We Built a Machine Without a Heart

A friend of mine has been dealing with the Government of Canada for months and months over a surviving spouse pension.

She has filled out forms. She has called. She has provided documents. She has answered the same questions again and again.

And now she has been given another six-page form, asking for much of the same information and documents all over again.

She still doesn't know whether she will receive the pension.

And I have to wonder: where is the human being in all of this?

I hope there is one.

Because if it's anything like trying to find a job these days, we already know what it feels like to send your life, your experience and your information into a system where a computer may decide your fate before a human being ever looks at you.

We have built incredibly sophisticated machines.

But somehow, we've forgotten that people aren't machines.

People grieve. People get tired. People get confused. People lose documents. People make mistakes. People need someone to explain things to them instead of sending them another form.

And here's the part that really gets me:

We pay for these systems.

People work their entire lives and pay billions of dollars in taxes. We fund governments, departments, programs, pensions and services.

Yet when someone actually needs help, they can find themselves being passed through a complicated, impersonal system that feels less like being helped and more like being processed.

And the people working inside these systems may be just as exhausted.

They're overworked. They're dealing with enormous caseloads. They're following procedures created somewhere above them. They may desperately want to help but have very little room to actually do so.

So perhaps the problem isn't that the people are heartless.

Perhaps we've created a heartless machine and put tired human beings inside it.

That's what we've done to so many parts of modern life.

More automation. More forms. More passwords. More portals. More algorithms. More “your request has been received.”

But fewer opportunities to simply talk to another human being who can look at your situation and say:

“I understand. Let's figure this out.”

That shouldn't be too much to ask.

Especially after someone dies.

Especially when someone is already grieving.

Especially when the people asking for help are the very people who have spent their lives paying for the system to be there when they need it.

We can build artificial intelligence.

We can build machines that see, speak, calculate and learn.

Surely we can also build government services that remember that there is a human heart on the other side of the paperwork.

Because somewhere along the way, we've confused efficiency with humanity.

And we shouldn't have to choose.

10 hard questions

When you design an automated government system, do you actually run scenarios involving grief, bereavement and cognitive overload—or do you test only whether the form technically works?

What happens when the person filling out the form is grieving so intensely that remembering dates, finding documents and answering repetitive questions becomes genuinely difficult?

Do programmers and policymakers consider grief a risk factor when designing benefits systems? Grief can affect sleep, concentration, memory, decision-making and the ability to cope.

What happens when the person who has died was financially supporting the surviving person? Is the system designed to understand that waiting three months for money isn't simply an administrative inconvenience?

How many times should a grieving person have to submit the same information before the government takes responsibility for finding what it already has?

Does anyone test these systems by putting real people through them while they are exhausted, grieving and financially frightened—not just by testing whether the software produces the correct result?

What happens when bureaucracy itself becomes the thing pushing a vulnerable person closer to the edge? Who is accountable for that outcome?

Do the people in charge measure how long people wait for money against what that waiting actually means in their lives—rent, food, medication, transportation and basic survival?

If an automated system rejects, delays or repeatedly requests information, is there a clear and immediate path to a human being who can actually look at the circumstances?

To the people responsible for designing these systems: what are you doing that is genuinely helpful to a grieving person—and how do you know it is helping?

#GriefMatters #Bereavement #HumanCenteredDesign #GovernmentServices #SurvivingSpouse #PensionDelays #Automation #PublicServices #MentalHealthMatters #PutPeopleFirst