Ministry of Social Development scopes new kiosk service for its centres

The Ministry of Social Development is set to transform the Front of House experience for its 1.1 million client base and has issued a Request for Information (RFI) for an online self-service solution that can be delivered to over 120 sites nationwide.

“It’s really important that our clients can easily access the information and support that’s right for them. We want to provide information on eligibility in a range of ways and self-service in our centres is a great way of making information easily accessible,” says Group General Manager, Strategy and Change Liz Jones says.

“We are looking to see what is available to improve our self-service solutions, and we have issued an RFI for our kiosk service as the contract is up for renewal. We’re really looking forward to seeing what’s available so we can be sure that we continue to provide the best service to our clients.”

The RFI notes that the current solution is a one-size-fits-all ‘Kiosk’ accessible within service centres, with 760 self-service kiosks operating across 135 sites. A previous kiosk solution hit the headlines in 2012 when a major security flaw was discovered and shut down.

“The current kiosk solution is not the same solution that was permanently shut down in October 2012,” Jones says. “An external provider (Spark) now provides the Kiosk service. Spark did rigorous security and penetration testing as part of the implementation. The current solution is physically separated from our own network. No security breaches have occurred since the solution was implemented. Annual penetration tests are undertaken by Spark and we receive weekly reports from the provider.”

The Ministry is responsible for providing services to over one million people, and administers over $18 billion a year in financial assistance, processes 45 million transactions, meets with clients face-to-face 2.3 million times and takes around nine million phone calls.

“We take the privacy and security of our client’s personal information very seriously.  Our procurement process will include specialised security knowledge on the evaluation panel. The solution we select will undergo significant testing and we will use a certification and accreditation process to evaluate and certify the solution prior to implementation,” Jones says.

In the RFI respondents are asked to provide a range of potential options, with indicative costs. “We are not looking for a lot of details, just a few pages to give us a flavour of the possible. This could inform our strategy and how we go about developing our subsequent procurement needs.”