User Type: Stakeholder outside of government

This is a curated collection of 30+ resources from Stanford d.school classes and workshops, including activities, tools, and how-to guides. They are intended for anyone who wants to become more familiar with design thinking or unlocking creative thinking in whatever challenge being tackled. Some are full-fledged workshops that for guiding others through. Other resources are short worksheet-based activities.

Features: Associated curriculum, Facilitators guide, Guiding framework

Grounded Change is an approach and social innovation methodology used by the company InWithForward. It means flipping the order in which most social policies & services are made. Rather than start at the top, in boardrooms, they start at the bottom, with user needs. They have named 7 kinds of interactions that they believe are the most important to weave into policy, procurement, service delivery, and community activities. This resource contains the context, reasons, and mechanisms of Grounded…

Features: Examples or Cases, Techniques

This is a starter kit covering signal spotting, or detecting early signs of change in several fields: Technology, Policy, Business model, Citizen action, Research finding, Design, Application, Idea / innovation. The online resource includes video guidance, examples of signals in the different fields, and exercises for practice with signal spotting. It also includes exercises for signal spotting in one's own context.

Features: Guiding framework, Interactive diagnostic, Video guidance

This web-based resource contains ideas and practical help to use digital and social media in the public sector. It is organised by techniwues, strategies, examples, and (user generated) questions. This resource can assist governments with service delivery and stakeholder engagement. The publisher's main website also contains other resources for online communication.

Features: Techniques

The Government Innovators Network is a collection of ideas and examples of government innovation for policymakers, policy advisors, and practitioners. It contains news, articles, reports, descriptions of award-winning innovative programs, and events as well as online communities of practice. The publisher's goal is to stimulate new ideas and bring people and ideas together around innovations in government for the purpose of stimulating discourse on the principles and practices of innovation and…

Features: Examples or Cases

A collection of 55 different public/stakeholder engagement techniques, including an assessment of difficulty, engagement level, cost, when might be used, how many people might be needed to run, timeframes, innovation level and a step by step guide for using each.

Features: Glossary, Tactics, Techniques, Tips&Tricks

An collection of communication tools used in service design processes that deal with complex systems, organised by design activities, representations, recipients, and contents. The website is the result of the research activity done by Roberta Tassi during her graduation thesis investigating the relation between communication design and service design, starting from the observation of the existing practices in the field of service design. Each tool contains a description, how-to instructions,…

Features: Examples or Cases, Glossary, Guiding framework, Tactics, Techniques

This resource distills the United Nations Development Programme's experience and lessons with running Social Innovation Camps into a "how-to" manual for others. The publisher intends it to broaden a project's results, attract donors, find new partners, source new perspectives on an issue, and/or place beneficiaries at the centre of project design. The resource was created within an international development and social innovation context but can be adapted for public sector use. It is available…

Features: Facilitators guide, Tactics, Techniques, Tips&Tricks

A collection of design patterns, or ‘gambits’, for influencing user behaviour through design. It’s applicable across product, service, interaction and architectural design, aimed particularly at socially and environmentally beneficial behaviour change. The patterns are drawn from a range of disciplines, and are phrased as questions or provocations to enable the toolkit’s use as both a brainstorming tool and a guide for exploring the field of design for behaviour change. It includes…

Features: Guiding framework, Interactive diagnostic, Techniques, Tips&Tricks

A collection of code, tools, and case studies to help United States federal agencies adopt the Open Data Policy and unlock the potential of government data. This project is meant to be a living document, so that collaboration in the open data ecosystem is fostered, and the continual update of technology pieces that affect update can happen at a more rapid pace. Edits to the content may be made by anyone. It could provide other governments with examples and starter content for its own open data…

Features: Glossary, Techniques