The Online Public Innovation Course has been designed for public officials, especially considering their agendas and their workloads. Thus, the course is flexible in the times allotted for the fulfillment of all the activities. This flexibility was introduced to the current version as a result of the constant feedback process that the Lab engages in, aiming to improve every iteration of the course. Another innovative aspect of this course is the focus on capacity building to foster an innovation ecosystem in all of Bogota’s public offices, as well as aiming to develop public innovation leadership from within through the strengthening of each of the public officer’s skills.

The Online Public Innovation Course has been implemented since 2016. As previously stated, the course has already had 6 Cohorts (groups of students) and with each one, the main goal is to receive feedback through surveys done to all the public officials, as well as through interviews to some of the students. The idea is to gather both quantitative and qualitative information that allows to rethink aspects of the course, focusing on the needs and desires of the course’s users: Bogota’s public officials. Aside from this process of evaluation on the course’s impact, the Laboratory is currently seeking to establish partnerships with other organizations to further spread this type of initiatives in other public offices.

LABcapital and the Veeduria’s team in charge of developing courses involved in designing, follow-up, monitoring and evaluation of the course. Additionally, LABcapital has engaged in conversations with other public innovation Labs, including Chile’s Public Innovation Lab and the US Office of Personnel Management’s Lab. These partnerships are key to share best practices and lessons learned in order to improve the team’s efforts on building innovation capacities in the public officials.

The course’s main users are public officials from Bogota’s public offices. Approximately 420 have taken the course, coming from almost 16 different public offices. LABcapital has set the goal to gather students from all of Bogota’s public offices, in order to foster the strengthening of a public innovation ecosystem, which in turn will generate shared value for Bogota’s citizens, as public service delivery is further improved.

The Online Public Innovation Course has managed to reach 420 public officials from 16 different public offices, which represents approximately 58% of the City’s 56 public offices. Additionally, the LAB is constantly monitoring the results of its course by engaging the community of public officials in surveys. In its most recent survey, 53 public officials answered, and 52% took the course in order to foster innovation in their public office. Additionally, 47% considered the course allowed them to seek solutions to public challenges. Overall, the course continues to expand its reach to other public offices, aiming to achieve full coverage of the entire City’s public sector.

Throughout the course’s implementation, there are four main challenges that the team has identified: working around public official’s schedules, barriers for teamwork, student retention and measuring results and impact. For the first three, LABcapital has managed to reduce the negative effects with each redesign process, improving the methodologies or activities used in the course. For example, the course is less intensive, while also being flexible in the due dates for activities in order to accommodate itself better to the workloads of public officials. Regarding measuring impact, LABcapital is seeking to learn from peers on the best mechanisms to ensure a relevant and focused way to measure impact.

In order for an initiative like the Online Public Innovation Course to be successful, teams that wish to replicate it must consider who they are preparing the initiative for: public officials.

Using design thinking and service design in order to focus on the public official’s needs and desires is key to incentivize positive results. Additionally, the more user-friendly the online platform and tools used are, the more engaged public officials become. Finally, another key component for success is the role of senior and mid-level leadership within public offices. Whenever we are counting with their support, the course has better results.

The course has been done in 3 different versions throughout its 6 Cohorts. In its first version, the course was only a pilot done with some public officials from the Veeduría Distrital. In its second version, the course consisted of two halves: the first one being focused on a theoretical development of the concepts and reading comprehension exercises, and the second one being an effort to solve a public challenge in teams. Unfortunately, the second half of the course did not run smoothly due to busy work schedules and lack of coordination between teams. Thus, for its third version, the course shifted towards individual practical activities, so every public official can fit them the best they can to their own schedule. Additionally, the group section was transformed into a one day workshop, and instead of trying to aim a public challenge, the public officials seek to identify a challenge for the promotion of innovation in their public office.

The Online Public Innovation Course is an effort to generate capacities within public officials as LABcapital believes that fostering these types of initiatives is a more lasting way of boosting innovation within the public sector. Through the course, LABcapital seeks to nurture the innovation ecosystem with public officials that serve as beacons of innovation within their own public offices. Therefore, these public officials later become the leaders when working on solving public challenges and/or conducting policy evaluations, which are the other two lines of action of LABcapital’s mission.