Bringing EU Human Centered Design to BC

This three year project aims to engage European and North American researchers with BC public sector organization policy makers and practitioners to build and sustain complaint system capacity in local government public sector organizations in B.C. It builds on a previous set of workshops which were co-funded by the Erasmus + Programme of the European Union through the Jean Monnet Chair in Innovative Governance (2018, Co-constructing Justice: Citizen-centered design for public service complaint systems).

Complaint System Design is about access to justice, and involves the creation of processes and systems to deal with repeated or systemic disputes: an effective complaint system inhabits a constitutionally significant space within public service organizations, making the justice journey more manageable and accessible for users. Therefore, the aim of this grant is to build on the EU advancements in human-centered, public sector complaint systems and harness EU knowledge to apply to public sector organizations in British Columbia. In this project we will study how to adapt and implement EU approaches to complaint system design, and apply these learnings to local governments in British Columbia, Canada.

Activities:

• Research: Researchers will engage and supervise graduate students to conduct pre-post evaluations of complaint system capacity building success in BC local government public sector organizations
• Outreach: 1) Training the Trainers Workshop, 2) two orientation workshops with public sector administrators and elected officials, and 3) a pilot training for 10 BC local governments. As well we will host a major international conference in Canada (Year 2)
• Teaching: an Open Online Course on complaint system design in public sector organizations

Outputs:

• 4 training workshops
• 1 international conference
• 1 open online course platform: DR509
• A research grant program for graduate students
• 20 trained practitioners in complaints system design
• 10 local governments in pilot
• Social media presence through Access to Justice: Centre for Excellence website, as well as Facebook and Twitter
• Publication: a Complaint Guide for BC local government officials

UVic Team:

Tara Ney

Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly

Partners:

Chris Gill, University of Glasgow

Jane Williams, Queen Margaret’s University,

Sabine Junginger, University of Lucerne

Chris Gill, BC Office of the Ombudsperson

Local Government Management Association

Union of British Columbia Municipalities

Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing

Robert Lapper, School of Law, University of Victoria