Pama Platform

OVERVIEW

Pama Platform (or ‘Pama’) is a Try, Test and Learn (TTL) initiative, co-designed with Cape York people and funded by the Department of Social Services (DSS). It uses agile delivery techniques to innovate the linking of Indigenous individuals and families in Cape York to opportunities. It does this in a way that can provide strong scaffolding to help people to move from the passive welfare system to a virtuous circle of change, where success breeds greater success. Focusing on five key domains—money management, education, health, home ownership and employment—the Platform, once fully developed, will amalgamate and enhance existing Opportunity Products and services delivered by the O-Hubs. Pama will streamline these into a single, userfacing, secure, mobile-friendly, responsive web-based application.

Pama’s first release (launched in February 2021) provides users with access to key features that support employment and money management such as uploading a job profile and completing a budget online. The Platform also offers a community calendar and noticeboard, which enables users to keep up to date with local events and activities in their community. In the second half of 2021, users will be able to open Opportunity Accounts—a key pillar of the Pama innovation. It will enable them to allocate a portion of their income towards certain goals according to their life stages such as child-rearing expenses, education, personal development and home ownership. These funds will be ‘locked’ to prevent access except for the dedicated purpose, which will aid in building personal wealth as well as protecting individuals from exploitation and negative behaviours. These features of Pama build financial capability and a sense of achievement by providing visibility of account balances and leveraging lessons from behavioural economics to reward positive actions and nudge individuals towards their targets through a credit points system. Incentives, funded by the National Indigenous Australians Agency and co-designed with Cape York people, are tailored to encourage ongoing engagement with the Platform and incentivise consistent contributions to Opportunity Accounts. The Platform can be accessed at mypama.com.au.

MEMBERSHIP

TOTAL USERS 228 Pama Platform user accounts had been created by the end of June.1 BUDGETS 22 Quick Budgets and 12 Detailed Budgets were completed by users between January–June to gain a greater understanding of their current financial position. JOB PROFILES 19 Job Profiles were completed by users to prepare for employment opportunities.

HOW DOES PAMA BUILD CAPACITY AND REDUCE WELFARE DEPENDENCY?

Welfare payments generate more income for Indigenous individuals and families than most entry-level jobs or opportunities in the Cape York region. This creates a barrier to seeking out training or employment and traps people on the ‘welfare pedestal’. Taking into account this context, Pama seeks to engage users and encourage them to take up opportunities to build personal capacity in five domains— money management, education, health, home ownership and employment. The Platform instils and relies on users to be self-reliant, and take actions for themselves. They complete their budgets, upload documents, create resumes, contribute to their Opportunity Accounts and check their balances. The Platform is inherently designed to maximise self-help.

The first release of Pama contains features for the Minimal Viable Product (MVP) that satisfies the immediate needs of the user base within available funding provisions. The capability building features available at the end of June were:

• Budgeting tools—users have access to a Quick Budget that provides a snapshot of their financial situation, or a

Detailed Budget that captures all income and expenditure by type and outlines potential for savings; and • Job profile—an in-app resume builder that captures education and employment history, and more. It creates a personalised PDF resume the user can download and circulate to potential employers. The suite of capability building opportunities available on the Platform will expand to include: Opportunity Account balances and the ability to action purchases; money management training tools; automated reminders from community calendars; booking medical appointments at incommunity health clinics; and more.

BUILD FINANCIAL CAPABILITY

Provide an opportunity to build financial capability through budgeting skills and oversight of Opportunity Accounts.

IMPROVE SOCIAL CONNECTION

Facilitate social connectedness through Pama events, and promotion of local community events on the Pama Calendar and Community Noticeboard.

ENCOURAGE POSITIVE BEHAVIOURS Provide reminders, encouragement and exposure to digestible information that helps to improve decision-making and behaviours.

NUDGES

Nudges, or notifications, are sent to users to encourage ongoing engagement with platform features (e.g. encourage users to complete a budget). SMS and email nudges commenced in mid-May, and included: alerts about new Pama features; tips on resetting passwords; details on upcoming Pama challenges; information on points and redeeming rewards; and tips about the Pama features, how they are helpful and why they should be completed. POINTS AND REWARDS

Pama includes gamification through points and rewards to encourage consistent platform engagement and contributions. Users can earn points by regularly contributing to Opportunity Accounts and for completing tasks on Pama. These points can be redeemed for rewards in the form of vouchers or as Opportunity Account credit.

At 30 June, users had earnt more than 13,520 points. Over the rest of 2021, Pama will be encouraging users to accumulate more points and highlight how these points can be utilised for real rewards. CALENDAR AND NOTICEBOARD

The Pama Dashboard includes a noticeboard and a calendar of events that is specific to the community/ies the user has affiliated with (users can link to more than one Cape York community in their profile). These features highlight events and notices across the community, and are not restricted to CYP entities and events—any service provider can opt into having their events showcased. Between February to June for example, Aurukun Shire Council requested Pama include details of events for their school holiday program.

Pama, available online at mypama.com.au, is a user-friendly, easy to navigate platform. Some of the most popular features to date are the budgeting tools, which allow users to assess their current financial situation (left), a dashboard upon login that shows the user’s current points balance and remaining tasks on their to-do list that can earn them more points (centre), and a community calendar (right) that showcases events occurring in community.

From February 8–12, the Pama Platform officially launched in Aurukun, Coen, Hope Vale and Mossman Gorge. In each community, O-Hub staff provided detailed information sessions outlining the Platform’s many features and benefits, and supported community members to create their online Pama accounts. Over the four days, 66 Pama users signed up on the spot to participate in this lifelong opportunity.

“Being able to see your financial goals and [incremental] achievements makes budgeting and saving seem more manageable.”

Keithean Bowen, Hope Vale Pama user

SMS and email nudges are sent to users on a weekly basis, as a means of prompting activity on the Platform. Pama Challenges are monthly, community specific competitions that encourage users to engage on the Platform and participate in some healthy competition. Two Pama Walking Challenges were held, in Hope Vale and Mossman Gorge, which saw challenge winners share in fabulous prizes. We look forward to holding more challenges in the months ahead that encourage more participation on Pama.

Users can access their Pama accounts online from any computer or mobile device. This includes through the self-service computers at their local O-Hubs, where they can ask O-Hub staff questions if required. In June, the Pama Project Team did an interactive demo of the Platform and, together with the Family Responsibilities Commission (FRC), explored ways in which Pama can support FRC clients in the near future.

“I really enjoyed competing against others. It kept me motivated to keep moving every day. Hopefully, more people will sign up for [future challenges]!”

Jasmine Salam, Mossman Gorge Pama Challenge Winner