This year has been rich in learning. The terrible pandemic has provided a lot of insights and required all of us to do things differently. As part of the preparation for Government After Shock, OPSI has been pulling together examples and analysis about the innovative responses seen across the world, undertaking some sensemaking and doing some workshops with different communities about the crisis, and learning from other events and practitioners. One thing we have…
Posts on Innovation Tools & Resources
Steps towards a New Data Deal: Prototyping an evidence-based innovation panel for the Portuguese Public Administration A rigorous, realistic, and actionable knowledge of current innovation practices is indispensable in order to meet the present challenges and proactively prepare the future of Public Administration. From the outset, innovation practices in Public Administration must understand the specificities of public service guaranteed by the State. For the Experimentation Lab for Public…
The OPSI mission has three pillars: Uncovering emerging practice and identifying what’s next Turning the new into the normal Providing trusted advice In 2020, the work that supports this mission shifted sharply; suddenly, there was a deluge of “emerging practice” as every country on earth was facing different shades of the same problem. We, in turn, experimented rapidly with ways to support governments: collecting responses to COVID-19 as a platform…
Recently I posted about a sensemaking project to collect, curate, and provide tools to understand and contextualize the many ideas emerging from the COVID-19 crisis. Over the past months, there has been a deluge of articles taking the form “COVID-19 urgently proves the need for X,” where X is an investment, approach, program, policy, or complete paradigm shift. Which we think is a genuine and needed examination. “William Hynes, Head of the New Approaches to...
We are taking OPSI’s portfolio exploration and assessment support into the virtual realm. We are asking for 20-30 minutes of your time to share initial thoughts and feedback on our first draft of questions for exploring: The way your organisation’s innovation portfolio is oriented Your organisation’s overall portfolio management capability Following the set of questions, there is an example output based on hypothetical inputs. We…
OPSI is researching innovation portfolios as part of our European Commission Horizon 2020 work and we are developing a self-guided portfolio assessment tool for people to analyse and explore their own organisational innovation portfolio. We welcome your feedback. Hero-innovators are imaginary Does your organisations still believe in hero-innovators? Probably not. Based on our research and observations, in order for innovation to be impactful, organisations need a lot of distributed…
Which toolkits or guidance about tools have you found useful in helping you apply a new or different method or approach to your work? We are seeking your help in enhancing the OPSI Toolkit Navigator , so that more public servants and practitioners can benefit from the existing resources and guidance. OPSI’s Toolkit Navigator The OECD is a natural platform to aggregate and help navigate the numerous resources that have sprung up to help people,...
Abraham Maslow once wrote, “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”[1] This snappy quote captures the insight that our behaviour tends to be shaped by the tools we have at hand, and the tools we have at hand shape how we see the world and what is possible. In this post, I would like to explore our emerging thinking...
This guest post is written by Leeanne Douglas from BizLab within the Australian Government. We have learned lots of lessons running the first human centred design academy in the Australian Government. It has been a bit of trial and error for us, so we thought we would share a few things that might help others in the same position. BizLab, an innovation hub within Australia’s Department of Industry, Innovation and Science, was established in 2016....
OPSI held its conference 'Innovation in Government: Steps, leaps and bounds' on the 19 and 20 of November 2018, convening leaders and innovators from around the world in Paris.