PSDA Service Lab — Co-Designing Georgia's 112 Emergency Service with Deaf Citizens

Since 2014, Georgia's Public Service Development Agency (PSDA) has run an internal "Service Lab" to redesign public services around the people who use them. Working with UNDP Georgia and support from the Swedish government, the Service Lab ran a seven-month process to rebuild the national 112 emergency line for citizens who are Deaf or hard of hearing. Staff from the 112 centre travelled to Ireland to study accessible emergency-response models, then ran a three-day design-thinking workshop with the Union of Deaf of Georgia, technologists and civil-society groups, using a step-by-step simulation of a real emergency call to surface exactly where the existing system failed Deaf callers.
The redesigned service launched nationwide in March 2015: a free, 24/7 SMS and video-relay channel connecting Deaf and hard-of-hearing callers to 112 operators trained in Georgian Sign Language, requiring prior registration for identity verification. In 2016 the European Emergency Number Association (EENA) recognised the service with its award for Best Innovative Efforts in Disability Support, presented in Prague to over 600 delegates from 82 countries — external validation that the co-designed service met a real, previously unmet need.
The evidence base is descriptive rather than evaluative: no independent study of how many Deaf citizens actually use the service, or their satisfaction, was found, and much of the process documentation comes from UNDP, which co-funded the project. The award and the service's continued operation since 2015 are the strongest available proxies for effectiveness.

Read the full analysis: https://eena.org/knowledge-hub/news/112-app-georgia/