Identifying innovation

Generating innovation Think creatively Challenge the status quo Understand user needs Recognise opportunities Generating innovations requires: Think creativity – how can staff be encouraged to think creatively to find innovative solutions? What types of skills and training help to encourage staff to be more creative? Challenge the status quo – innovation is often stifled by risk aversion and preference for continuity rather than change. How can organisations be encouraged to take appropriate risk? How can organisational culture support challenging the status quo? Understand user needs – how can an administrative draw on the ideas and experiences of users so that innovations target their needs? Recognise opportunities – how can the public administration be encouraged to recognise when there is potential for improvement; when new technologies or new approaches emerge (perhaps beyond the administration itself) that create opportunities to do things in new ways? How? Presentation looks at tools that support generating innovation across 4 key areas for public sector innovation (Can highlight draws on nascent framework of public sector innovation and examples collected by OPSI

Information and Learning Knowledge management platforms Crowdsourcing Information and Learning How do organisations manage their information so that it is used to learn and continually develop (learning organisation)? How can organisations be sensitive and respond to what is happening beyond their borders? Knowledge management platforms Sharing information within an organisation (and beyond) Supports generating innovation by: Encouraging effective and systematic recording and sharing of knowledge Sharing practices, what worked, and what didn’t helping others = reducing costs and risks of innovation for others Examples on slide National Process Library, Germany Common Knowledge Network, Portugal Crowdsourcing Enables the public sector to draw on the input of a wide number of people Opening up government to create two way interaction between govt and society Opens up administration to new ideas, trends and opportunities Directly involving users in service development to better understand their needs Challenge.gov, USA RetoSat Movil, Mexico

Incentives, Recognition and Celebration Rewarding safe risk taking and innovative thinking Building an organisational culture that embraces innovation, including experimentation and failure as a learning opportunity Rebuilding the image of public service by celebrating innovation in the public sector. Tools: Innovation awards (challenging risk averse culture; inspirational effect; rewarding innovators) On slide: Innovations in American Government Award from Harvard Kennedy School/Ash Centre EPSA CAPAM (Commonwealth Association for Public Admin and Mgmt) Int’l innov awards. Ideas that work (publication from South African government associated with their public sector innovation awards)

Rules, Regulation and Opportunity Trend in Regulatory Impact Analysis adoption across OECD jurisdictions Explicit programme for reducing administrative burdens: 1998, 2005, 2008 Some bureaucracies are more heavily regulated than others. Overly complicated and rigid rules, regulations and procedures can limit the opportunity for innovative ideas to be recognized as people are more concerned about compliance than by creative solutions. More and more countries are revisiting their rules and regulations for their economy and society. For example, there is a clear trend towards using more regulatory impact assessment (first chart) and programmes for reducing administrative burden (left slide) But these are focused outward. Perhaps we need to develop tools to do the same for internal rules and regulation.

Organisational Design What work needs to be done; how do these parts connect and how should activities be organised? Where is the relevant knowledge and resources located? Where is the policy executed? What actors are involved? Labs A tool to address organisational design and support generating innovation Labs aim to address the ‘architecture of the problem’ as the Helsinki Design Lab calls it by bringing together small interdisciplinary teams bridging organisational and sector boundaries Support generating innovation by: Bringing users directly into design process to understand their needs more accurately Encourage creativity by engaging a wide range of different perspectives through small interdisciplinary teams that include service users, designers, ethnographers, staff, public policy specialists Bridge organisational and sector boundaries to help challenge established practices Examples on slide Office of Personnel Management, USA Helsinki Design Lab, Finland La 27e Region, France Mindlab, Denmark