With potential operational reviews on the horizon, there’s an opportunity to rethink how government departments assess effectiveness and identify areas for improvement. Traditional approaches to these reviews often focus on efficiency—cutting costs, streamlining processes, and finding quick fixes. But what if we took a different approach? One that puts people at the center of how services are designed and delivered?

This is where service design can play an important role. By mapping out the full picture—how employees, clients, and stakeholders experience government services—we can move beyond surface-level optimizations and uncover deeper systemic challenges. Service design allows us to visualize workflows, highlight pain points, and co-create solutions that aren’t just efficient but also effective and user-centric.

Instead of making changes in isolation, service design engages the people who use and deliver services to understand what’s working, what’s not, and where real opportunities for improvement exist. In this way, we can test and refine solutions before they’re implemented, reducing risk and ensuring that changes actually meet the needs of those they impact.

At a time when government departments are being asked to do more with less, this approach ensures that operational changes aren’t just about cutting but about creating better, more sustainable ways of working. It’s about embedding change management principles, fostering collaboration, and ensuring that innovation leads to real, measurable improvements.

If we focus solely on cuts and quick fixes, we risk creating short-term efficiencies at the expense of long-term effectiveness. Reducing resources without fully understanding service impacts can lead to bottlenecks, lower service quality, and frustrated employees and clients. Quick fixes often address symptoms rather than root causes, leading to recurring issues that drain time and resources later. Worse, rushed changes can erode trust, making it harder to implement meaningful improvements in the future.

Real transformation requires a deeper look—not just at what can be cut, but at what needs to be redesigned to work better.