Who we worked with
Manaaki Tairāwhiti and Ministry of Social
Development
What we did together
GovTech Accelerator
Aotearoa spends more than 50 billion dollars annually on social services that are designed to help everyone thrive. However, these services inadvertently create barriers. Over the last five years, Manaaki Tairāwhiti – an Iwi-led place based initiative – has spearheaded systemic change in the social services sector. The current tool used for collecting whānau needs is not fit for purpose and does not provide real-time data.
“Urungi is a tool that communicates the experiences of whānau to social sector decision-makers in real-time, highlighting gaps and barriers put in place by the system as well as what whānau needs aren’t being met.”
Leslynne Jackson
Manaaki Tairāwhiti, Programme lead
How we did it
The GovTech accelerator helped the Manaaki Tairāwhiti team by addressing 3 main areas:
Cross-agency and community collaboration
This was a joint project between the Ministry of Social Development and Manaaki Tairāwhiti who worked closely with their front-line navigators, iwi, government officials and community providers to successfully create a solution that works across the system.
Testing, iterating and validating a solution with users
The team utilised low-cost, effective methods of testing prototypes with front-line navigators. This allowed them to ensure Urungi is user-centric and fit-for-purpose.
Cost-saving
By experimenting, testing and validating a tool that does not require complex or expensive development, the team is able to significantly reduce costs incurred by creating a bespoke tool
The result
With the support of the GovTech Accelerator, the Manaaki Tairāwhiti team has developed Urungi.
Urungi is a platform that captures whānau needs, as described by whānau and system barriers from a whanau perspective. Urungi will make the task of gathering information quick and easy for those on the front line.
It uses a simple messaging application that aggregates this information into a dashboard, in real-time, to inform leaders of areas requiring action/change for system improvement.
The project team also secured funding from the The Digital Government Partnership
Innovation Fund and was awarded the $50,000 sponsor prize from the Westpac NZ Government Innovation Fund.
