After Government After Shock we invited event hosts to share with us recordings of their events, any write-ups of their event or some after-the-event reflections on their event and what they learnt. This blog post provides an easy reference point to help interested people navigate between these. You can also find these materials on the relevant event listing on the Government After Shock site. Event recordings We have created a YouTube playlist where you can find a...
New Year’s resolutions are so frequently unfulfilled that it has become a cliché to cynically write them off as futile. We create them in the hopes of creating innovation in our lives, but often they fall short of the novel, implemented, impactful action that innovation implies. Why does this happen? Many would argue it’s to do with the resolutions themselves—their scope, ambition, execution, and definition. A quick internet search will find you countless advice articles...
A reflection on a year of crisis and a deliberate start to 2021 While many of us are ready to dive into 2021 and never look back, we can’t race towards “normal”. We are facing a critical juncture where governments must choose to deliberately build on the learnings of this year to be better prepared for the complex future ahead. The Government After Shock event held in November focused on this challenge: reflecting on the...
Since the launch of the Toolkit Navigator in November 2018, we have maintained it as a live and continuously growing resource and built up an active community of fellow tool and method experts and enthusiasts. In addition to adding new toolkits, including many submitted by our community, as well as encouraging reviews of existing toolkits from practitioners who have experience with the toolkits, we look forward to Toolkit Navigator enhancements in 2021. We are happy...
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...
This article is jointly published on the UCL IIPP blog. As part of an ongoing partnership between the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) and the OECD’s Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (OPSI), we hosted an online immersive workshop on 2 December 2020 to explore the challenges and opportunities of directing mission-oriented innovation in practice. The event brought together leaders from across a range of government institutions in OECD countries and from the...
Many of you working in the public sector may want to prepare for uncertainty, or set up a future-oriented vision in your organisation. Many of you may have heard of anticipatory innovation or have engaged in foresight activities, but the sheer flurry of methodologies and tools in this space can be disorientating – and they may seem to require special abilities if you are not used to apply them. For this reason, OPSI and LabX...
In the lead up to Government After Shock we undertook a number of interviews with a range of leaders and practitioners to hear about perspectives on the COVID-19 pandemic and what the associated crisis was revealing. The culminating event of Government After Shock was part of our collaboration with the European Commission through the H2020 programme, and these interviews helped provide us with a richer understanding of how innovation works in practice, with the crisis...
Since late 2019, we have been working to answer the question “why hasn’t blockchain, and its underlying distributed ledger technology (DLT), made a bigger impact in the public sector?”. It has been over two years since OPSI published the report Blockchains Unchained: Blockchain Technology and its Use in the Public Sector, and over a year since the OECD Digital Government and Data Unit published the report State of the Art in the Use of Emerging...
As part of the OECD Internship Programme, OPSI is recruiting one or more interns to join the team in January 2021 (there is some flexibility with start dates and end dates). Specific projects would vary depending on the ongoing projects of the team at the time, as well as the experience, qualifications, and interests of the selected candidate(s). Some potential project areas may be related to: Innovation management. Anticipatory Innovation Governance (see Project page). Behavioural...