Affordability Payment Program
Providing Ways to Deliver Relief Payments to 1.5 Million Albertans in 8 Weeks
In late 2022, rising costs of food, housing, and energy created financial pressure for Albertans. The Government of Alberta wanted to deliver immediate relief, but no fast or scalable system existed to send payments directly to people’s bank accounts. Printing and mailing cheques would have been too slow and costly to drive the intended impact.
In response, J5 designers worked alongside six ministries to deliver the Affordability program and payment portal in 8 weeks, a record time for a government service to be ready to serve millions at once.
INDUSTRY
Government
CLIENT
Government of Alberta
WHY IT MATTERS
The Affordability Payment Program provided Albertans with fast, direct financial relief during a time of rising costs. By making the process simple and accessible, the portal ensured that seniors, families, and vulnerable individuals received support when they needed it most. Beyond immediate relief, the project demonstrated that government can deliver secure, user-friendly digital services at speed, building trust with the public and creating reusable systems for future programs.
PROCESS HIGHLIGHTS
J5 service designers unified six ministries, citizen groups, and partners around a shared problem picture, coordinating workflows from call centers to finance.
Processes were made simple, accessible, and streamlined so all Albertans could easily access relief payments.
Journey mapping, prototyping, and backend simulations surfaced pain points early, avoiding costly fixes later.
Designers bridged the citizen-facing portal with the policies, systems, and staff processes working behind the scenes.
Impact
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User Level
140,000 applications were successfully processed for payment within the first 24 hours of the portal opening with no outages.
Between Jan and June 2023, $770M worth of payments were issued to 1.3M Albertans through the portal.
Average time to complete the online application was 2 minutes.
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Employee Level
Automation eliminated the need to manually check 1.5M applications, making the process manageable without large-scale hiring or training.
Existing government services continued without disruption, reducing strain on staff workloads.
Staff capacity was freed to focus on in-person applicants and support the most vulnerable Albertans.
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Organizational Level
Set a new model for service delivery by combining citizen-trusted digital experiences with strategic partnerships, creating scalable programs that reduce overhead and free teams to focus on innovation.
Delivered efficiency and savings through reusable modules, fewer vendor contracts, and reduced duplication, enabling faster speed to market for future projects.
Built trust and resilience with consistent digital services and tested components that improved reliability, reduced errors, and strengthened citizen confidence.
