OSAP Website Repositioning: Creating Value for All Students Beyond Financial Assistance

1. Proposed idea

The Ontario Government provides a multitude of valuable resources available for students online, but they are all scattered across different websites, they don’t offer integration between each other, and they are not very intuitive through their user interface. The Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) website is an example of these flaws but has a great opportunity to become more than what it currently is.

My idea is to reposition and redesign the OSAP website as a portal of valuable information for students throughout the various stages of their post-secondary education (before, during, and after). It will aim to enhance the support to students beyond financial aid to become a one-stop shop for all available assistance from the Ontario Government, by utilizing the data collected from users to create a personalized experience and partnering with different government programs/ services to aggregate their resources into a single site. This will be done by creating the following 3 key sections in the newly redesigned OSAP website:

Getting Started (Before): To help students take the right steps prior to starting school, this first section will include services such as school research tools, graduate employment rates, University and College application centres, and the existing financial assistance functionality.

Study Time (During): The second section will focus on creating added value to students during their study period. Services such as a resume and cover letter builder, news feeds based on their field of study, links to student experience opportunities (supplementary education, networking events, summer job postings), and resources to manage the stress of student life will expand the benefits the OSAP site provides and entice students to visit it more often.

Career Launch (After): Lastly, the objective of the third section of the new website will be to help students successfully launch their career post-graduation. It will highlight services like the Ontario Job Bank to provide filtered full-time job posting related to their field of study and location, months ahead of their graduation date to improve their chances to find a position straight out of school. There will also be additional information about financial literacy to make long-term savings as well as student loan repayment assistance.

2. Anticipated impact on Ontarians (who benefits)

This idea is anticipated to impact the entire student population of Ontario which is estimated to be close to 900,000 people according to Statistics Canada. Since the concept is to move beyond the current single service of financial aid, the site would become available for any type of student whether they are receiving grants and loans or not. This includes the ever-increasing population of international students that are not eligible for OSAP.

3. Two potential risks and mitigation strategies

Costs: The monetary resources required to implement this idea are a definite risk as it calls for a website redesign and the cost associated with the efforts to create the partnerships with the other government programs/ services.

To mitigate this risk, my suggested strategy would be to work on budget reallocation. Since there is going to be an amalgamation of a number of other existing services, there is the possibility to shift or combine some of the funds to subsidize this project.

Time: The proposed website repositioning and redesign will require considerable time to implement in order to deliver a valuable product. Creating the partnerships will not be quick for every single program/ service and the redesign of the site will need several iteration tests and troubleshooting.

My suggested strategy to mitigate this risk will be to begin the partnership acquisition process and website development as soon as possible since they can be done simultaneously, and work off each other. In terms of ensuring the site is not down for too long, the tests and maintenance should be done at low traffic times that can be analyzed through data collected from previous years.

4. Performance measures and approach to evaluate the idea’s effectiveness

This will be done through SMART objectives (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time bound) including but not limited to the expected (1) increase in the graduation rate and graduate employment rate, (2) decrease in time it takes students to become employed post-graduation, (3) increase average visits to the OSAP website, (4) increase user satisfaction, and (5) number of government program/ service partners acquired. This would be an ongoing process but the cut off date for analyzing the effectiveness of the idea could be 1 year after initial roll out.

5. Alignment to a current government priority

Prepare people for jobs: By providing easier access to all the available government resources, students will be more inclined to research and get involved in extra-curricular activities that enhance their knowledge about their field of study and have valuable experience to become more competitive when applying to jobs.

This will give them the opportunity to land a position in a shorter time frame post-graduation, begin to repay their debts sooner, start saving for other milestones, and have better equipped to afford a comfortable life by earning a competitive wage through their job in their chosen field of study.