Having already developed a similar application with the Government of British Columbia our team felt privileged to now have the opportunity to assist Alberta. BC made the decision to open-source the code for their solution, so with this starting point, we also felt well prepared to help craft a solution that aligns with the needs of the Government of Alberta and their citizens.

The Returning Traveller Outreach Program for COVID-19 is a robust system, with 3 different components working together and yet it’s only a small part of Alberta’s effort to implement a human-centred response to the pandemic. However, with this solution in place, the province has already saved many labour hours for government agents while providing peace of mind to thousands of travellers and residents.

Tracking Follow Ups

To protect its citizens, the government also needed to be able to follow up promptly with all incoming travellers to ensure they are following self-isolation protocol. Agents needed to make a record for each call made, including the date and time. This was again done manually using the problematic Excel file; with many calls for each of the many cases, this was taking a significant amount of time.

Aligning Policy and Public Services

Presented with these challenges, Alberta needed to rapidly align policy intentions with the delivery of public services amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Alberta government wanted to address these challenges head-on and ensure Service Alberta agents would be able to follow up quickly and efficiently with citizens once the self-isolation website went live. So our team set out to design and build a solution to replace and improve upon the existing Excel / SharePoint system.

The first component is a web based application that allows travellers arriving from diverse origins to submit a form as they return to Alberta. As travellers complete this form they provide information about their self-isolation plan including where they are staying, who they are staying with, and their ability to fulfill basic needs while in isolation (food, transportation, etc). 

Once they submit this form, they are given a confirmation number which screening agents will use to look up that traveller once they arrive.

The form was built to be viewed and completed easily on any browser and any device. Once this form is submitted their plan is on file and will be awaiting review at the Screener Portal when they arrive in Alberta.

Once a passenger arrives in Alberta, agents review the self-isolation plan that was filed via the second component of the system –  the Screener Portal. To begin their assessment, screening agents will look up a traveller by name or confirmation number.

Automated Assessment of Plans

When a traveller arrives, their isolation plan will have been automatically marked with a status based on the travellers input. A red “isolation plan status” tells the agent a traveller has given information which suggests they likely need support or more information from Service Alberta. For example they may be staying with an at-risk individual or not have the means to properly self-isolate.

A green status suggests the traveller has a suitable isolation plan and no immediate flags. With agents screening every person entering Alberta, the screening process can be time consuming. This status helps them know when to dig deeper and more easily identify which of the dozens or hundreds of travellers likely need more attention.

Determining if Support is Needed

Regardless of the suggested status, screening agents will always make the final determination and mark each plan as “Support Required” or “No Support Required”. They will make notes to support that determination, as well as what the traveller’s needs are. This can be reviewed by the eventual case agent who will be following up with that traveller.

Service Alberta agents can then triage cases more effectively and get the right resources to incoming travellers quickly, ensuring everyones can self-isolate properly and reduce the risk of exposure.

With the exception of exempt workers, all travellers who arrive in Alberta and then screened will have a case created for them. This case is then added into the database of the Service Alberta portal.

The Service Alberta portal is the biggest component of the system. Within this web application is where Service Alberta agents perform the actual case management activities.

Filtering and Sorting

A case is created in the database for all travellers who arrive in Alberta and complete the screening process. Within the portal agents will see a list of all cases, which they can then filter to see only cases that:

• • have not yet been assigned to an agent
  • are assigned to themselves
  • are completed – traveller has completed their self-isolation period

In each filtered view, key information like the travellers name, status, and arrival date is still visible and can be used to further sort the list of cases. This filtering and sorting within the database helps each agent efficiently triage cases in order to follow up with the most pressing ones.

Case Assignment

Agents can filter to see unassigned cases which they can pick up for processing by assigning a record to themselves. Cases can be easily reassigned to other agents along the way, allowing the entire team to work together to efficiently manage the workload for Service Alberta.

Updating Status and Notes

For the cases an agent is assigned, they are responsible for following up with those travellers. Each time an agent makes a call they use the simple drop down menu to update the status of the case. Status options were carried over from the old system to ease the change management process.

If and when a traveller is contacted, they will also enter notes with pertinent information as to whether the individual has been able to properly self-isolate. Agents no longer have to record the time and date of when calls were made, as the system now does this automatically based on status updates and recorded notes.

Reporting

Alberta Health Services has a separate login access to the portal as well. This allows them to generate reports based on the aggregated information that is being provided by the Service Alberta agents.

Building a Team

The Kaizen approach facilitates continuous development in the course of change.In practice, this influenced not only the solution we were creating, but how we were creating it. Our team continuously experimented with small changes in our way of working with a new partner team – adopting the change if it worked in a given context, and abandoning it if it didn’t.

The results of this approach became manifest in many ways by allowing us to:

• identify existing or expected challenges

• mitigate security and privacy risks

• confirm benefits that needed to be realized

• keep desirable functions and features of both models

Minimizing User Errors

From research and experience, we knew that there would be many cases of user errors, such as typos. So our team implemented drop-downs for a variety of fields, including: countries, airport names, travellers’ border crossings / ports of entry, and more.

Zero Downtime Deployment

We knew from working on BC’s solution that we were likely going to learn many things in production, so it was essential for us to be able to respond to changes swiftly without scheduling deployment windows. To address this need, our team set up zero downtime deployments using the blue-green deployment approach from the get-go, prior to launch.

Privacy and Security

As a contractor to the Government of Alberta, we are considered an affiliate of healthcare data under Alberta’s Health Information Act. This additional responsibility lent itself well to following the principles of security by design and the principle of least privilege. Similar to B.C., travellers can only post information to the system, and do not have read access. Access to screeners and Service Alberta agents is tightly controlled. IPs are whitelisted and federated authentication in place to ensure only the right individuals have access. As an added layer of protection, Service Alberta agents are only shown information that is needed for them to perform their duties.