Case Studies

A developed nation was unifying their methods of paying benefits to citizens. This would be achieved by issuing 10s of millions of citizens with a unified payment entitlement card. The card offered many advantages, including cost savings and fraud avoidance.

Nonetheless there were more complex issues to be addressed in terms of the perceptions of the card in the minds of various groups of citizens, lawmakers and the employees of the diverse range of agencies currently providing the services.

A global consultancy was providing a wide range of services within the programme. Despite their presence there was a widespread recognition of the need to obtain a comprehensive package of training, mentoring, consultancy and audit in benefits management that sat within the wider discipline of programme management.

It was vital that the selected vendor had impeccable credentials, and could offer a full range of training and consultancy services. Furthermore they would have to base their work on widely recognised international standards while adding genuine value to the publicly available advice.

After a global search the card office concluded that only AFA could meet these challenging conditions. AFA put together a tailored package that consisted of:

• Training in programme management using MSP to foundation,practitioner and advanced practitioner levels for staff from the central card office and a wide range of existing payment agencies
• Complementary training for staff who had conducted the programme management training and others in both:
  • Benefits Modelling and
  • Realising benefits through the life of the programme

During this training the payment card was used as a case study, so that the delegates would have the chance to apply newly acquired skills to their own work. At the end of the course the delegates conducted a substantial amount of action planning in order to prepare for a benefits management workshop to be held the following day.

AFA's trainer/consultant also carried out a high level review of the existing benefits documents using AFA's decision gate process and provided mentoring for a newly appointed benefits coordinator by developing an iterative and pragmatic approach for her to take as her role developed.

Our consultant then went on to facilitate the Benefits Management Workshop at which a wider group created a more comprehensive benefits management action plan. This group then went on to apply some of the newly acquired techniques to model the programme benefits

Only the previous week the programme had been examined by the upper house of the national parliament. AFA were able to put this development within the context of the benefits model and propose specific actions to ensure that the programme met the needs of parliamentarians.

Finally the AFA consultant presented both the benefits management audit and action plan to senior decision makers.

In the future AFA expects to provide on going mentoring, further training and specialist benefits management audit services to the programme.