Prototyping for policy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Camilla Buchanan at Policy Lab Blog: “…Prototyping is common in the product and industrial design process – it has also extended to less tangible design sub-specialisms like service design. Prototypes are low fidelity mockups of an imagined idea or solution and they allow for testing before implementation. A product can be tested in cardboard form, a website can be tested through a hand drawn wireframe, a service interaction can be tested with roleplay….

Policy is a more hazy concept, it implies a message or statement of intent which sets a direction of work. Before a policy statement is made there will be some form of strategic conversation. In governments this usually takes place at the political level amongst ministers or within political parties and there is little scope for outsiders to enter these spaces. Policies set by elected officials tend to be high-level statements – as short as a line or two in a manifesto – expressed through speeches or other policy documents like White Papers.

A policy statement therefore expresses a goal and it sets in motion realisations of that goal through laws, programmes or other activities. A short policy statement can determine major programmes of government work for many years. Policy programmes have their own problem spaces to define and there is much to do in order to translate a policy goal into practical activities. Whether consciously or not, policy programmes touch the lives of millions of people and the unintended consequences or conflicting results from the enactment of poor policies can be extremely harmful. The potential benefits of testing policy goals before they are put in place are therefore huge.

The idea of design interacting directly with policy making has been explored in the last five or so years, and the first book on this subject was published in 2014. In government terms this work is very new and there is relatively little precision in current explanations. Prototyping for Policy made space to explore this better….

It is still early days for articulating exactly how and why the “physical making” aspect of design is so important in government contexts but almost all designers working in this way will emphasis it. An obvious benefit to building something real is that operational errors become more evident. And because prototypes make ideas manifest, they can help to build consensus or reveal where it is absent. They are also a way of asking questions and the presence of a prototype often prompts discussion of broader issues.

As an example, the picture below shows staff from the Service Design team at the consultancy OpenRoad in Vancouver considering advanced prototypes of changes to transit fare policy for the city for their client TransLink….(More).

Prototypes of changes to transit fares by OpenRoad

The Innovation System of the Public Service of Canada

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

OECD: Today, the OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (OPSI) is pleased to announce the release of The Innovation System of the Public Service of Canada, the first of the OECD’s reviews of a national public sector innovation system….Some of the key findings and observations from the report include:

  • The Government of Canada starts with a strong base, having a long demonstrated history of innovation. The civil service also has a longstanding awareness and appreciation of the need for innovation.
  • There has been an ongoing recognition that the Public Service of Canada needs to continue to adapt and be responsive. Respective Clerks (the Heads of the Public Service) have repeatedly identified the need to go further.
  • Much of the ‘low-hanging’ fruit (i.e. activities to support public sector innovation such as awards, efforts to remove hurdles, introduction of new tools) has already been picked, but this is unlikely to lead to long term sustainability.
  • The innovation system is still relatively fragmented, in that most actors are experiencing the same system in different ways. New approaches are needed.
  • The Canadian Public Service has made some significant steps towards a more systemic approach to public sector innovation. However, it is likely that without continuous efforts and direction the innovation system will not be able to consistently and reliably contribute to the delivery of the best outcomes for citizens.

Given that much is still being learnt about public sector innovation, the report avoids a prescriptive approach as to what should be done. It identifies potential areas of intervention, but recognises that the context will continue to evolve, and that the specific actions taken should be matched to the ambitions and intent of the Public Service of Canada.

An innovation system is made up of many parts and contributed to by many actors. The effectiveness of the innovation system – i.e. its ability to consistently and reliably develop and deliver innovative solutions that contribute to achieving the goals and priorities of the government – will depend on collective effort, involving action from different actors at the individual, organisational, and system levels.

While a range of options are put forward, the aim of this review, and the guidance included within it, is to help provide a reflection of the system so that all actors can see themselves within it. This can provide a contribution to the ongoing discussion and deliberation about what the collective aim for innovation is within the Public Service of Canada, and how everyone can play a part, and be supported in that….(More)”.

Welcome to ShareTown

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Jenni Lloyd and Alice Casey at Nesta: “Today, we’re pleased to welcome you to ShareTown. Our fictional town and its cast of characters sets out an unashamedly positive vision of a preferred future in which interactions between citizens and local government are balanced and collaborative, and data and digital platforms are deployed for public benefit rather than private gain.

In this future, government plays a plurality of roles, working closely with local people to understand their needs, how these can best be met and by whom. Provided with new opportunities to connect and collaborate with others, individuals and households are free to navigate, combine and contribute to different services as they see fit….

…the ShareLab team wanted to find a route by which we could explore how people’s needs can be put at the centre of services, using collaborative models for organising and ownership, aided by platform technology. And to do this we decided to be radically optimistic and focus on a preferred future in which those ideas that are currently emerging at the edges have become the norm.

Futures Cone from Nesta’s report ‘Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow: A modest defence of futurology’

Futures Cone from Nesta’s report ‘Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow: A modest defence of futurology’

ShareTown is not intended as a prediction, but a source of inspiration – and provocation. If, as theatre-maker Annette Mees says, the future is fictional and the fictions created about it help us set our direction of travel, then the making of stories about the future we want should be something we can all be involved in – not just the media, politicians, or brands…. (More)”.

Tricky Design: The Ethics of Things

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Tom Fisher and Lorraine Gamman: “Tricky Things responds to the burgeoning of scholarly interest in the cultural meanings of objects, by addressing the moral complexity of certain designed objects and systems.

The volume brings together leading international designers, scholars and critics to explore some of the ways in which the practice of design and its outcomes can have a dark side, even when the intention is to design for the public good. Considering a range of designed objects and relationships, including guns, eyewear, assisted suicide kits, anti-rape devices, passports and prisons, the contributors offer a view of design as both progressive and problematic, able to propose new material and human relationships, yet also constrained by social norms and ideology. 

This contradictory, tricky quality of design is explored in the editors’ introduction, which positions the objects, systems, services and ‘things’ discussed in the book in relation to the idea of the trickster that occurs in anthropological literature, as well as in classical thought, discussing design interventions that have positive and negative ethical consequences. These will include objects, both material and ‘immaterial’, systems with both local and global scope, and also different processes of designing. 

This important new volume brings a fresh perspective to the complex nature of ‘things‘, and makes a truly original contribution to debates in design ethics, design philosophy and material culture….(More)”

What’s inside the black box of digital innovation?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

George Atalla at Ernst and Young: “Analysis of the success or failure of government digital transformation projects tends to focus on the technology that has been introduced. Seldom discussed is the role played by organizational culture and by a government’s willingness to embrace new approaches and working practices. And yet factors such as an ability to transcend bureaucratic working styles and collaborate with external partners are just as vital to success as deploying the right IT…

The study, Inside the Black Box: Journey Mapping Digital Innovation in Government, used a range of qualitative research tools including rich pictures, journey maps and self-reporting questionnaires to tease out individual characteristics of team members, team sentiment, organizational governance and the role played by cultural factors. The approach was unique in that it captured the nuances of the process of digital innovation, rather than merely measuring inputs and outputs.

The aim of the study was to look inside the “black box” of digital transformation to find out what really goes on within the teams responsible for delivery. In every case, the implementation journey involved ups and downs, advances and setbacks, but there were always valuable lessons to learn. We have extracted the six key insights for governments, outlined below, to provide guidance for government and public sector leaders who are embarking on their own innovation journey…(More)”.

The Public Mapping Project: How Public Participation Can Revolutionize Redistricting

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Micah Altman and Michael P. McDonald: “… unveil the Public Mapping Project, which developed DistrictBuilder, an open-source software redistricting application designed to give the public transparent, accessible, and easy-to-use online mapping tools. As they show, the goal is for all citizens to have access to the same information that legislators use when drawing congressional maps—and use that data to create maps of their own….(More)”.

Governance Indicators Approaches, Progress, Promise

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Helmut K. Anheier, Matthias Haber and Mark A. Kayser: “As difficult as it might seem to define governance, it appears to be that much more difficult to measure it. Since the World Bank Institute launched the Worldwide Governance Indicators in the late 1990s, the governance indicators field has flourished and experienced significant advances in terms of methodology, data coverage and quality, and policy relevance. Other major initiatives have added to a momentum that propelled research on governance indicators seen in few other academic fields in the economic and social sciences. Given these developments and the prominence and policy relevance the field of governance indicator research has achieved, the time is ripe to take stock and ask what has been accomplished, what the shortcomings and potentials might be, and what steps present themselves as a way forward.

This volume– the fifth edition in an annual series tackling different aspects of governance around the world– assesses what has been achieved, identifies strengths and weaknesses of current work, and points to issues that need to be tackled in order to advance the field, both in its academic importance as well as in its policy relevance. In short, the contributions to this volume explore the scope of existing governance indices and indicator frameworks, elaborate on current challenges in measuring and analysing governance, and consider how to overcome them….(More)”.

Farsighted

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Steven Johnson: “Big, life-altering decisions matter so much more than the decisions we make every day, and they’re also the most difficult: where to live, whom to marry, what to believe, whether to start a company, how to end a war. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach for addressing these kinds of conundrums.

Steven Johnson’s classic Where Good Ideas Come From inspired creative people all over the world with new ways of thinking about innovation. In Farsighted, he uncovers powerful tools for honing the important skill of complex decision-making. While you can’t model a once-in-a-lifetime choice, you can model the deliberative tactics of expert decision-makers. These experts aren’t just the master strategists running major companies or negotiating high-level diplomacy. They’re the novelists who draw out the complexity of their characters’ inner lives, the city officials who secure long-term water supplies, and the scientists who reckon with future challenges most of us haven’t even imagined. The smartest decision-makers don’t go with their guts. Their success relies on having a future-oriented approach and the ability to consider all their options in a creative, productive way.

Through compelling stories that reveal surprising insights, Johnson explains how we can most effectively approach the choices that can chart the course of a life, an organization, or a civilization. Farsighted will help you imagine your possible futures and appreciate the subtle intelligence of the choices that shaped our broader social history….(More)”.

The rise of policy innovation labs: A catalog of policy innovation labs across Canada

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the Centre for Policy Innovation and Public Engagement (CPIPE): “In recent years, governments all over the world have been embracing new and innovative ways to develop public policies and design public services, from crowdsourcing to human-centred design thinking. This trend in government innovation has led to the rise of the Policy Innovation Lab (PIL): individual units, both inside and outside of government, that apply the traditional principles of scientific laboratories – experimentation, testing, and measurement – to social problems.

PILs are an increasingly important development in public policy making, with a variety of methods and approaches to building relationships between governments, organizations, and citizens, and generating ideas and designing policy. Yet, these labs are under-researched: many are established without a full understanding of their role and value to the policy community. We aim to address this knowledge gap, and create opportunities where policy innovators can make connections with their peers and learn about the current practices and applications of policy innovation from one another.

This report identifies the innovation labs in Canada, profiling their methodologies, projects, and partners, mapping the policy innovation landscape across the country. Each one-page summary provides a profile for each lab, and highlights the existing innovation practices and networks in the public, academic, non-profit, and private sectors, and identifies methodological and ideological trends across the different labs and networks.

This report is the first of its kind in North America. In this highly dynamic space, new labs are emerging and disappearing all the time. The purpose of this report is to put a spotlight on policy innovations and their successes, and to build and strengthen connections between researchers, policymakers, and policy innovators. Through a strengthened and sustained community of practice, we hope to see governments continue to embrace new approaches for effective policymaking…(More)”.

The rise of public sector innovation labs: experiments in design thinking for policy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Michael McGann, Emma Blomkamp and Jenny M. Lewis in Policy Sciences: “Governments are increasingly turning to public sector innovation (PSI) labs to take new approaches to policy and service design. This turn towards PSI labs, which has accelerated in more recent years, has been linked to a number of trends. These include growing interest in evidence-based policymaking and the application of ‘design thinking’ to policymaking, although these trends sit uncomfortably together. According to their proponents, PSI labs are helping to create a new era of experimental government and rapid experimentation in policy design.

But what do these PSI labs do? How do they differ from other public sector change agents and policy actors? What approaches do they bring to addressing contemporary policymaking? And how do they relate to other developments in policy design such as the growing interest in evidence-based policy and design experiments? The rise of PSI labs has thus far received little attention from policy scientists. Focusing on the problems associated with conceptualising PSI labs and clearly situating them in the policy process, this paper provides an analysis of some of the most prominent PSI labs. It examines whether labs can be classified into distinct types, their relationship to government and other policy actors and the principal methodological practices and commitments underpinning their approach to policymaking. Throughout, the paper considers how the rise of PSI labs may challenge positivist framings of policymaking as an empirically driven decision process….(More)”.