Service Design Mentorship at the Department of Justice
Coaching & Mentoring | The Department of Justice
The Department of Justice is the first government department in Ireland to establish a dedicated Service Design & Customer Insights (SDCI) team. Established in 2018, the team is comprised of 10 civil servants and is part of the Change, Technology and Innovation function of the Department. They work on service challenges from across the justice sector[SK1] .
Context Studio joined the team as mentor and coach for a period of over seven months, to help build upon the excellent training the team had already received, to assist on live projects, and to facilitate the development of a service design methodology for the Department of Justice.
Four masterclasses were also provided, in a successful collaboration between Context Studio and Snook.
The process began with understanding the context – an interview was held with each team member, to understand the status of the team, the projects they work on, and their hopes for the future and for the mentorship programme.
That insight was brought to a kick-off workshop, where we arrived at ambitions for the programme, and polled topics for potential workshops.
Over a period of about seven months we worked on projects with the team including stakeholders from Forensic Science Ireland, the International Protection Office, and other stakeholders from the Department[SK1] and the justice sector.
In addition to this, workshops and deep collaboration with SDCI team formulated a draft methodology document including Service Design Principles, methods and tools to be brought forward by the team. This will aid the team in future communication of their ways of working both to new joiners, but also to other teams across the Department of Justice and the justice sector.