A summary of GNB's social reform direction and the human-centred design approach that will drive the transition from current to desired systems.
To tackle broad-ranging recommendations, GNB must ensure efforts account for immediate needs while also investing in upstream work that enables the transition to desired future systems.
Understanding, monitoring, and improving client experience
Mapping services to deepen understanding and facilitate collaboration
Creating data sharing agreements and making non-confidential work accessible
Establishing cross-departmental teams to build lateral collaboration and coordinate efforts across the organization
Ensuring open access to shared resources internally to help with policy and service design — data, research, strategies
Leveraging existing technology infrastructure and prioritizing interconnections between departmental systems
Investing time and money for teams to learn, experiment with novel solutions, and diffuse insights across the organization
Preparing our workforce to be adaptive, creative, and empathic through training, practice, and support
Questioning foundational practices like:
How do we collect, manage, and learn from data?
How are we structured and evaluated?
How are funds budgeted and monitored?
What are the expectations for services and results?
There is a renewed emphasis on how the government will approach its work. These working principles center New Brunswickers in the design and evaluation of services — amplifying the importance of changing internal practices in response to recent challenges.
These principles amplify the importance of changing internal practices in response to the challenges laid out in recent reports — and affirm that GNB must do better in responding to complex social issues facing the Province.
This requires GNB to tackle urgent needs while also re-imagining structures upstream to help transition from the current system to the desired future state.
Interactions focused on prioritizing prescribed rules and conditions of narrow service scope.
Planning, response, and investments primarily guided by financial considerations and reacting to problems.
Work, data, and services managed by departments with limited shared access and coordinated services.
GNB to shift how we:
Interactions centered on need and connection, focused on prioritizing prevention services.
Planning, response, and investment guided by preventing, anticipating, and adjusting to needs and changes.
Collaboration and collective advancement through sharing data, resources, and designing integrated services.
To support GNB's shift toward a more relational, resilient, and integrated system, the following areas must be given focused investment. Each represents a distinct layer — from foundational systems to immediate team capability.
Preparing our workforce to be adaptive, creative, and empathic through training, practice, and support
Enabling Collaboration — establishing cross-departmental connections to build lateral collaboration and coordinate efforts
Invest in exploring foundational practices like:
How do we collect, manage, and learn from data?
How are we structured and evaluated?
How are funds budgeted and monitored?
What are the expectations for services and results?
Ensuring open access to shared resources internally for policy and service design — data, research, strategies
Creating data sharing agreements in programs that touch or influence one another; increasing awareness of access rights
Investing time and money into teams mandated and equipped to go from discovery to solution with openness to novel approaches
Leveraging existing technology infrastructure and prioritizing connectivity between departmental systems and employee networks
Understand client experience by measuring, improving, and monitoring the impact of projects using Good Services and other standards as guides
Offer essential training in authentic engagement and prototyping to policy and program design teams actively leading this work
Lead discovery research linked to GNB's policy process to find ways to integrate user-centered design and test concepts
Work with some policy teams to apply user-centered design practices into a policy process and share applicable learnings to others across the organization
Three system-level shifts from the 2024 Advocate reports
The 2024 reports from the Office of the Child, Youth, and Seniors' Advocate outlined three major system-level transformations — mapping where GNB currently operates to where it must go. Each transformation requires GNB to fundamentally shift how it designs services, structures planning, and leads change.
Interactions focused on prioritizing prescribed rules and conditions of narrow service scope.
Planning, response, and investments are primarily guided by financial considerations and reacting to problems.
Work, data, and services are managed by departments with limited shared access and examples of coordinated services.
GNB to shift how we:
Interactions centered on need and connection, focused on prioritizing prevention services.
Planning, response, and investment guided by preventing, anticipating, and adjusting to needs and changes.
Collaboration and collective advancement prized and achieved through sharing of data, resources, and designing integrated services.