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How public design?

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INDEX

Redesigning the political / 2Reforming public systems / 4

Design enters the stage / 8Data-visualisation as tool for discovery / 12

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Four policy studios / 14

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Leading with design attitude / 32Perspectives / 34

‘What happens when you bring smart, experienced and dedicated people together to make the most of their mutual expertise,

engagement and insight? One possible answer is that it enables them to ask better, more

reflected questions.’

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What might be better ways of developing public policies and services? How might we start with the lives of citizens and the realities of businesses when we craft new strategies and initiatives that are supposed to help them? What are ways in which we can bridge the gap between political goals on one hand and tangible change for real people on the other? What do leading organisations across the world do to address such questions?

These were some of the themes discussed at MindLab amongst nearly 100 policy makers, academics and design practitioners during the How Public Design? seminar in early September, 2013. The event set out to explore how design might drive public innovation to create new solutions as well as new publics. “Design” is usually understood as graphics, products, services and systems. But design is more than such end results: To design is to apply a particular mindset – drawing on a range of ap-proaches, tools and skills to shape the creation process itself. In that sense, design is relevant for everyone who seeks to change a given situation into a better one. With this outset, I asked the following as we opened the seminar:

/ How might we work together to tackle some of our most pressing public challenges?

/ What is the current edge of design-led approaches to innovation in gov-ernment, and where do we need to go next?

A major part of this conversation took place in what we call policy studios: deliberate processes involving a select group of policy makers, domain ex-perts and designers in order to ask new questions to a policy problem and

REDESIGNINGTHE POLITICAL

How public design?

discover potential new approaches to it. Reflecting the policy areas of Mind-Lab’s circle of owners, the studios addressed education, employment, mod-ernisation and business policy. Using a set of simple design tools, the stu-dios were not supposed to generate final answers, but rather to bring new dimensions into the policy process, and open up a new conversation. I sometimes compare the meeting of public policy and design by the im-age of great waves crashing against each other: The logic of politics, power and authority versus the culture of designers: functionality, aesthetics and human experience. How can they be reconciled? To me, the meeting of these two realms is fruitful exactly because they are not easily reconciled. Rather, they challenge each other to ask new ques-tions. Consider for a moment what happens if we flip the characteristics of politics and design the other way: How can policy makers create public interventions that are useful, at-tractive and meaningful to people? How can designers relate to the political goals that constrain their briefs, how can they better understand the social power of the products and ser-vices they create and how can they work effectively with formal, traditional and hierarchical public organisations? How Public Design? demonstrated – again – that public officials and de-sign practitioners can have a meaningful conversation about how to enact societal change. On the following pages, we share some of the highlights and some of the new questions. Enjoy.

Christian Bason, Director, MindLab

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Why must we search for new approaches to public sector reform? In some respects, our past approaches have served us well and have helped West-ern societies reach an unprecedented level of economic development and societal well-being. This growth model is currently being copied or adapt-ed across the globe. However, our public systems are increasingly coming under political and financial pressure in situations where:

/ There is currently little on offer, either due to under-developed offerings or the emergence of new or newly identified needs.

/ What is currently on offer is not working, either from a lack of take-up or lack of impact, or little evidence of what works in terms of tackling particular issues.

/ The system needs to shift towards a more preventative approach, such as in the rehabilitation of the elderly, reducing re-offending or in pre-venting the development of long-term health conditions.

/ Public organisations are facing substantial cuts or changes to their context, requiring imagination and ingenuity in how to respond to a changing environment.

One simply needs to think of issues like family support services, social differentiation and youth unemployment, weak educational performance, the challenges of growth and (re)industrialisation or rapid environmental change to see how the public sector is under increasing pressure. How Public Design? opened with a session focusing on this reform agenda: how could we change the instruments of government to make

REFORMING PUBLIC SYSTEMS

How public design?

space for more human-centred and co-productive public service systems? What kinds of changes in perspective and mentality might enable a more explorative, learning-based and adaptive approach in some areas of pub-lic governance and development? How can we continue to ensure the le-gitimacy of public interventions in the lives of citizens?

Are we reforming the right things?Jocelyne Bourgon, President of Public Governance International (CA), opened with the keynote ‘Re-form’ by introducing a new framework for public administration called ‘New Synthesis’. New Synthesis combines conventional public governance with a more adaptive approach to create space for diversity and emerging practices. Bourgon highlighted that the challenges in the public sector can be met by starting to rethink how the public service system is being administrated, managed and developed. Despite the many well-intended reforms throughout the last decades, none have focused on actually changing the management and culture of the system. Jocelyne Bourgon thereby set a very high bar for the remainder of the seminar: what would a public administration fit for the 21st century look like? Moving from rights to resources Odense, Denmark’s third largest city and a new partner of MindLab, is en-deavouring to provide some of the answers. Odense has decided to ad-dress the new reality of fewer public resources by starting to change the very system through which they seek to produce welfare. Jørgen Clausen,

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the city’s chief executive (DK), contributed to the reform agenda with a key-note highlighting three focal points:

/ Co-operation. How do we co-operate with citizens? How do we co-operate with stakeholders? How can we increase the quality of our services by ac-tivating resources outside our system?

/ Preventive action. How do we help the citizen to never need us?/ Community. How do we motivate a sense of citizenship? How do we sup-

port life where it is lived? How do we support the quality of life on the citi-zen’s own premises?

Odense is in the middle of a shift from a focus on what rights citizens have to a focus on what resources they have. This shift demands a much closer link between ad hoc conversations with citizens and strategic welfare develop-ment. The municipality is now engaged in a process where they involve the citizens in a dialogue with the intention of moving them from ‘know’ to ‘en-gage’ to ‘take initiative’ in relation to public welfare.

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What is the unique contribution, if any, of design to the kinds of public sector reforms that are needed? What are the forms and shapes that the applica-tion of design processes take, and how do they challenge current policies and services? What are the barriers and limitations to design in a govern-mental setting? At MindLab’s previous How Public Design? event, in 2011, we highlighted how design can offer three contributions toward developing better public services by:

/ Providing research tools such as ethnography and visual mapping to help decision-makers see problems differently;

/ Facilitating the innovation process via creative, graphical tools such as concepts, scenarios, storyboards and prototypes;

/ Enabling concrete solutions via communications, products and service templates.

This time, however, the seminar conversation illustrated that design increas-ingly reaches beyond tools and methods. Design seems to offer an oppor-tunity to work systematically with redefining the very relationship between citizens and the public sector. This relational role of design was central in a panel contribution from Ed-uardo Staszowski, Parsons Desis Lab (US). Building on casework with New York City’s subsidised housing administration, he emphasised how design can play a central role in exploring and challenging the relationship between citizens, public servants and politicians.

DESIGN ENTERS THE STAGE

How public design?

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In each of their contributions to this session, the other panellists: Philip Col-ligan, NESTA (UK), Chris Sigaloff, Kennisland (NL) and Hilary Cottam, Partici-ple (UK) likewise pointed to the relational power of design-led reforms in the public sector. For instance, Cottam pointed out that we have a fundamental need to shift from a transactional model of welfare to a relational one, which is more shared and more collaborative. Human-centred design has a role to play in order to pursue a better understanding of the implications of pub-lic sector interventions, revealing a more nuanced, illustrative and in-depth description of everyday human and social living. In other words, enabling a different conversation about the possibilities and risks involved when the public sector intervenes in the lives of citizens. One of the emerging challenges which the panellists addressed in their subsequent dialogue, facilitated by Manuel Toscano, ZAGO (US), is the pres-sure generated between opposite interests, activities, scales and time hori-zons. The panellists all dealt with how they manage these internal and exter-nal conflicts and how the choices of their owners or clients are essentially political and ethical decisions. In a public sector setting, ripe with politics and power, everything is ultimately a negotiated compromise. The focus in design to make solutions that are meaningful, attractive and useful to peo-ple may very well clash with the realpolitik of public bureaucracy. How are design practitioners going to relate to that?

‘We can re-design and renew the idea of the political. Design can do more than just create better public services. We can ask ourselves how we can use design as a tool for reconnecting with citizens in new forms of political participation and political possibilities.’Eduardo Staszowski, Assistant Professor, Parsons Desis Lab, The New School (US)

‘Maybe now that the field has had some success and some failures,

it is even more aware of how everything it does has an impact.

But it may still be uncertain as to what fundamental ideas

and goals it should be guided by.’ Manuel Toscano, Principal, ZAGO (US)

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How public design?

The field of data-visualisation has changed dramatically through the last years, with an incredible amount of data and analytical tools now available. The rise of social media, mobile data, geographical data, and the low cost of data storage are among the key drivers. On-line and in print we see hun-dreds of examples every day of information presented through abstract and diagrammatic forms. But are we good enough at using visualisation as a tool to create knowledge and new insight? Design director Giorgia Lupi, Accurat (IT) shared a range of examples on how visualisation can be crucial to better understand, take decisions and act on public problems. For instance she showed how a data-visualization on ‘Startups Universe’ provides an intuitive visual access to a complex da-tabase elucidating money raised, timespans, relationships and patterns on venture capital firms and founders. Another project explores Nobel Prizes and Laureates from 1901 to 2012 analysing the age of recipients at the time prices were awarded, average age evolution through time and distribution among categories, grade level, main affiliation universities and principal hometowns of the laureates. Understand and visualise, or visualise and understand? Giorgia Lupi suggested that we maybe sometimes need to visualise first in order to un-derstand. In the plenary conversation, Sabine Junginger, Kolding Design School (DK) raised the purpose of visualisation - is it not to make data more simple and accessible? In response, Georgia Lupi emphasised that visualisation can serve mul-tiple purposes and audiences. Some people just want a quick overview of an interactive graphic. Others might want to spend more time with the piece, and explore it more in depth.

DATA-VISUALISATION AS TOOL FOR DISCOVERY

This can be a helpful way of thinking about audience, and how to select data: Who should learn from it and in what situation will they see the results? For policy makers, who are no foreigners to bar charts, perhaps the main prom-ise of data visualisation is the mapping of complex systems. Could data visu-alisation act as a powerful tool for inquiry, helping them discover new rela-tionships and causalities, and to ask better questions? What data could you imagine being visualized? We asked the seminar participants this question and received interesting answers e.g. “Visualiz-ing the whole activity of project/policies within an administration”. “Better understanding of the complexity of the local/regional/national/international context” and “New types of interaction of government – who, how, what etc.”

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FOUR POLICYSTUDIOS

FACILITATING SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

EDUCATION: NEW NORDIC SCHOOL

CREATING MEANINGFUL SYSTEMS OF SUPPORT

EMPLOYMENT: EMPOWERMENT

ENABLING DISTRIBUTED CHANGE

ECONOMIC AFFAIRS AND THE INTERIOR: MODERNISATION

DESIGNING POLICY

BUSINESS & GROWTH: EXECUTING POLITICAL PLANS

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Policy Studio

How could politicians, civil servants, professionals and citizens work togeth-er differently to create an alternative model for lasting change? The policy studio on education involved Danish policy makers and international edu-cational and design experts to explore the potential of an alternative kind of policy tool: might social movements provide a different kind of change pro-cess that could potentially revitalise the role of the state and public services, making them generative forces for change? Bottom-up change from within the system and a network-based collabo-rative process of learning and improvement characterises the political ini-tiative New Nordic School (NNS), launched by the Danish Ministry of Educa-tion. NNS is a nation-wide voluntary programme where primary schools and day-care institutions can sign up to contribute to a shared vision of learning, thriving and social inclusion. More than 350 institutions across Denmark have signed up to take part in this coalition for change, driven by a common vision. But what are the strengths and weaknesses of such a bottom-up pol-icy initiative?

The importance of on-boardingGetting a school and a day-care institution to sign up as NNS institutions is not the same as getting people on-board. The idea must move from the status of being told to the status of true engagement. Like rituals, in schools well-known as timetables, NNS also needs to become a ritual. If the goal is system change, putting ideas on the wall doesn’t work. The goals need to be adaptable in practice.

FACILITATING SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

Education: New Nordic School

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‘Schools should decide the how, and theministry should be very clear about what! Teach the school the process. Teach what, without telling how.’ Megan Roberts, Executive Director, Division of Innovation, New York City Department of Education (US)

Constraints as a lever for creativity?NNS currently reflects the recommendation in the quote above, as NNS insti-tutions are only obliged by a few very overall goals of the New Nordic School, e.g. to minimize the impact of social background with respect to learning outcomes. However, constraints are not necessarily limitations, but can be levers for creativity. The question is, whether a more constrained `what´ of the decentralised NNS experiments could leverage the creativity of the NNS institutions even more?

‘New Nordic School is a masterpiece of political positioning.’Charles Leadbeater, Government Advisor and Author (UK)

Tell the stories! Show interestChange initiatives often tend to matter more in the initial phase, result-ing in burnouts and decreasing momentum over time. Honouring the best

stories of positive impact and allowing them to be shared throughout the system is a quick and low-cost way to keep the change initiative burning.

‘One thing that government can do really well is convene and put official stamps and make people feel really good by being honoured by their government.’Benjamin Riley, Director of Policy and Advocacy, NewSchools Venture Fund (US)

Designing social movements in public development utilises a clear vision of a better future as a starting point. The challenge is then to organise the movement around existing and new local infrastructures to create the mo-mentum and constructive feedback to enable a community of practice that is able to create new practical solutions. The challenge is to find the right balance between central direction and decentralised emergence and iden-tifying what kinds of resources are needed to allow the movement to grow.

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Policy Studio

A focus in many public design approaches is developing and scaling services which rely more on empathy and trust. Design here involves creating and sustaining relationships and alliances around the specific problem or situa-tion in the particular context. The aim is to develop policies and regulations that support ‘systematic relationality’ that work with citizens in improving their situation. But how might one authorise and scale services that in their very nature require a highly local operationalisation? For many years, the system of employment services, not just in Denmark but in many comparable countries, has been permeated with mistrust from the top down as well as from the bottom up. Repeated negative experiences and years of heavy regulation have created scepticism among citizens as to the system’s intention to help them – especially in prolonged relationships with public services. Likewise, the system suffers from mistrust within – among regulators, local authorities and caseworkers. So how can the Danish Ministry of Employment begin to work more systematically with empower-ment of citizens as well as with transforming the employment system itself?

Start with the person, not the programmeA study shows that our most vulnerable citizens have more confidence in the police than in their social workers. This can be explained by the lack of pre-dictability and the often long involvement with changing caseworkers that causes mistrust and unnecessary uncertainty. How might one begin to redefine the roles of authorities in the lives of vulnerable citizens? What will it take to change the rhetoric and open up a new kind of dialogue that is based on the citizen’s own perspective on the

CREATING MEANINGFULSYSTEMS OF SUPPORT

Employment: Empowerment

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How public design?

problems and possible solutions? Can the ownership of the process be given back to the citizen? In this policy studio, Brenton Caffin, Nesta (UK); Nina Terrey, Think Place (AUS); and Hilary Cottam, Participle (UK), illustrated that it is possible to change the environment with very simple design methods. This could be visual tools to help guide a conversation that takes its depar-ture in the citizen´s concerns, questions and needs, for instance. Such tools can help the citizen and the professional in reaching a common understand-ing of the issues, and to focus on actual problem-solving. For instance, if a parent says that the problem is that the children don´t want to go to school, the conversation can move from this issue to why they don´t want to attend school, and to what the parent can do.

‘People don’t know what they don’t know.’Brenton Caffin, Director of Innovation Skills, Nesta (UK)

Enabling caseworkers to make individual decisionsThe mistrust built into the system becomes obvious when looking at the massive regulatory architecture that the caseworker typically has to man-age. But even if these constraints were removed, the caseworkers might feel uncomfortable in taking individual decisions, for which they are held accountable. Therefore, it is necessary to re-design regulation and support-ive tools in a way that shows caseworkers the purpose of the regulation and helps them find meaningful ways of working with individual citizens. How to strike the right balance between prescriptive rules and professional judge-ment?

‘The welfare state is based on an outdated transactional model and needs to bereplaced with something that is shared, collective and relational.’ Hilary Cottam, Founder and partner, Participle (UK)

POLICY STUDIOS:

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Policy Studio

How do you design and support a process of distributed change? How can a national policy process be organised to create the space to deal with prob-lems based on local and regional conditions and needs? How do we most productively build on existing development initiatives at the local level to secure a fruitful relationship between radical and incremental innovations?These questions are all part of the challenge of ensuring implementation of central government reforms. They require the state to take on a new role as a facilitator of implementation that refrains from strict prescriptive and top-down procedures. Instead, it has to design a distributed process of change from a common spine of principles that enable and guide people to locally enact and contribute to them. The Danish Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Interior is faced with the challenge of facilitating a new process of modernisation in the public sector. But what is the role of the ministry in a distributed process of change?

A reform of the welfare stateThe newly agreed modernisation process in Denmark is based on seven principles of governance. The principles evolve around themes such as de-centralisation, trust and a stronger focus on the outcomes created in the concrete interaction between citizens and public employees. This causes Jocelyne Bourgon, Public Governance International (CA), to describe it as a meta-reform and possibly a reform of the entire welfare state. A reform of this magnitude is not easily implemented, but the chance of success is greatly strengthened by a strong history of collaboration and trust in the Danish public sector.

ENABLING DISTRIBUTED CHANGE

Economic Affairs and the Interior: Modernisation

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The role of the ministryOne central point of discussion in this policy studio focused on the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Interior’s role in implementing the principles and how to facilitate the paradoxical processes of ‘centralised decentralisation’. How can a central ministry enable, support and ensure the productive use of the new principles locally? And how is the correct level of devolution decided upon?Three particularly important design challenges were highlighted:

/ The narrative. One point of great consensus in the studio was the importance of a strong narrative. An elaborated narrative and purpose is necessary so the modernisation principles don’t stand alone in a rule-like form.

/ Operating model. According to Martin Stewart-Weeks, Cisco (AUS), the ministry should lay down an operating model for the reform process. Decentralised innovation processes happen at different speeds in different contexts. An operating model should ensure consistency by focusing on areas of tolerated divergence, since uniformity is both improbable and counterproductive.

/ Criteria of success. It is important to establish the connection between the criteria of success locally and how success is measured centrally.

‘The narrative defines the lens through which you create the society you aspire to.’Jocelyne Bourgon, President, Public Governance International (CA)

‛In Denmark you have the possibility of reinventing the public sector

utilizing this massive asset, which is that you trust each other.’

Jill Rutter, Program Director, The Institute for Government (UK)

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Policy Studio

Traditional approaches to policymaking are becoming increasingly inad-equate in the quest for making new policies and reforms ‘stick’ in our so-cieties. Designing for policy inherently challenges public policymaking as the presumed rational development of stable models for change; design is rather more predisposed to iterative creation and stewardship, closing the gap between development of the ‘plan’ and its implementation into ‘practice’. Rather than formulating a strategy that is distinct from practical applica-tion, it is in the testing and iteration that the plan truly comes to life in rela-tion to context, practical outlook and consequences for people. In this policy studio, the question was: how do you craft public policy in a global context? Might one speak of conventional versus design-led approaches? The studio took departure in a case example of a highly ambitious policy process.

The case: Australia in the Asian CenturyTom Bentley, former Policy Advisor to the Australian Prime Minister (AU), opened the studio by sharing a policy effort entitled ‘Australia in the Asian Century’, in which he played a key role. The financial crisis accelerated a tectonic shift from the West to East with China as one of the new economic centres of the world. Due to this re-balancing, the Australian government wished to develop a long-term strat-egy that could identify the opportunities for Australia and the methods to realise them. The policy process was run by a cabinet committee with a senior minister and a task force of public officials, who drew on their international network and a variety of think tanks to conduct their analysis. The result was a 380

DESIGNINGPOLICY

Business & Growth: Executing political plans

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page long white paper (strategy) with key findings and priorities for the year 2025, along with methods and specific responsibilities for ensuring pro-gress. Whereas the policy process itself was relatively conventional – estab-lishing a commission, conducting a comprehensive analysis, setting forth priorities – the policy illustrated the key importance of problem framing. The Australian government could have articulated the problem as ‘How does Australia counterbalance China in the years to come?’; but it chose to take a much broader geographical stance (Asia) and a much longer time horizon (a century). As Tom Bentley pointed out, this framing of the problem meant that the policy answers became quite different. For instance, whereas the first strategy might have meant sending more diplomats to China, the sec-ond strategy meant investing in broad-based cultural exchanges with Asian nations.

Growth team Agriculture and Food: Using micro-level research for macro-level insightIn his reply to the Australian case, Jens Lundsgaard, Ministry of Business and Growth (DK), shared a more bottom-up oriented approach to the poli-cy process. His point of departure was the experience of a ‘growth team’ of private business representatives, industry associations and policy makers established by the Danish government. Amongst a select number of policy areas, the government had identified the food industry as a major contribu-tor to Denmark’s future growth and job creation. However, the food indus-try is highly regulated, which means that Danish companies face a series of competitive challenges. To explore these challenges, the growth team interviewed a number of specific companies in the environmental and food industries. Narratives from these highly qualitative, micro-level interviews with company manag-ers were presented at one of the growth team’s meetings in the form of edit-ed video footage. At the same meeting, the most important insights from the stories told by the companies were physically represented at the conference

table in the form of quotes and images from the field visits. The stories from the companies contributed to establishing a common frame of reference, which the growth team could use in its discussions. In that sense, although the stories were based on the micro level, they helped prioritise the team’s macro-level recommendations to the Danish government. Banny Banerjee, Stanford University (US), emphasised the power of de-sign to oscillate between the micro and macro levels of public problems. This is done by combining in-depth understanding of policy consequences for people or business while enabling system-wide thinking, and then testing potential system redesign with users. Sabine Junginger, Kolding School of Design (DK), illustrated the classic policy process model: First, research, then analysis, then decision, then im-plementation. However, a design approach would be much more concerned with implementation (experience and impact for end-users) from the outset, and would – in line with Banerjee’s point – be driven much more iteratively.

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Stewarding design

How can public managers lead the process of innovation? And on which ba-sis should they make their decisions? In fact, where do alternative options for making decisions come from?

Whereas design is often thought of as a consultant activity, or as particular methods, design can also be thought of as a management style. Based on his recent doctoral work, and inspired by academics Richard Boland, Fred Collopy and Kamil Michlewski, MindLab’s Christian Bason shared the concept of leading with a design attitude. Bason argued that a public manager’s attitude to problem-solving is crucial to innovation, and he presented two ways of how managers can approach a problem: with a deci-sion attitude, where the manager focuses on the evaluation of two or more alternative courses of action, and then decides which action is optimal; or, with a design attitude, where the manager first of all focuses on what he should make a decision about and thereby what the problem space to be decided on is. Bason presented four characteristics of a design attitude:

Questioning basic assumptions. Managers with design attitude systemati-cally question the assumptions on which they base their decisions. They con-tinuously challenge their own definition of the problem space.

Centering on outcomes. The managers are not only interested in user experi-ence; they are interested in how to achieve desired change – by impacting the behaviour of users. And they make this their priority.

Leading the unknown. Public managers with design attitude navigate the pro-

LEADING WITH DESIGNAT TITUDE

cess of innovation in two ways: they take active responsibility for disturbing or challenging their employees, for instance by insisting on continuous experi-mentation, and they are (relatively) comfortable with not being able to answer where the process will lead – thereby giving their staff significant freedom to identify new solutions on their own.

Making the future concrete. Managers with design attitude tend to establish a narrative or vision about the future that is so concrete that you can see it and feel it. The active use of models and sketches, but also stories, media and enactments, are all expressions of a ‘designerly’ approach to driving change.

‘There are always underlyingassumptions and frames that

shape our current thinking andprevent us from taking a fresh

look at the challenge. In order to create deep changes, we must

assume a position of ‘cultivatednaivete’ and repeatedly ask

the question ‘why’ so as to get to the root causes

and false assumptions.’Banny Banerjee, Associate Professor, Director, Stanford ChangeLabs (US)

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Outro

What happens when you bring smart, experienced and dedicated people together to make the most of their mutual expertise, engagement and in-sight? One possible answer is that it enables them to ask better, more re-flected questions. Certainly, a lot of questions – some perhaps new, some definitely endur-ing – were raised during the conversations that took place in Copenhagen for a few days in early September. Firstly, there is the question of redesigning the political. What are the political implications when public administrators and professionals start shaping new solutions in empathy with the practical concerns, needs and lives of citizens? Where does that leave political ideas about what is ‘good’ or ‘right’ for people and society? Does it narrow the scope for political deci-sion-making, or does it enrich it? Does it call for a different kind of politician, or perhaps for a different political process? Might we need to create new participatory processes which combine public deliberation (co-deciding) with co-designing? Secondly, there is the question of redesigning administration. Design invites social complexity into the policy process as a point of departure that can enable more human-centred and differentiated sets of practices – leading perhaps to ‘empowerment’, ‘centralised decentralisation’ or to the generation of ‘new public movements’. However, how does this fit with the hierarchical, rule-based and more authoritarian nature of most public or-ganisations? How are they supposed to strike the right balance between control on one hand and service co-production on the other?

PERSPECTIVES

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Thirdly, increasingly, public sector innovation efforts are being embedded in design labs like the Lab at OPM (US), MaRS Solutions Lab (CA) or La27e Re-gion (FR). Design labs are organisations which draw on design approaches to work with decision-makers to enact change. But how can the perspectives, insights and solutions they help create become more embedded in the core operations of the public sector? How can design practices take root within, or close to, public organisations, contributing to systemic changes and ena-bling a new culture of decision-making? Fourthly, the issue of co-production and ‘relational welfare’ raises the question of redesigning the professions. What are the future roles of nurses, doctors, teachers, social workers and other ‘front-line’ professionals? What do we expect from them if their interactions with citizens are to be more sharing, relational and mutual? And what might we expect in terms of a new professional ethos from public managers? Another way of understanding the outcome of How Public Design? is one of community building. Design not only enables new kinds of public and po-litical participation. It is also becoming a reference point for a global dia-logue about the future of the public sector. We look forward to taking part in this dialogue, with this growing community, in the years to come.

MindLabSlotsholmsgade 121216 Copenhagen KDenmark+45 9133 7187info@mind-lab.dkwww.mind-lab.dk

Follow the conversation on:LikedIn: MindLab groupTwitter: @mindlabdkBlog: mindblog.dkInstagram: mindlabdk

Content and editing:Christian BasonJesper Christiansenand the MindLab team

Design and Photos:Anette VæringLene Nørgaard

Printing:ReklameTryk, Herning

© MindLab 2013

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