The case for public sector innovation has been steadily growing for years. Citizens’ expectations continue to grow and evolve, and governments need to rethink and re-imagine how they deliver value to citizens. These were some of the strongest underlying themes that arose in the discussions at OPSI’s 2017 Innovation Conference. To make this a reality, governments cannot afford for innovation capabilities to be exclusively in the hands of hired private sector consultants or a select...
On the 21st and 22nd of November, over 500 participants from all around the world gathered in Paris to share skills, experiences, practices and knowledge at the OPSI conference, with the one focus in mind: making innovation in government the ‘new normal’. The theme of the conference Innovation in Government: The New Normal (#opsi2017) came from the belief that innovative people and practices certainly exist in government, but they are not yet mainstreamed as they should be....
This blog was written by Nicolas Zahn, Former Consultant, Digital Government Team at the OECD At a recent OECD Conference, speakers from various backgrounds joined forces to discuss what role public policy plays in supporting the development and implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to benefit societies. Although we are standing at the beginning of a transformation, AI already has an impact on our everyday lives and hence complex questions arise from data governance over labour...
We are living in an age where access to government and politicians is ever increasing, educational levels are rising, and yet we trust government institutions less and less. On 11 October 2017, OPSI ran a workshop exploring “Trust in Government in a Digital Age” as part of the OECD Global Parliamentary Network meeting. The workshop had three goals: first, to introduce parliamentarians to new methods of working on complex problems; second, to put these methods...
In September, OPSI launched the report “System Approaches to Public Challenges: Working with Change” on dealing with complexity in public policy. To take this work forward, we launched a series of workshops with leading countries to discuss how systems approaches could change the everyday functioning of government. We held the first one on September 6, 2017 in Brdo pri Kranju in cooperation with the Prime Minister’s Office of the Government of Slovenia. This work was...
This blog was guest written by Wouter van Acker, PhD, KU Leuven Public Governance Institute I should know better than to write a blog starting with a ‘how-to-title’. One conclusion after writing a PhD on public sector innovation, which is what I did and why I’m writing here, is that there is no such thing as a ten-tip-recipe-for-success in innovation. But we all succumb to the appeals of clickbait. So here we are. In 2014...
What roles can a politician play if they want to help promote, push or steer public sector innovation? Our focus here at the Observatory on Public Sector Innovation tends to concentrate on the public service side of things: what government organisations can do to develop and implement more sophisticated approaches to innovation. That involves looking at institutions (what are the frameworks and settings that allow/inhibit innovation), at organisations (how can different administrative practices…
Innovators are encouraged to submit innovative practices to fuel new research on innovation trends and that can be considered for the UAE’s new Edge of Government Innovation Award. We have extended the deadline for submissions to 22 September 2017 based on feedback from the innovation community. After a successful collaboration over the last year, OPSI and the Mohammed Bin Rashid Centre for Government Innovation (MBRCGI) are happy to announce the continued collaboration and partnership for...
When public sector innovation is talked about it can often seem like a new focus, or something that governments have only recently paid attention to. Yet on a recent holiday I had a reminder that governments have been innovating for a long time, and that many of the issues that we face today when innovating are not new. In this case the reminder was a Swedish naval vessel built early in the 17th Century. The...
This guest blog was written by Rob Thomas Communications Officer, BizLab, Australian Department of Industry, Innovation and Science “It is the responsibility of every APS officer to explore the opportunities that are available to you through initiatives such as Innovation Month, the innovation labs and teams…” – Glenys Beauchamp – Secretary, Australian Department of Industry, Innovation and Science Was Innovation Month really last month? At time of writing it feels like…