Societal challenges such as demographic change affects rural areas in particular. The Social Foresight Lab is an innovative participatory approach towards rural development and technology transfer to address these challenges. It combines foresight, needs assessment and strategy development. Rural areas benefit, as it takes into account regional characteristics, initiates new cooperations among regional stakeholders, and integrates technological and social innovations into regional development.
Innovation Tag: Design
In 2016 the NEB launched the Data Visualization Initiative to face the challenge of producing usable and useful data to go beyond using new technologies to deliver better service to citizens. It created multiple products from the same information to expand public participation in the energy dialogue and enable evidence-based decision-making. These products include interactive data visualizations and other materials, such as high school lesson plans, as a new way to engage experts and nonexperts.
The Australian government is transforming employment services to improve how the system works for job seekers, employers and the community.
Transformational change requires genuine consultation to capture the diversity of views of stakeholders affected by changes, identifying pain points, testing ideas and laying the groundwork for sustainable policy reform.
A citizen centric approach helps to understand the real-world impact, leading to better outcomes and greater acceptance in the community.
The Client Experience Measurement Survey Model was developed by Employment and Social Development Canada to gather and analyse client feedback to improve service delivery to its clients. Canadians have been able to express their views on government programs and services, which have informed the way programs and services are designed and delivered. The survey allows the tracking of service satisfaction, ease of access, effectiveness of service delivery, and the experience of particular programs…
The integration of health and social care was seen by the Scottish government to require support to ensure that benefits of both national and local data and knowledge were able to be shared across two very different cultures and service providers to jointly develop more appropriate services for local populations.
LIST using their expertise in analytical work was seen as a way to develop a sound evidence base to allow decision makers to develop effective services.
The Northern Ireland (NI) Public Sector Innovation Lab has organised a hackathon, “Hack the Pain,” to address these needs of an underserved group: people with persistent pain. These individuals need for better information services for self-management, and the projects that emerged from the hackathon include a virtual reality app for mindfulness, a pain tracking app and a website of information on pain management techniques.
TOMI is a network of interactive street kiosks that allow every citizen to freely use public services on-the-go, in a simple, fast and convenient way, while performing their daily routines on the city streets.
By using TOMI, people can search for a specific public entity/service, choose the one that’s closer to their current location and take a virtual queue ticket to a given public service, with the possibility to require an SMS alert when their queue number is approaching.
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.
Αugmented Nature is a set of robotic tools that help animals adapt to the mass extinction. The tools enhance the capacities of so called Ecosystem Engineer species to reclaim and change their own habitats.
Reliable transportation is the primary barrier to stable employment for shift workers. Our solution leverages existing technology to provide “transportation as a benefit” through an integrated network of on-demand transportation options. We will quantify savings for employers due to reduced turnover and increased employee productivity, incentivizing them to fund the program long-term.