MyACC for Business: A successful digital government case study

ACC is responsible for the operation of New Zealand’s national accident compensation scheme which helps individuals recover from accident-caused injuries in the workplace and elsewhere. ACC is a Crown entity governed by a ministerially appointed board. Its legislated mandate is to “provide a fair and sustainable scheme for managing personal injury that has, as its overriding goals, minimizing both the overall incidence of injury in the community, and the impact of injury on the community (including economic, social, and personal costs)” (Accident Compensation Act 2001 s3). MyACC for Business is one of several web-based digital platforms developed and maintained by ACC to serve as a dedicated self-service channel via the internet for a particular client group, in this case ACC’s business customers. This custom-built browser-based web application allows businesses to easily access their documents, payments and reports where and when they want to, ultimately to help them protect and insure their most important asset - their people. The MyACC for Business application is built from different components, predominantly using two frameworks. Springboot is ACC’s backend framework, using Java software. This manages any business logic and connections to core systems where business customer data is mastered. Within Springboot, ACC uses things like Spring-data/Spring-JPA to manage the connections to the ACC business customer database and maintains models in a sensible way. React provides a frontend framework. React controls the user interface and user look and feel. Within the user interface, a library - which is React-bootstrap - brings in re-useable user interface (UI) components. The development of the MyACC for Business channel was commenced in 2016. It was an operational self-service channel for business customers and their agents at the time this case study was conducted in 2020. Its agile development and maintenance is ongoing for as long as ACC identifies new benefits to be gained. This web-based channel is not a stand-alone development but as indicated in the technical description above, is reliant on other digital products, platforms and databases operated by ACC. This means that our case study also touches these other systems. We note where important technical systems and business processes on which MyACC for Business relies needed to be updated before the vision and benefits of the MyACC for Business could proceed or be fully realised. The research focuses on the factors that assisted (or hindered) the success of MyACC for Business’ creation and functionality. It delves into the lessons learned by the organization in the process of its development with the intent that other organizations might find them useful. We have used the term project as a collective noun for this development because this term is in common across the digital government sphere in New Zealand and elsewhere. We note here however that ACC people most usually refer to this development as a digital ‘product’ and eschew the notion of a project that has a timeframe and sequence of steps known at the start. The reasons for this should become more apparent in the reading of the case study but it is essentially a service that is undergoing continuous adaptation. Document review and interviews with key actors within ACC during 2020 are the source data for the identification of the factors leading to the creation of a successful public sector digital government initiative. Our working definition of successful is that the product is in use and delivering benefits for customers and the digital service owner.