Global: European Commission Collaboration

We’re building an incubator at OPSI and we’d like to share the current thinking, hear your thoughts, and put out an preliminary call for interest for the (free) alpha version of the model. Typically, incubators provide start-up or scale-up private and social sector organizations with office space, administrative services, financing, coaching, and networks to help them build and scale rapidly. This will be inspired by a similar value proposition, but customized to support and develop...

In December 2019, OPSI launched a partnership with ITLA Children’s Foundation in Finland. The aim of the work is to examine mechanisms of Anticipatory Innovation Governance and to test some of these out on fast-changing challenges with high levels of uncertainty. To that end, we were together with Angela Hanson in Oulu and Vantaa at the end of February 2020 to kick-start a series of workshops on the topic.  In particular, the anticipatory looking glass...

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,...

It is currently difficult for the public to follow how EU laws are made. This is because the Council - where Member States are represented - remains relatively inaccessible. Documents are difficult to get hold of and Member States’ positions on a given law are not public. The EO opened an own-initiative inquiry into Council legislative transparency and has called for a series of transparency steps to be taken.

The OECD and the European Commission supported a series of studies to better understand the innovation process. This paper focuses on measuring public sector innovation, arguing that while measurement and evaluation should be mutually reinforcing, they should not be seen as interchangeable entities.

What is in a name? Would a toolkit by any other name seem as useful? In this post, I delve into what comprises innovation “toolkits”—and make a stab at classifying them. What is the difference between a playbook and a manual? This taxonomy development is a step in building our resource to help public sector innovators navigate, sequence, and tweak tools and methods to facilitate their innovation journeys. In one of my previous blog posts...

The European Citizens’ Consultations (ECCs) were a project aiming to engage citizens in a consultation about what Europe meant to them. It was formed of two strands; an online survey about the future of Europe, and a series of national consultation events organised by national governments and other organisations like NGOs, think tanks, and academic institutions. This was a new experiment to give European citizens the possibility to express and exchange their opinions about the Union and its…

The European Commission led #Blockchain4EU as a forward-looking exploration of existing, emerging and potential Blockchain and other DLTs (Distributed Ledger Technologies) applications for industrial sectors. Through an experimental and participatory approach, this project allowed first to come up with an overview of promising applications across industries, and second to co-design five prototypes that physically showcase how Blockchain could be applied in the near future.

This report explores how governments are upskilling and investing in people in innovative ways. The report is part of the 2020 Trends Report series, an annual trends report developed by the OECD-OPSI and the UAE’s Mohammed Bin Rashid Centre for Government Innovation (MBRCGI).

We suspect that the world does not need another toolkit. There, I said it. This hunch is reinforced when I am met with wincing but affirming smiles each time the topic emerges in conversation with public sector innovators. We want to move beyond the innovation toolkit Hi, my name is Angela Hanson, I am a design lead at the OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (OPSI). My work involves innovation methods and tools, a topic...