Overview
This case study outlines the design and implementation of an Experience Model used to connect human-centred experiences with enterprise architecture, strategic planning, digital investment, and cross-agency transformation initiatives across Australia’s health, aged care and disability ecosystem.
The work addressed a common challenge across large government portfolios: strategy, policy, architecture, digital investment, and operational delivery were often being designed and governed in silos. While significant capability models, architecture artefacts and reform programs existed, there was no consistent mechanism to connect them back to the real experiences of people navigating the system.
The Experience Model established a shared experience-led structure that could align:
- Human-centred design
- Enterprise and Business Capability Models
- Business Architecture artefacts
- Strategic priorities and Business Motivation Models
- Digital investment planning
- Agency and ecosystem roles
- Future-state transformation planning
The model became a foundational artefact used to support strategic alignment, cross-agency collaboration, prioritisation, and future-state design.
Situation
Australia’s health, disability and aged care ecosystem is highly fragmented. Individuals, carers, providers and government agencies interact across multiple systems, policies, jurisdictions, funding models and regulatory environments.
Within the department and broader ecosystem, fragmented process models, inconsistent terminology and highly technical architecture artefacts made cross-functional alignment difficult. Transformation efforts often focused on systems and organisational structures rather than end-to-end human experiences, while digital strategies and investments lacked clear links to lived outcomes. Agencies also tended to operate within portfolio boundaries instead of shared experience journeys, making it difficult to identify gaps, duplication and whether the ecosystem was truly connected from a person’s perspective.
This created significant challenges:
- Duplication of effort
- Gaps between policy intent and lived experience
- Difficulty prioritising investment
- Inconsistent understanding across disciplines
- Limited ability to identify cross-agency dependencies
- Poor traceability between strategic outcomes and frontline experiences
There was a need for a unifying structure that could:
1. Start with human experiences
2. Connect strategic intent to operational delivery
3. Align architecture and investment decisions
4. Support future-state transformation planning
5. Be understandable across executive, policy, architecture, delivery and HCD audiences
Task
The objective was to design an experience-led model capable of:
- Mapping the full end-to-end experience ecosystem across health, aged care and disability
- Providing a stable “anchor” for transformation planning
- Aligning human experiences to enterprise capability models and architecture domains
- Creating traceability between strategic goals, digital priorities and operational initiatives
- Supporting future-state “Better Future” mapping
- Enabling cross-agency and cross-program alignment
- Translating complex architecture concepts into plain English
- Supporting investment planning and prioritisation
The model needed to operate across multiple sectors and agencies while remaining stable through organisational and policy change. It also had to scale from executive strategy through to delivery design, support both current and future-state transformation work, and be practical for multidisciplinary teams to apply in day-to-day planning and decision-making.
Action
1. Reframed Architecture Around Human Experiences
Instead of beginning with organisational structures, systems, or capabilities, the work began by identifying the major experience stages people move through across the ecosystem.
This resulted in the creation of an experience model that represented the end-to-end experiences involved in planning, accessing, delivering, funding, regulating and continuously improving services. The framework provided a stable foundation for connecting human experiences with business architecture, strategic planning and transformation activities across the ecosystem.
This approach was critical because organisations, programs, technologies and policies continually evolve, while the underlying experiences and needs of people remain comparatively stable. The model therefore provided a durable structure capable of supporting long-term transformation across reform cycles and machinery-of-government change.
2. Established the Model as the “Experience Anchor”
The model was intentionally positioned as the anchor layer between:
- Human-centred design
- Business architecture
- Digital strategy
- Policy design
- Investment planning
- Delivery roadmaps
This shifted conversations away from organisational ownership and towards the experiences being improved, creating stronger alignment across policy, architecture, strategy and delivery teams.
3. Mapped Enterprise Capability Models (ECM) to Experience Stages
A major component of the work involved aligning Enterprise Capability Models and Business Architecture artefacts to the Experience Model.
This included:
- Mapping L1 and L2 capabilities against experience stages
- Identifying where capabilities contributed to multiple experiences
- Revealing duplication and fragmentation
- Testing whether critical experiences had supporting capability coverage
- Highlighting gaps and over-concentration
This transformed traditionally abstract architecture artefacts into something stakeholders could understand through real-world experiences.
4. Connected Strategy and Business Motivation Models (BMM)
The model was aligned to strategic outcomes, digital priorities, objectives, tactics and investment horizons, creating clear traceability between government outcomes, strategic intent, human experiences, capabilities, investments and delivery initiatives.
This allowed teams to answer questions such as:
- Which experiences does this investment improve?
- Which strategic objectives does this capability support?
- Where are multiple programs solving the same problem?
- Which stages have the highest transformation pressure?
- Which experiences are under-served?
5. Developed “Better Future” Future-State Mapping
The model became the foundation for future-state transformation mapping. This included analysing current-state pain points, developing Better Future journeys and experience outcome statements, identifying opportunities, mapping cross-agency dependencies, and aligning the broader digital ecosystem around shared experiences.
The Better Future approach translated complex strategic intent into practical human outcomes that executives and delivery teams could clearly understand. Rather than framing transformation as technology delivery alone, the work focused on improving continuity of care, reducing administrative burden, creating more coordinated and inclusive experiences, simplifying navigation, and enabling better connected data and services across the ecosystem.
6. Applied the Model to Investment and Prioritisation
The Experience Model also supported Digital Investment Planning (DIP) and roadmap development by:
- Grouping investments around human outcomes
- Identifying duplicated initiatives
- Supporting prioritisation decisions
- Connecting roadmap activities to strategic intent
- Creating continuity across 2-year, 4-year and 10-year horizons
This shifted investment discussions away from funding individual systems and towards enabling better future experiences and outcomes across the ecosystem.
Result
The Experience Model became a foundational transformation artefact used to:
- Align multidisciplinary teams
- Connect strategy to delivery
- Translate architecture into human outcomes
- Support cross-agency transformation planning
- Improve strategic traceability
- Enable experience-led investment discussions
- Create shared language across business and technical domains
Key outcomes included:
Improved Strategic Alignment
Stronger Executive Engagement
Better Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration
Increased Visibility of Ecosystem Gaps
More Human-Centred Transformation Planning
This work repositioned business architecture and strategic transformation around human experiences rather than organisational structures or technology systems.
By establishing the Experience Model as a shared anchor across strategy, architecture, investment and service design, the approach created a scalable and durable model for aligning complex government ecosystems around real-world outcomes.
The result was stronger alignment, clearer traceability, improved collaboration, and a more human-centred foundation for long-term digital and service transformation across health, disability and aged care.