of what Marianne also talked about, it’s that relationship between citizen and the government. It’s now based on fear, of fear of doing something wrong, anxiety of having to prove yourself that you’re a rightful citizen. I think that has to change. I think that the relationship has to be based on trust, on mutual trust, on human needs. So it has to be way more empathetic in this sense. I think if that will be at the center of the relation between the government and its citizens, you will have a way more transparent government and you will have a citizenry which is way more wanting to actually, well, accept how certain norms are imposed in that sense and actually kind of make use of structures that are there by the government, that are put in place by the government and affect also their own behavior in that sense without having that sense of guilt or maybe a sense of they have to prove themselves that they aren’t bad citizens.

Randy Semeleer: Yeah, even I recognize that myself and you know I’m I would say a somewhat functioning member of society at least somewhat and even when I get a letter from the government before I opened it I’m already oh my God what is this about.

Priyanka D’Souza: Have I done something wrong?

Randy Semeleer: Have I done something wrong? Have I forgotten about something? What do they want? And then I can imagine what it can be for other people getting those letters, maybe not even opening those letters anymore, those people in that situation. I always find it funny that if a government doesn’t get a reply to a letter, then their first reaction is, “Oh, let’s send another letter.” I think if people aren’t reading letters, then the second letter or the third letter is also not going to make that much of a difference. Exactly.

Priyanka D’Souza: Yeah, it’s like, it feels like quite an unequal relationship. Like, as a citizen you feel like you don’t have the power.

Randy Semeleer: Isn’t that the nature of that type of relation? Will that always be unequal or could it be equal?

Priyanka D’Souza: I feel like there are things we could do to, I feel like even as someone that works in government and is more familiar with the structures of how government operations happen than say say, like in everyday citizens, I still feel like if I have a specific problem, it can be so difficult to like, you know, bridge that gap between like having the problem and being on the outside. Looking into government feels very opaque.

Randy Semeleer: Definitely.

Priyanka D’Souza: Like actually getting help for something specific that isn’t, where there isn’t like a, if it’s a non-vanilla problem and there isn’t a service, online service designed for it, if it’s still like a paper process or an unusual situation, you feel like you’re going to be waiting a long time, it’s going to be really difficult, it’s going to be really time consuming to get help.

Randy Semeleer: Yeah, I agree.

Priyanka D’Souza: I think citizens’ needs are still going to exist whether we have designed and anticipated them or not. Like it takes a lot of energy to be, to complain, to be visible. services will say we don’t have any disabled users because no one has contacted us. But if your existing services are inaccessible, they’ve already spent way more time on them than they have budgeted for. So they have even less time and capacity to vocalize their issues, vocalize any frustrations, vocalize that they’ve been excluded. If you don’t work in government, how are you going to know how to influence an internal government service from the outside?

Randy Semeleer: It’s almost impossible.

Priyanka D’Souza: Yeah.

Randy Semeleer: I agree. Well, I think that’s a good note to end on. Just want to highlight a few things that we spoke about during this conversation, this very fascinating conversation. I think the key factors is to have a strong focus on empathy, trust, empathy and trust between both the citizen and government. Trust of course is also a two-way street but a lot of empathy from government towards its citizens and echo what Marianne said, bring back the soul in public service, the humanity so to speak. Okay, that was it for this episode. This was my conversation with Alexander Smith of the University of Groningen, Priyanka D’Souza of the UK government and Marianne van den Anker, Ombudsman of Rotterdam-Rijmond who joined us in the first section of this episode. Marianne asked me to remind everyone, especially all the Dutch speakers, but you can also of course use a tool to translate of the website for the Ombudsman of Rotterdam-Rijmond, it’s orr.nl, orr.nl. And if anyone is interested to look into Alex’s research, his PhD research will be available after the summer, so you can check it out then. And we’ll see if we can add a link in the show notes if people are listening to this at a later date. Alexander and Priyanka, a sincere thank you for your time, your knowledge and your insight and also being so open and also of course thank you to Mariana for joining us earlier.

Priyanka D’Souza: Thank you. Thank you.

Randy Semeleer: That is it for this episode. Thank you for listening. Are you interested in more interesting conversations like this one? Subscribe to the podcast through Spotify, Apple Podcasts or in your podcast app of choice. If you subscribe it’ll be easy to listen to a new episode. It’s also very helpful if you leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. Does this episode contain something important for your organization? Share the episode with your colleague, manager or executive official. Do you want to learn more about these topics? Visit international.gebruikercentraal.nl or for Dutch speakers gebruikercentraal.nl. You can also find these links in the show notes. Dear listeners, in this podcast we explore perspectives across borders. Still, keep in mind that while borders may seem to divide us in many ways, we are all connected. Until the next one. This episode was produced by Elka Helmers, Victor Zuydweg, Jessica Straetemans, Jeroen Schalk and myself, Randy Semeleer. Editing and audio engineering by André Dortmont. Social media by Elka Helmers. A special thanks to the Meervaard Theater where this episode was recorded.