8 / 32
8
/ Canadian Government Executive
// April 2016
Strategy
Nestor
Arellano
Connectingwith the Young:
Ontario’s EO Live Chat
Y
ears and years ago when I was unemployed, being able
to speak with a live person at the employment office was
important to me. Waiting for nearly an hour in line or
on the phone queue was a given, but I still believed that
connecting with a real person was the best way I could convey my
concerns and receive the services I needed.
The new cohort of job seekers today still have pretty much the
same needs as I had back then, but their preferred mode of commu-
nication has changed drastically. Whether they’re navigating the
city streets with smartphones in hand, working away at their desks
on laptops or seating at the coffee shop and Web browsing on their
tablets or “chatting” with someone, they are exchanging text mes-
sages with another person using their mobile devices. It’s the way
people complain to customer service agents about a product they
purchased, reach out to friends and relatives on social networks,
and how political parties connect with their constituents.
Connecting with clients in the mobile age
Research conducted by the ministry indicated that this age group,
which is on track to become the province’s largest demographic,
was not likely to seek support by phone or email.
“Our clients needed an accessible way to connect with the gov-
ernment in real-time,” said Mary Joe Freire, director of the West-
ern Region of the Employment Training Division. “They needed
a way to access services that help them with their job interviews,
skills with literacy and apprenticeship training services.”
It was with this mind that Ontario’s Ministry of Training, Colleg-
es and Universities (MTCU) launched the “Employment Ontario
Live Chat” program in 2015. It was a solution developed by the
ministry’s Employment and Training Division to provide an inno-
vative alternative for Ontarians, especially youth who are among
the most vulnerable in the labour market. The objective was to
provide a tool to connect with the government and to access the
services they need through the method they preferred.
“Youth unemployment in Ontario is almost 17 per cent,” accord-
ing to David Fulford, assistant deputy minister, employment and
training division. “Forty per cent of our clients are between the
ages of 15 and 29. Not many of these people like to talk on the
phone.”
EO Live Chat was seen as a way of providing a new communica-
tions and service tool to enable government departments to reach
a more diverse group of clients, especially those who use commu-
nications technologies in their daily lives.
We’ve never done it this way before
When the EO Live Chat team got down to work, they realized the
enormity of the challenges before them.
“We had to integrate Live Chat with multiple tech platforms
within the university and elsewhere,” said Soussan Tabari, chief
information officer and assistant deputy minister at the Ontario
Ministry of Education.
The team had to open the government Web service to the pub-
lic, a move which came with the inherent possibility of security
risks. The team had to reconfigure and link servers between min-
istries to accommodate new public facing access ports within in-
ternal servers as well as the associated increase in data traffic.
The operation of Live Chat also had to comply with legislative
requirement covering the archiving of interactions, protection of
client privacy and meet the OPS privacy legislative requirements.
There were also concerns about preserving a positive image of
the government and fears regarding “negative interactions.”
During the pilot testing, technical issues and potential barri-
ers were raised by various partners. Another worry was about
the ability of the Employment Ontario Contact Centre (EOCC) to
manage and deliver EO Live Chat.
Other challenges to implementation included: ensuring com-
pliance with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act
(AODA); identifying financial resources to develop and maintain
Live Chat; navigating numerous OPS guidelines, policies and pro-
cedures; and working with diverse groups with different needs.
Taking all these into consideration the EO Live Chat team was
to accomplish its mission within the current budget and without
hiring additional staff.
Partnering to Get it Done
The EOCC worked with many partners with diverse needs, in-
cluding: Community Service Cluster (Information and Informa-
tion Technology (CSC I&IT Cluster), the Government Services
Integration Cluster (GSIC) and Infrastructure Technology Ser-
vices (ITS), MTCU Communications, Cabinet Office, I&IT Acces-
sibility Centre of Excellence (Ministry of Community and Social
Services), Cyber Security, Ministry of Government and Consumer
Services (MGCS), Information Privacy and Archives, MTCU legal
counsel, the MGCS Architecture Review Board, MGCS Enterprise
Classification Unit, Human Resources, OPS Employee Union and
EOCC staff.
With no less than thirteen different departments involved, it
meant working with multiple governance structures and making
sure all the stakeholders were adequately informed in a timely
manner.