# Vignette 24: Guinea-Bissau's notary office
UNDP Guinea-Bissau's Accelerator Lab began exploring the country's access to basic public services with an extensive field assessment, visiting every region and sector, mapping 165 solutions, and conducting collective intelligence workshops with diverse stakeholders. This revealed a clear pattern: access to justice was a significant challenge for citizens, with the Notary Office, the busiest service point within the Ministry of Justice, where several common service delivery issues emerged.
To understand the challenges at the Notary Office, the team ran a series of workshops using a problem tree analysis, behavioral analysis, and other methods to tap into stakeholders' collective intelligence. Through interviews with 255 users and 40 staff, they discovered that inadequate physical spaces were creating tension between staff and citizens, compromising safety during COVID-19, and making service delivery inefficient.[\[1\]](#endnote-1)
Collaborating with the Ministry of Justice, they initiated a participatory redesign process. This involved using a time-lapse video of interactions around the service desks (Figure 39) to highlight problems and conducting workshops where staff and users collaboratively identified root causes and proposed solutions. The team then introduced practical changes like organized seating, clear queue systems, protective screens, and dedicated security personnel. The Ministry of Justice further demonstrated ownership by funding the implementation of these solutions, ensuring the redesign effectively addressed the needs of both staff and users.
The results showed significant improvements in both user and staff satisfaction across multiple measures - from service delivery to perceived safety.[\[2\]](#endnote-2) What started as a prototype in a single office began influencing how other departments thought about their public spaces. For instance, the Building and Automobile Record’s Office, also took inspiration from the process at the Notary Office and used a similar approach to space arrangement.
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#### **Key takeaways:**
* **Keep experiments simple and visible:** Design solutions that are easy to understand and demonstrate clear benefits, as these are more likely to be adopted by others.
* **Design with users, not just for them:** Involve key stakeholders in the design process to ensure solutions meet real needs and create momentum for change.
* **Look for ripple effects:** Track the broader impacts of your experiments and monitor how they might influence other areas or systems within the organization.
* **Stay engaged during scaling:** Continue to provide guidance and gather insights as solutions are adopted, adapted, and implemented across new contexts.
{% endhint %}
***
## Notes
1. Bergh Lopes da Costa (2021) [↑](#endnote-ref-1)
2. See Bergh Lopes da Costa (2022) for a more detailed report on the results, as well as situational overview of the notary, before and after the remodeling. [↑](#endnote-ref-2)
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