Life events

The life event approach provides an overview of the end-to-end experience of people’s interactions with government and third parties during key life events.

The approach gives a human-centred picture of government services. It stretches beyond the boundaries of a single service, agency, or jurisdiction. It also allows us to identify findings and opportunities for whole-of-government service improvements, which provide a seamless end-to-end experience for people and businesses.

Life event journeys

A life event is an event in a person’s life where they experience a major change. This may be planned or unplanned. For example, the birth of a child or losing a job.

A life event journey is the description of a person’s experience from trigger to outcome. It describes the tasks, activities and interactions people will complete to reach the outcome. For example, for the ‘Having a baby’ life event, the journey can include all activities from planning a pregnancy through to caring for a newborn.

These journeys are visualised through life event journey maps, which help us see the holistic picture of people’s experience. This includes a view of people’s pain points and the interactions between different levels of government and third parties.

To access our life event journey maps please visit our Life Event Communities.

Value of the life event approach

During key life events people need a higher level of interaction with government. Developing services based on life events allows government to deliver high impact support to people when they need it the most.

By taking a life event approach, we can focus on what people need to do to meet their needs, across multiple agencies and levels of government. With this approach we can look at what is happening holistically. It helps us identify common or systemic problems impacting people’s access to services. It also shows:

• the relationship between services
• service gaps
• service duplication
• pain points caused by accessing multiple services at the same time.

Ultimately, this approach helps us find opportunities to better connect our products and services to improve people’s experience, across all agencies or jurisdictions.