Putting public sector innovation at the top of the ‘to-do’ list is not an easy task for government. Even if there’s notional support, trying something new often means that you face inertia, confusion and even fear about what exactly innovation is, what goals it can serve or how to do it. To combat these common barriers, the Irish Public Service Leadership Board took matters into their own hands. They created their own Declaration on Public...
Month: June 2019
This is a guest post from Robert Braun, Johannes Starkbaum and Anna Gerhardus of the Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna, Austria, and the RiConfigure EU research project (Grant agreement No.: 788047). Public sector innovation is widely seen as a key for ‘doing things better’. However, innovation per se will not necessarily lead to ‘the better’ nor define what ‘the better’ actually is. Just as the novel OECD Declaration on Public Sector Innovation suggests , we...
“I want to do something new. It’s going to take time and effort to get right. I don’t know whether it will work, and even if it does, it won’t instantly be better than what we already have. There will probably be unintended consequences and some of our known stakeholders will likely lose out or be displeased. Those who might benefit may not even recognise that we made the difference. If it goes wrong, it’s...