The Innovation Laboratory is the driver of public administration innovation​ in Latvia right under the Prime Minister in State Chancellery, which is the peak of public administration structure. InLab promotes cross-sector, cross-institution, and cross-department collaboration in developing user centric policy solutions. InLab work's methodology is based on the British Design Council's Double Diamond design process, which focuses on user needs for designing the best possible policy solution. In addition we use dynamic development (Agile) or the principles of an iterative approach – solutions are not created trying to solve everything at once, but gradually. InLab works in “sprints” or fixed-term agile project sessions designing policy solutions for horizontal challenges or problem situations, engaging participants from various institutions of public administration as well as experts and potential policy users in the policy design process.

InLab is in its most active phase and currently the product portfolio is under development, with an intention of expanding the approaches used in the Lab and adding behavioural insights, systems thinking, foresight, and design imagining approaches. There is a large list of prototypes which have been developed within InLab and have been implemented as horizontal policy solutions, such as Remunerations policy for medical personal in Latvia, Administrative simplification strategy, Future of Work policy, Shadowing and Entrepreneur programme, and more. Inlab introduced a revolutionary approach to policy making and currently we plan to expand to Latvia's regions.

The Innovation Lab was established in 2018 as a prototype or proof of concept testing design thinking user centric approaches in policy planning activities. With strong partners as the OECD's OPSI, DEMOS, PWC, OXFORD Intelligence and support of the EC DG Reform, InLab has proved the pilot concept and secured national budget for permanent activities. Locally we maintain a horizontal cross-ministerial impact.

Citizens are engaged in policy planning at the very beginning of the process and have a much greater impact on the end result as well as become co-owners of the policy. Government officials have access to novel and effective methodologies for user centric policy planning, and as a result perform better in their sectoral responsibilities. Civil society organisations benefit from recognising the transparency of the policy planning process and user centrism. Companies engage as either experts or policy users.

Some of the results to mention:

• Over 108 co-creating sessions and 1 hackathon
• 47 prototypes or solution designs were developed that were tested in the laboratory and which had potential to be implemented in a real environment in the form of a pilot project
• Over 300 people involved in various roles during sprints
• Fostering overall innovation culture in Latvia's public sector, ensuring proper stakeholder involvement as well as demonstrating the way regarding how the problems should be solved using a user-centric approach.
• An innovation expert network was established across the public sector

Multiple prototypes have been implemented:

• Innovation handbook
• Experimentation guidelines for public sector
• Future of Work guidelines
• Shadowing entrepreneur
• Decreasing administrative burden handbook
• Remuneration policy for medical personnel

An overarching impact has been the naturalisation of the user-centric approach in InLab, which in turn contributes to changing the mindset of the public sector and the culture of policy making.

• Struggle to move from ideas to implementation particularly piloting prototypes of policies or services in a meaningful way
• Low involvement of senior decision-makers to be ‘sponsors’ or ‘owners’ of policy challenges, proposed outcomes, and prototypes
• Lack of resources and internal expertise within the Lab to conduct design for policy interventions, resulting in a reliance on external, particularly international, consultants

This is an exciting time for the Innovation Lab as it embarks on its third phase of operation contributing to transformation of the public sector through design and expanding to the regional level. Innovation Lab has an enormous potential but it still needs a critical ''user'' mass across the public sector as well as horizontal recognition across the wider innovation ecosystem. We believe that boosting internal capacity and simultaneously engaging in regional collaboration are success factors for InLab. We have secured a stable financial support for the next planning period which enables us to boost coverage nationwide.

This model is definitely replicable and what is most essential - it is replicable at a rather modest budget impact. The model of the InLab has been tested in a pilot version previously, and has been improved and adjusted via user consulted process minimizing cost and burden on acting human resources. The Lab is built in a way that ensures sustainability - project activities are tailored to build public sector capacity and particularly capacity of the State Chancellery to hold strong in-house consultants in public sector innovation and design thinking and to improve policy making focusing on the user across public sectors. This model has no cultural or institutional particularities which could hinder replication or scaling it. Separate implemented prototypes can also be replicated in other levels, for instance the methodology for admin simplification, can be used in governmental, and also municipal level ( https://www.mk.gov.lv/lv/media/8527/download).

Other practical results for possible transfer or adaptation are the Experimentation Guidelines for the Latvian Public Sector, developed in 2021 by the think tank Demos Helsinki in close collaboration with the Observatory of Public Sector Innovation and the Innovation Laboratory. The guidelines define an experiment as a structured process of trying out policy ideas in order to enable learning and iteration before scaling takes place. Experimentation offers governments opportunities to create effective, people-centred policies and services by enabling engagement and co-creation with a wide range of stakeholders throughout the process. It mitigates risks by enabling the testing of solutions before significant investments have been made. Using experimentation helps create evidence-based policies and enables quick learning in early phases by revealing what works and what does not.