And prototyping approaches to policy prototyping
Policy prototyping is a human centred design approach that aims to improve the process and outcomes of policy making, and contribute to overall service delivery.
Various entities define the design process in slightly different ways, but prototyping tends to come into play as a fourth step in this high level list:
- understanding and empathizing with end users
- defining a problem
- ideating on potential solutions
- Prototyping and testing
In 2018, the OECD identified that:
“Until now, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and Canada have mostly led in formalizing design thinking, by developing and adopting design toolkits, playbooks and methods. Most of these developments are linked to the digitalisation of government.”
Today, policy prototyping can be understood to be a form of design doing.
2018 was kind of a big year for policy prototyping. A lot of energy kicked up around this approach, as part of ongoing efforts to do more than think about design, but really make it happen, as part of the day to day operation of public services, and service delivery.
As Gord Ross covered, at that time, a fair bit of energy came from a conference that was held at the legendary (to me) Stanford Legal Design Lab, which he described as sitting at the intersection of the Stanford Law School and the Stanford d.school. “And what better place to host a wide ranging set of presentations and discussions on the topic of public policy and the role of design” he wrote, in a follow up summary based on insights gained through his attendance.
That intersection — and its primacy to policy prototyping — remains a good guide for thinking about where this activity sits, in an organization, and why it matters. Not only to the discipline (or lack thereof) of policy, but as a contributor to overall service design and delivery outcomes, and the role of policy in achieving them.
Policy Prototyping in Ontario
The recent emergence of policy prototyping as a dedicated function in the Ontario Public Service was an extremely exciting development to me, signalling that policy folks are no longer simply thinking about the potential benefits of design approaches in their work. Some might actually be doing design.
How amazing!
Possibly.
Particularly for those who have worked closely with service designers and product managers, policy prototyping feels like an obvious inclusion in work that is required to deliver services. It simply makes sense that one would prototype potential rule sets in the course of design, test language, and generally, acknowledge, through adapted policy practice, an understanding of the interconnections between underlying policy architecture and service outcomes. It makes sense, and then, getting this kind of thing up and running will likely be quite challenging.
The most hopeful part of me believes that increased awareness of and interest in policy prototyping is a sign of the potential for policy to join the design and delivery team without, necessarily, needing to lead it or advance its own form of prototyping, independently.
Challenges I see
A primary challenge for policy prototyping, with respect to its viability as a practice that delivers value to a design and delivery team is related to how and where it can fit as a step within:
- a design process
- the policy development cycle
- the digital service lifecycle; or,
- funding approvals
To the best of my knowledge, there is no jurisdiction in the world that has harmonized its design process and policy development lifecycles, and unified these as inputs into an overall approach to funding delivery.
On the one hand, that could make getting policy prototyping up and running kind of frustrating.
On the other hand, lack of a clear path means there are four or more options on where to embed policy prototyping, within an existing process, if this is a step an organization believes it needs to take to assure outcome delivery and deliver services that work.
Catherine Althaus and Pia Andrews have generously shared draft writing on the complexity of internal approvals and conflicting development and delivery flows, which outlines the challenges and opportunities in detail.
In my read of the challenge space, what this means is that there is nothing that is going to incentivize or require policy prototyping to happen. When and if it happens, it’s because people want it to. As people make it happen, more of it will happen. That is typically the change pathway I have seen to be effective, and sustainable, in government settings.
The Opportunity: Prototype It
In the absence of formal process, what most public services have are some amount of designers and reformed policy professionals who are already attempting to stitch processes together, or find wins in various places, while delivering a viable service, and attempting to achieve an outcome.
The first potential policy prototyping activity they could work on together might be to establish potential ways that policy prototyping can happen, within an existing, highly governed service environment. To have a few established design or delivery teams try it out, at different points in a design process, delivery cycle, or policy development process, and agree to come back and share notes on how it went and what they learned.
But because it will take energy to try, it’s also worthwhile to consider what we can know about the viability and utility of policy prototyping today, as it relates to how it has been applied, elsewhere.
An initial review shows that — beyond advancing design practice or bringing policy into service design and digital service delivery, it’s also about:
- generating broader involvement in policy development
- deepening an understanding of how the implementation of privacy and data governance policies might impact a broad range of affected persons
- + providing more tangible forms of engagement in highly technical policy areas
- mitigating risk by throwing unworkable ideas out early and continuously progressing on an implementable pathway, from the start
- improving outcome delivery and incorporating early-stage feedback loops to test and mitigate assumptions. .
Over the next few weeks, I’ll continue exploring policy prototyping to dive deeper into how it’s been applied, where, by whom, and why.
If you’ve applied this in your work, or have a team you look to for inspiration, reach out.
I’ll also consider what we know about its effectiveness, including the underlying conditions that make it more or less helpful.
Because it does matter, in terms of its effectiveness, I’ll aim to share some considerations on who, on a service design and delivery team, is best to lead policy prototyping activities, where this approach is not yet fully established.
Spoiler alert: it isn’t necessarily the best role for policy.
Stay tuned.
