Authors: Christina Vogt and Martin Ruebens (INO – Flemish Public Sector Innovation Network), Patricia Idsinga and Frits Bussemaker (RIC – Dutch Government Innovation Community), Laurien Mues (NIDO – Belgian federal government innovation lab), Tom Van Nieuwenhove (City of Ghent) In the course of the 2021 Creative Bureacracy Festival, five community builders from four north-west European public sector innovation networks (PSIN) came together to discuss their experiences, hopes as…
Posts on Innovative Capacity
Will in-person work be a distant memory 15 years from now? Will ministries’ offices only exist in cyberspace? Or will AI-powered bots become the norm when interviewing potential job candidates? While the answers to many questions like these are impossible to know today, one thing is certain: working in the future will be very different from what it is now. This will not only be determined by new innovative technologies, the disappearance of certain jobs...
“We create and re-create narratives throughout our lives to make sense of what happened, to process experience, to interpret and reinterpret our view of the world as life unfolds. I believe that beautiful and difficult process is what it is to be human.” Lauren Oakes For me, significant transitions in life prompt such introspection and recreation of narratives – to reflect on key moments that have shaped who I am and how I think. Recently,...
Editor’s note: This is a guest blog by Benjamin Kumpf, Innovation Team Lead in the OECD Development Co-operation Directorate and was co-authored by Angela Hanson and Alex Roberts. It summarises the event ‘Government Capabilities for 21st Century Challenges: What Types of Innovation Do We Need’, co-hosted with the Observatory of Public Sector Innovation on 21 April, 2021. The governments of tomorrow cannot be the same as the governments of yesterday. Change is needed – but...
This is a guest post from Johannes Mikonnen of Demos Helsinki, a partner in our recent work with the Latvian public sector. The world in which we live today calls for governments to find solutions to the most pressing challenges, and governments are falling short. Experimentation offers one particularly promising way for navigating the uncertainty and the rapidly changing circumstances of the 21st century. The Innovation Lab of the Latvian government embraced the transformative potential...
Over the past four months the Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (OPSI) has worked together with the Government of Denmark to conduct this Public Sector Innovation Scan. Learning from public sector innovation: the role of scans Public sector innovation systems are dynamic and constantly evolving: there is no perfect end point. Regardless of how developed or successful an innovation system is, there is always need for critical reflection on the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for...
How do you coordinate and convene a public sector innovation network? How do you connect people whose common interest is difference? Recently, we started to compile a catalogue of public sector innovation networks from around the world, in recognition of the important and valuable role that such networks can play. There are quite a number now, and in response to questions from some of the coordinators of the networks, we decided to hold a meet-up...
Today we’re releasing an innovation scan of the Latvian national public sector, undertaken in conjunction with the Latvian State Chancellery and with the support of the European Union’s Directorate General for Structural Reform Support. We are releasing both a report and a highlights document. We’re very excited to share this work, both because it is about recognising and celebrating the efforts that have already occurred in Latvia, and because it is a demonstration of the...
Editor’s note: This guest blog was written by Katju Holkeri, Head of Unit for Governance Policy in The Public Governance Department in the Finnish Ministry of Finance. This post was written following a February 2021 collaboration session between three OECD teams to join up intersecting work on trust, civic space, and anticipatory innovation governance in Finland. Anticipating the trust of citizens is not easy. What is possible for us in Finland however is to strengthen...
Since 2016, OPSI and the UAE Mohammed Bin Rashid Centre for Government Innovation (MBRCGI) have worked in partnership to surface key activities and case studies in public sector innovation, resulting in a series of annual reports on key innovation trends. However, this year is not a normal year, with 2020 being one of the most challenging years in most of our lifetimes. The COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly and drastically changed the daily lives of nearly...