Introducing Service Blueprints to Support Digital Transformation at Canada National Defence

When modernizing a digital government service, it can be challenging to fully understand the scope of the work and its challenges.

Canada's National Defence Digital Services Group (DSG) faced this very issue. They needed a clearer picture of their services and processes to effectively advance their critical work in data management, cybersecurity and digital services. The stakes were high, and understanding their current state was a necessary first step.

That's where service blueprints came into play.

Last year, I was brought onto a project with DSG as a service designer. DSG was formed to unify the Chief Information Officer Group (CIOG) and the Digital Transformation Office (DTO). DSG plays a pivotal role in advancing digital transformation within the Department of National Defence (DND) and the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). 

When I first joined the team, I quickly recognized the need for a better understanding of their services and processes. Documenting how services operate across touchpoints is essential to achieving DSG’s goals of modernization and efficiency. To address this, I introduced and advocated for service blueprints.

What is a service blueprint?

A service blueprint is a visualization of the steps, touchpoints and behind-the scenes processes involved in delivering a specific service. They help teams identify inefficiencies, gaps and opportunities for improvement. Fundamentally, a service blueprint includes:

1. Customer actions: The steps customers take when interacting with a service.
2. Front-stage activities: Visible interactions between the service provider and the customer (e.g., speaking to support staff, using an online portal).
3. Back-stage activities: Internal processes that support front-stage activities but are not visible to customers (e.g., inventory management, data backup and security, supplier coordination).
4. Support processes: Systems, policies, and teams that enable the service to function.
5. Lines of interaction: Connections between customer actions and organizational activities.

“The service blueprint approach that Corrina brought to the team not only helped bring clarity to what was and what was not working with our business processes, but introduced a new tool into our transformation toolkit. While we applied this approach internally, the benefits will only amplify once applied more broadly.” – Michel Mainville, Deputy Director, Application Portfolio Management and Architecture

What are the benefits of service blueprints?

Alignment and clarity are key for an organization tasked with modernizing digital services across a complex structure like the DSG.  I worked closely with teams managing the software procurement intake process, which was previously unstandardized and operated somewhat like a black box. 

The team was struggling with a lack of awareness or shared understanding of the intake process. By introducing service blueprints, I helped them uncover blind spots, surface assumptions, and visualize processes. This created a foundation for open discussion and strategic planning.

Service blueprints offer several benefits that make them an invaluable tool:

• End-to-end visibility: They provide a holistic view of the service, helping us capture, understand and connect customer-facing and internal processes.
• Identifying pain points: By visualizing the entire service, teams can pinpoint where delays, redundancies or gaps occur. This helps teams quickly identify ways to optimize their processes.
• Enable and improve collaboration: Service blueprints facilitate cross-functional conversations, ensuring that teams across silos can align on processes. 
• Supporting transformation: For DSG, service blueprints became a foundation for identifying areas where digital tools and new processes could improve efficiency. This helped with alignment on future vision and goals and to recognize where there was business value and opportunities.

Service blueprints vs. journey maps

It’s common to see service blueprints and customer journey maps used interchangeably, but they serve different purposes. 

Customer journey maps are ideal for capturing and understanding a customer’s experience. They:

• Focus on a customer's experience with a specific product or service
• Cover a customer's entire experience with a company, including their emotions, motivations and needs
• Produce an understanding of the customer's perspective and opportunities to improve their experience

Service blueprints dig deeper into the processes and structures that lead to those experiences. They:

• Focus on the entire service delivery process
• Cover the entire service, including internal operations, systems and dependencies
• Produce a recommendation for designing and optimizing the entire service delivery process

Service blueprints in action

When I began working with DSG, it was evident that the organization needed to align stakeholders on the value that they brought to their clients. Service blueprints helped the team clarify responsibilities and identify areas where there were gaps or areas of improvement. They provided a way to:

1. Map existing processes: By documenting what was happening, we could analyze where the gaps were in the processes. It also helped the team identify where processes were missing.
2. Foster collaboration: Through blueprinting workshops, team members across departments collaborated to co-create a shared understanding of their services.
3. Recognizing value: Being able to look at how a customer interacted with a service allowed the team to recognize the value they were or weren’t bringing to their customers. 

The blueprinting process highlighted opportunities for possible automation and integration and ensured that DSG could focus its efforts where it mattered most.

“The blueprint work led by Corrina allowed us to untangle the complex and inconsistent way we were engaging with stakeholders to find a clear path through.   While we are still using rudimentary technology to enable the process, the clarity we now have about how work flows through our governance will be crucial for our subsequent phases of transformation and eventually automation, where possible.” – Michel Mainville, Deputy Director, Application Portfolio Management and Architecture

Tools like service blueprints are essential to making invisible processes visible in digital transformation work. 

For organizations like Canada’s National Defence and the Digital Services Group, this clarity is critical to modernizing services, improving collaboration and building systems that work for users and internal teams. 

If you’re looking to drive similar improvements in your organization, get in touch today!

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Interested in learning more? 

Nielsen Norman Group’s Definition on Service Blueprints

Essense's Service Blueprint Miro Template

Service Design Tools on Service Blueprint with examples