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...
Global: Systems Approaches
Guest blog from the Applied Systems Thinking in Practice Group, School of Engineering & Innovation, The Open University (UK) Systems thinking in times of complex challenges The Covid-19 pandemic has shown what governments can do when faced with an existential threat: The climate and associated emergencies are existential threats. These will require even more of governments and of governance. Further, these new ways of governing are what is needed to enable governments to achieve real...
The State of Kansas piloted ‘Our Tomorrows,’ a novel framework to capture family experiences about thriving and surviving, to ensure that policies and practices meet the needs of families. The approach makes a large amount of data (over 2,500 narratives) directly accessible to decision-makers and the individuals who provided it. Communities make sense of patterns that emerge from stories to create a portfolio of small actions that will make Kansas the best place to raise a child.
To equip the Welsh Government to become more open, innovative and adaptive to change, the Education Directorate commissioned the OECD to undertake an assessment of the capacity of the Directorate to develop as a learning organisation (LO). This article explores the outcomes of the LO assessment and provides an early insight into the next steps. To get an overview of what learning organisations are and the OECD’s work in Wales, read OPSI’s previous blogs on...
Advice for Making Your Strategy Stand Out Over the past few years, innovation has become a popular term in the public and private sectors. Many are beginning to look for ways to make their company or unit more innovative, wanting to offer a service, product, or policy that is different and more creative than what currently exists. But when everyone else also tries to think ‘differently,’ how does one actually do so? This challenge can...
This report uses systems thinking tools to address pervasive problems in Slovenia's procurement system that the government has struggled to remedy through traditional regulatory means. The report outlines how room for innovation can be created within highly regulated policy domains and how governments can systematically benefit from it. It also explores potential reforms that could be designed from the bottom-up, to address specific behavioural and structural barriers – such as public…
“Everyone is afraid of making a mistake. Everyone is afraid of the consequence of error, but the greatest error is not to move. The greatest error is to be paralysed by the fear of failure.”– Dr Michael Ryan, WHO Executive Director, WHO Press Conference (13/03/2019) The stakes for innovation have never been higher, the risk of failing has never felt greater. Whenever an organisation innovates they are always taking a step into the unknown, with...
Building on the previous report, this report examines how governments can move from a tactical to a holistic approach to system change. Drawing on diverse case studies from across the world at both national and local levels, the report illustrates how a strategic approach to system change implies three key elements: envisioning and acting on the future, putting public value at the core of the change process, and systematically engaging citizens in decision-making.
Wales is in the thick of a major education reform process focused on large-scale school improvement. With such an ambitious agenda, the challenge wasn’t just about getting the policy right in the first place, it was about seeing it through to effective implementation so it could start transforming what, and how, students learn. To that end, the Welsh Government Education Directorate worked with OECD colleagues in the Education Directorate’s Implementing Education Policy team to…
Wales is in the midst of a major education reform process. As we know, good education policy is not about perfection on the page, it’s about what happens in the classroom. This is why Wales needed to think about not only effective policy development but also effective policy implementation. What conditions make for effective policy implementation? Our colleagues in the OECD Education Directorate’s Implementing Education Policy team collaborated with key actors in the Welsh education...