Surprise! Creativity in the Public Sector

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Jes Howen McBride at Good Magazine: “….As a watchword, “innovation” has been slow to infiltrate the public sector. We are a nation of private inventors and public regulators. However, while this bizarre gem of a cover page may not signify a major event, I see it as an indicator of where the public sector is headed. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, a CalTrans supervisor said of the cover, “This was an innovative project… We wanted people to notice the document and open it up.” And it worked. This “innovative project” brought attention to the 1,300-page report, which was not mentioned in local media until people noticed the unconventional cover page.

Less than a month later, the mayor of Los Angeles perpetuated the theme of public sector ingenuity by announcing an “Innovation Fund.” The Fund will support creative solutions proposed not by professionals in the art or tech industries, but by city employees. Anyone from janitors to general managers will be able to submit original ideas to improve the status quo. This initiative acknowledges the innovative potential in city staff and, moreover, provides funding to effectively tap into that potential.
The idea of creative change within the public sector aligns with the philosophy behind the Startup Cities Institute. Their model encourages unconventional ideas to be implemented by cities on a small scale to find solutions to problems in governance, infrastructure, and similar challenges. The key concept in this approach is that innovation comes not only from outside city hall, but from inside as well. Even though planners love guerrilla urbanism, it’s pretty spectacular when city government pulls off a good surprise. Some of my favorite “surprise-innovations” are New York’s Time Square beach chairs, Bogata’s traffic control mimes, and Hans Monderman’s naked streets, all conceived and executed by the public sector.
Innovative acts can be found everywhere. I have many friends in creative industries, but also some who are nurses, teachers, social workers, and full-time parents, and they are among the most creative people I know. I work for the City of Los Angeles in the Planning Department. I have seen the political and logistical challenges that the public sector is up against, but I am convinced that we can meet these challenges with novel ideas, fresh perspectives, and unconventional approaches. (And maybe some ‘90s clip art.) We can serve the public as well as delight them. That is the future of public service.…”

Test-tube government

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

The Economist: “INCUBATORS, accelerators, garages, laboratories: the best big companies have had them for years. Whatever the moniker (The Economist once had one called “Project Red Stripe”), in most cases a select few workers are liberated from the daily grind and encouraged to invent the future. Now such innovation units are becoming de rigueur in the public sector too: Boston has an Office of New Urban Mechanics; Denmark has a MindLab; and Singapore has the more prosaically named PS21 Office.
These government laboratories provide a bridge between the public and private sectors. Sometimes governments simply copy what private firms are doing. MindLab is based on the Future Centre, the innovation unit of Skandia, a big insurance firm. Sometimes they get money and advice from private sources: the New Orleans Innovation Delivery Team is partly funded by Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York city and one of America’s biggest media tycoons. Whatever the connection, these units plug the public sector into a new world. They are full of people talking about “disruption” and “iteration”.
The units also provide a connection with academia. Britain’s Behavioural Insights Team, originally based in the Cabinet Office, was the world’s first government outfit dedicated to applying the insights of behavioural economics to public policy (it was known as the “nudge unit”, after the book “Nudge”, by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein). David Halpern, the group’s head, says that its mission was to point out the “small details” of policy that can have big consequences (see Free Exchange). It persuaded, for instance, HM Revenue & Customs, Britain’s tax collection agency, to tweak the words of a routine letter to say that most people in the recipient’s local area had already paid their taxes. As a result, payment rates increased by five percentage points.
A new report published by Nesta, a British charity devoted to promoting innovation, and Bloomberg Philanthropies shows how popular these government innovation labs have become. They can be found in a striking variety of places, from developing countries such as Malaysia to rich countries like Finland, and in the offices of mayors as well as the halls of central government.
Whatever their location, the study suggests they go about things in similar ways, with a lot of emphasis on harnessing technology. The most popular idea is co-creation—getting one’s customers to help invent and improve products and services. Boston’s Office of New Urban Mechanics has produced a series of apps which provide citizens with a convenient way of reporting problems such as graffiti and pot holes (by taking a photograph and sending it to city hall, users provide it with evidence and GPS co-ordinates). The staff-suggestion scheme introduced by PS21 in Singapore has produced striking results: one air-force engineer came up with the idea of scanning aircraft for leaks with ultraviolet light, just as opticians scan the cornea for scratches….
The most striking thing about these institutions, however, is their willingness to experiment. Policymakers usually alternate between hostility to new ideas and determination to implement a new policy without bothering to try it out first. Innovation centres tend to be both more daring and happy to test things. Sitra, for instance, is experimenting with health kiosks in shopping centres which are staffed by nurses, provide routine care and stay open late and on weekends. The Centre for Social Innovation in Colombia has developed computer games which are designed to teach pre-teenagers to make sensible choices about everything from nutrition to gang membership. Sitra also tracks the progress of each project that it funds against its stated goals….”

Five public participation books from 2014 you should take the time to read

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

at Bang The Table: “Every year dozens of books are published on the subject of community engagement, civic engagement, public engagement or public participation (depending on your fancy). None of us has time to read them all, so how to choose.
I’ve compiled a short and eclectic list here that span the breadth of issues that public participation practitioners and thier public sector managers are likely to be thinking about; legal, organisational culture, bringing joy back into citizen engagement, thoughtful living and thoughtful engagement, and DIY citizenship (and what that means for the public sector).
Blocking Public Participation: The use of strategic litigation to silence political expression
written by Byron M Sheldrick, published by Wilfred Laurier University Press
The blurb…

Strategic litigation against public participation (SLAPP) involves lawsuits brought by individuals, corporations, groups, or politicians to curtail political activism and expression. An increasingly large part of the political landscape in Canada, they are often launched against those protesting, boycotting, or participating in some form of political activism. A common feature of SLAPPs is that their intention is rarely to win the case or secure a remedy; rather, the suit is brought to create a chill on political expression….
Making Policy Public: Participatory Bureaucracy in American Democracy
written by Susan L. Moffit, published by Cambridge University Press
The blurb…
This book challenges the conventional wisdom that government bureaucrats inevitably seek secrecy and demonstrates how and when participatory bureaucracy manages the enduring tension between bureaucratic administration and democratic accountability….
Making Democracy Fun: How Game Design Can Empower Citizens and Transform Politics
written by Josh A. Lerner, published by MIT
The blurb…

Anyone who has ever been to a public hearing or community meeting would agree that participatory democracy can be boring. Hours of repetitive presentations, alternatingly alarmist or complacent, for or against, accompanied by constant heckling, often with no clear outcome or decision….

What Would Socrates Do?: Self-Examination, Civic Engagement, and the Politics of Philosophy

written by Joel Alden Schlosser, published by Cambridge University Press
The blurb…
Socrates continues to be an extremely influential force to this day; his work is featured prominently in the work of contemporary thinkers ranging from Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss, to Michel Foucault and Jacques Rancière….
DIY Citizenship: Critical Making and Social Media
edited by Matt Ratto & Megan Boler, published by MIT
The blurb…
Today, DIY — do-it-yourself — describes more than self-taught carpentry. Social media enables DIY citizens to organize and protest in new ways (as in Egypt’s “Twitter revolution” of 2011) and to re-purpose corporate content (or create new user-generated content) in order to offer political counter-narratives….”

How US state governments can improve customer service

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

New report by the McKinsey Center for Government:”Technological advances such as smartphones and apps have opened new frontiers of convenience, speed, and transparency for private-sector customers. At the same time, tightening government budgets are making it difficult for the public sector to deliver services of a similarly high quality. With consumer expectations only increasing, it’s perhaps no surprise that interactions with government agencies frustrate and disappoint many citizens. Yet when we sought to find out exactly why, we discovered cause for encouragement: issues that frustrate citizens are solvable, and the frustrations mostly revolve around the way services are provided rather than the services themselves. In fact, we believe governments can significantly improve the service experience while lowering costs and increasing employee engagement and satisfaction.
During the past year, we measured the satisfaction of citizens by surveying approximately 17,000 people across 15 US states. …We found that the satisfaction of citizens with state services varied considerably, ranging from 22 for the highest-performing state to –36 for the lowest. Overall, the CSS was positive for eight states and negative for seven. Several common themes emerged:

  • Speed, simplicity, and efficiency make citizens happier. Participants expressed stronger negative feelings about specific attributes of service delivery than about state services overall. They were dissatisfied with the slowness of service delivery, its complexity, and the effort required to navigate through processes.
  • Satisfaction is often lower for more essential services. Public housing, food stamps, unemployment benefits, and other more essential services received lower satisfaction scores than more discretionary services (such as state parks or cultural facilities) did. This stood out in part because, among all respondents, the average CSS across the 15 states was positive for most services surveyed.
  • People who don’t use a service are often more skeptical about its quality. There’s a perception gap between users and nonusers of state services. The CSS for citizens who used a state service within the past 12 months was, on average, 12 percentage points higher than the score for participants who hadn’t done so but still considered themselves informed about its quality. This perception gap was smallest for public safety (1 percent) and largest for public housing (52 percent), followed by Medicaid (46 percent) and food stamps (45 percent).
  • Citizens are less satisfied with government services than with private-sector services. Government services fared more poorly than private-sector services, with some notable exceptions: state parks, cultural facilities, sporting licenses, public safety, and environmental protection. In fact, the CSS for private-sector services was 2.5 times higher than the score for government ones. The more favorable views about well-regarded service providers, such as e-commerce sites, may not be surprising. However, the fact that citizens were less satisfied with many government services than with cable- or satellite-TV services should concern government leaders.
  • Most citizens prefer to interact with government online. In response to follow-up questions, recent users of services from the department of motor vehicles (DMV) in their states said that the ability to complete processes online was their top priority. The availability of more and clearer information online ranked third. The most satisfied DMV users had no up-front interactions with staff, and satisfaction decreased as citizens interacted with more channels, including call centers and walk-in centers….

See :McKinsey Center for Government report Putting Citizens First: How to improve citizens’ experience and satisfaction with government services.”

What do businesses really look for in open data?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Harvey Lewis in Computer Weekly:  “In 2015, the UK’s primary open data portal, www.data.gov.uk, will be six years old. The portal hosts approximately 20,000 official data sets from central government departments and their agencies, local authorities and other public sector bodies across the country. Just over half of these data sets are available as open data under the Open Government Licence (OGL). Data.gov.uk forms part of an international network of over three hundred open data efforts that have seen not just thousands but millions of data sets worldwide becoming freely available for personal or commercial use. [See http://datacatalogs.org and www.quandle.com].
…simply publishing open data does not guarantee that a business will use it…., if businesses are building new products or services, or relying on the data to inform their strategy, a number of characteristics other than just openness become critical in determining success:

  • Provenance – what is the source of the data and how it was collected? Is it authoritative?
  • Completeness and accuracy – are the examples and features of the data present and correct, and, if not, is the quality understood and documented?
  • Consistency – is the data published in a consistent, easy-to-access format and are any changes documented?
  • Timeliness – is the data available when it is needed for the time periods needed?
  • Richness – does the data contain a level of detail sufficient to answer our questions?
  • Guarantees of availability – will the data continue to be made available in the future?

If these characteristics cannot be guaranteed in open data or are unavailable except under a commercial licence then many businesses would prefer to pay to get them. While some public sector bodies – particularly the Trading Funds – have, over the years, established strong connections with business users of their data and understand their needs implicitly, the Open Data Institute is the first to cement these characteristics into a formal certification scheme for publishers of open data.
A campaign is needed to get publishers to adopt these certificates and to recognise that, economically at least, they are as important as Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s five-star scale for linked open data.  ….”

OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

“The OECD is currently developing an Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (OPSI) which collects and analyses examples and shared experiences of public sector innovation to provide practical advice to countries on how to make innovations work.
The OPSI does this by:

  • Inspiring: Providing a unique collection of innovations from across the world, through an online platform, to inspire innovators in other countries.
  • Connecting: Building a network of innovators, both virtually and in person through events and conferences to share experiences.
  • Promoting: Turning analysis of concrete cases into practical guidance on how to source, develop, support and diffuse innovations across the public sector.

The OPSI’s online platform is a place where users interested in public sector innovation can:

  • Access information on innovations
  • Share their own experiences
  • Collaborate with other users

For further information please visit: OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation”

Innovation procurement

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

European Commission: “Innovation Procurement enables the public sector to modernize its services while saving costs and creating market opportunities for the companies in Europe. This workshop was organised on 7 October 2014 during the Open Days 2014 under the title “Make use of the enabling button for Innovation Procurement (PCP/PPI) to tackle societal challenges in Europe”….
Ms Lieve Bos (European Commission DG CONNECT) presented the importance and potential of pre-commercial procurement (PCP) and public procurement of innovative solutions (PPI) to modernize public services in Europe while creating market opportunities for companies. She presented the funding schemes in H2020 that  co-finance the preparation, coordination and the execution of PCP and PPI Procurements. 130M Euro of EU funding is currently available (deadlines for proposals in 2015) to support Innovation Procurements implementation in many domains of public interest. …
Mr Peter Asché (Uniklinik Rwth Aachen, Germany) presented the Thalea Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) project that is challenging providers to develop new innovative solutions for remote decision support to intensive care units through an interoperable telemedicine platform. Mr.Asché stressed that the project attracted considerable market interest with 23 companies from 5 different Member States participating to the open market consultation that preceded the publication of the Thalea PCP call for tender.
Mr van Berlo (Smart Homes, The Netherlands) presented the Stop and Go Public Procurement of Innovative Solutions (PPI) project that aims at deploying cost-effective, sustainable and innovative solutions for telecare for elderly. A transnational procurement in four Member States will enable the participant organizations to purchase innovative solutions with clear clinical and social outcomes creating in that way economies of scale that will benefit the procurers and the market and contributing at the same time to standardization. …”

Design for Policy

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New book edited by Christian Bason: “Design for Policy is the first publication to chart the emergence of collaborative design approaches to innovation in public policy. Drawing on contributions from a range of the world’s leading academics, design practitioners and public managers, it provides a rich, detailed analysis of design as a tool for addressing public problems and capturing opportunities for achieving better and more efficient societal outcomes.
In his introduction, Christian Bason suggests that design may offer a fundamental reinvention of the art and craft of policy making for the twenty-first century. From challenging current problem spaces to driving the creative quest for new solutions and shaping the physical and virtual artefacts of policy implementation, design holds a significant yet largely unexplored potential.
The book is structured in three main sections, covering the global context of the rise of design for policy, in-depth case studies of the application of design to policy making, and a guide to concrete design tools for policy intent, insight, ideation and implementation. The summary chapter lays out a future agenda for design in government, suggesting how to position design more firmly on the public policy stage.
Design for Policy is intended as a resource for leaders and scholars in government departments, public service organizations and institutions, schools of design and public management, think tanks and consultancies that wish to understand and use design as a tool for public sector reform and innovation….More: Full contents list; Introduction – The Design for Policy Nexus.”
 

The Next Frontier of Engagement: Civic Innovation Labs

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Maayan Dembo at Planetizen: “As described by Clayton Christensen, a professor at the Harvard Business School who developed the term “disruptive innovation,” a successful office for social innovation should employ four main tactics to accomplish its mission. First, governments should invest “in innovations that are developed and identified by citizens outside of government who better understand the problems.” Second, the office should support “‘bottom-up’ initiatives, in preference to ‘trickle-down’ philanthropy—because the societal impact of the former is typically greater.” Third, Christensen argues that the office should utilize impact metrics to measure performance and, finally, that it should also invest in social innovation outside of the non-profit sector.
Los Angeles’ most recent citizen-driven social innovation initiative, the Civic Innovation Lab, is an 11-month project aimed at prototyping new solutions for issues within the city of Los Angeles. It is supported by the HubLA, Learn Do Share, the Los Angeles *City  Tech Bullpen, and Innovate LA, a membership organization within the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation. Private and public sector support for such labs, in one of the largest cities in America, is highly unprecedented, and because this initiative in Los Angeles is a new mechanism explicitly supported by the public sector, it warrants a critical check on its motivations and accomplishments. Depending on its success, the Civic Innovation Lab could serve as a model for future municipalities.
The Los Angeles Civic Innovation Lab operates in three main phases: 1) workshops where citizens learn about the possibilities of Open Data and discuss what deep challenges face Los Angeles (called the “Discover, Define, Design” stage), 2) a call for solutions to solve the design challenges brought to light in the first phase, and 3) a six-month accelerator program to prototype selected solutions. I participated in the most recent Civic Innovation Lab session, a three-day workshop concluding the “Discover, Define, Design” phase….”

The Future of Cities

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
John Chambers and Wim Elfrink at Foreign Affairs: “As much as the Internet has already changed the world, it is the Web’s next phase that will bring the biggest opportunities, revolutionizing the way we live, work, play, and learn.

That next phase, which some call the Internet of Things and which we call the Internet of Everything, is the intelligent connection of people, processes, data, and things. Although it once seemed like a far-off idea, it is becoming a reality for businesses, governments, and academic institutions worldwide. Today, half the world’s population has access to the Internet; by 2020, two-thirds will be connected. Likewise, some 13.5 billion devices are connected to the Internet today; by 2020, we expect that number to climb to 50 billion. The things that are—and will be—connected aren’t just traditional devices, such as computers, tablets, and phones, but also parking spaces and alarm clocks, railroad tracks, street lights, garbage cans, and components of jet engines.
All of these connections are already generating massive amounts of digital data—and it doubles every two years. New tools will collect and share that data (some 15,000 applications are developed each week!) and, with analytics, that can be turned into information, intelligence, and even wisdom, enabling everyone to make better decisions, be more productive, and have more enriching experiences.
And the value that it will bring will be epic. In fact, the Internet of Everything has the potential to create $19 trillion in value over the next decade. For the global private sector, this equates to a 21 percent potential aggregate increase in corporate profits—or $14.4 trillion. The global public sector will benefit as well, using the Internet of Everything as a vehicle for the digitization of cities and countries. This will improve efficiency and cut costs, resulting in as much as $4.6 trillion of total value. Beyond that, it will help (and already is helping) address some of the world’s most vexing challenges: aging and growing populations rapidly moving to urban centers; growing demand for increasingly limited natural resources; and massive rebalancing in economic growth between briskly growing emerging market countries and slowing developed countries….”