Innovation Tag: Design

A-Lab was conceived to break down barriers to renewable energy in Australia. A-Lab draws on a network of people with a wide range of expertise and passion to make systemic change in the electricity sector. A-Lab is a space for these people to design and deliver solutions to the most complex challenges of integrating renewable grids, combine their respective strengths and build momentum for change.

Over a third of U.S. federal employees are eligible to retire in the next five years, yet only 6% of employees are under 30—a pressing issue given the rate of innovation. Piloted as an effort between agencies and a student-led nonprofit, the Civic Digital Fellowship recruits the next generation of technologists—students and recent grads—pairing them with in-need agencies. It has scaled to six agencies, and is an attractive on-ramp for technical students into public service.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires that organisations carry outData Protection Impact Assessments (DPIA or PIA) prior to starting a likely risky processing operation. The PIA tool is a free and open source software tool, available as a standalone and “server” version. It helps organisations to conduct PIAs by guiding them through the process step-by-step, and thus to demonstrate compliance with the GDPR.

Comoodle was developed to create a genuine sharing economy in Kirklees, fundamentally shifting the relationship between the Council and the community in the process. Comoodle is a web based platform, an elegant solution to enable collaboration, that is now helping local communities to access and share under-used resources. There is no other platform that exists across in the world that has public sector bodies actively sharing “stuff skill and spaces” in such a proactive and accessible way

Tens of millions of Americans are eligible to clear their criminal record, but due to a complicated, costly, and time-consuming process, only a small fraction have been able to do so. Clear My Record makes automatic record clearance possible by using an open source algorithm to review records, determine eligibility, and produce clearance motions. It shifts the burden of record clearance off of individuals by enabling the government to clear all records at scale and reinvest in communities.

The OEE established a Social Innovation "UnLab" (SIU) to test an embedded innovation model and amplify energy efficiency policy and service impacts in Canada. The SIU creates value for energy efficiency stakeholders in three ways: Building relationships and capacity for energy efficiency policy and service innovation; Generating evidence and collective learning by co-creating and testing insights and interventions; Amplifying impacts by scaling learning and implementing what works.

A first of its kind (in our context), cross-jurisdictional partnership between three levels of government to research, co-design and test prototypes with citizens to inform and improve the experience and uptake of home energy efficiency labeling and reporting. The core team was comprised of representatives from Natural Resources Canada’s (NRCan) Office of Energy Efficiency (OEE), the Province of Alberta’s CoLab, and the City of Edmonton with service design support from Situ Strategy.

In reaction to the sudden arrival of tens of thousands of refugees to the city of Hamburg (DE), MIT and Hafen City University's City Science Lab created a public participation and decision-making process for refugee accommodation in Hamburg neighbourhoods. 'CityScope FindingPlaces', an Human Computer Interaction platform, was designed and deployed to facilitate dozens of community meetings with ~500 participants, resulting with 160 locations accepted by Hamburg’s citizens to be developed for…

Mental health issues affect about 1 in 10 young people in the UK. MH:2K gives young people a leadership role in solving this most important of challenges. It empowers 14-25 years old to identify the mental health issues they see as most important, engage their peers in exploring these topics, and work with decision-makers to make recommendations for change.

The lab brings citizens and stakeholders together in a structured design process to form a common realisation of present challenges and pathways to the future. The stakeholders engaged are all identified and relevant to the target group. They are part of a national ecosystem from user, practitioner to policymakers locally, regionally and nationally. The design methods used in the lab are visualizations of processes, gap analysis and aesthetic disruption to enable needed cultural transformation.