The Toolkit helps government employees use crowdsourcing and citizen science in their work. It provides five basic process steps for planning, designing and carrying out a crowdsourcing or citizen science project. It also includes a case study library of this process in practice as well as citizen science-related resources (examples, background information, journal articles, tools).
These methods were developed for United States Government staff but could also be used by other governments and…
Toolkit Navigator
A compendium of toolkits for public sector innovation and transformation, curated by OPSI and our partners around the world
The U.S. Public Participation Playbook is a resource for government managers to evaluate and build better services through public participation using best practices and performance metrics.
Based on discussions with US Federal Government managers and stakeholders, the publishers identified five main categories that should be addressed in all programs, whether digital or offline. Within each category they identified 12 unifying plays to start with, each including a checklist to consider,…
A playbook of 13 key “plays” drawn from successful practices from the private sector and government that the publisher believes, if followed together, will help governments build effective digital services.
A community sourced set of best practices and principles to help incorporate human-centered design into a product development process.
The website contains dozens of methods organised by process, difficulty, time required, and outcomes. Each method contains an overview, detailed, steps, resources, and examples or cases.
The methods are framed in terms of private sector product or service development but can be adapted to a public sector context.
DemTools is a suite of free, open source software solutions developed by NDITech and distributed for supporting democracy building efforts around the world. The software includes contact management, issue tracking, crowdsourcing, election monitoring, open data, and petition development tools. These were built with the developing world in mind but can also be used in other contexts.
An associated DemTools Guide Book offers an overview of each of the suite of tools, including use cases, user…
A canvas for individual sharing about work preferences, meant for building good teams and working relationships. The publisher intends for this to be used for making preferences explicit but not for making demands. PDF and Adobe Illustrator file available.
This playbook defines smart cities through human experiences, including 3 "mindsets" (lenses to understand) and 6 "plays" (ways to start). Originally developed for the City of Calgary, Canada, it offers ways to document, prioritize and advocate for individual human experiences at the nexus of networked technology, data and urbanism. It promotes embracing complexity and designing responsive systems, policies and governance around people for people-centered smart cities. Both PDF and slide deck…
“Scenes” is a tool and a method to create visual stories about products and services fast, collaboratively and iteratively. It is intended for leaders and professionals of all industries to shape their ideas and scenarios in the form of fun illustrative storyboards without the need of refined drawing skills. It uses storytelling instead of long functional specifications for new or redesigned services or concepts.
It contains free, downloadable and printable templates for professionals to…
This kit discusses the fundamentals of innovation - immersion (understanding the context), problem definition, ideation, prototyping and testing
This kit presents the role of transparency within an open government system, including topics like visualisation of data, freedom of information laws, and communication strategies