A Manifesto for Civic Service Design
W hat is service? It is no secret that government infrastructure is considered by many to present more roadblocks than opportunities. So, when innovation and government are used in the same sentence, it can seem like an oxymoron, but that is precisely what Civic Design Lab is poised to do in Oakland.
As the home of nation’s first Women’s Suffrage march in 1908 and the Black Panther movement in 1967, Oakland has made it a city legacy in putting equity first. For the past year, Civic Design Lab has continued serving this legacy as the implementing partner of the City’s resilience strategies focused on housing and economic security issues for our most vulnerable residents while also fostering innovation from within city hall by training the government staff on service design and strategy.
Last month, we publicly launched the Civic Design Lab to embolden our commitment to Oaklanders.
Civic Design Lab serves as both a cornerstone and an implementing engine of the Resilient Oakland playbook, a community-led resiliency action plan that was built over a 3-year period with support from 100 Resilient Cities — Pioneered by The Rockefeller Foundation. Civic Design Lab recognize that a resilient government is one in which government staff can be more nimble, efficient, and responsive to its residents by getting timely input and feedback to deliver most needed services. Functionally, Civic Design Lab is an in-house design and strategy team housed within the Office of Resilience, consisting of directors and innovation fellows supported through philanthropic support from our founding funders at Citi Community Development. In short, we seek to empower the City of Oakland staff to better meet the needs of Oaklanders through a new model of civic innovation. So, what does that look like?
Civic Design Lab stands for three principles : People. Process. Innovation.
And, incidentally, we also make our design decisions in the same order.
Breaking Down Our Principles:
1. Creating Meaningful Engagement By Putting People First
First priority of ours is that we put people first in all of our work. Our chief goal is to educate our elected officials and local government staff to become more innovative and entrepreneurial in their approaches by working alongside them to more effectively and efficiently deliver civic services and policies, so that, in turn, we can better meet the needs of Oaklanders where they are. This involves putting people first with an initial period of listening, so that we can check all assumptions at the door and invite our stakeholders partake in the discovery of: “whom is this service or policy are we designing for?” Furthermore, we also engage in deep conversations with members of our community on regular basis to ensure that the City’s policies and services are adapted to the realities of the environment in which they live.
For example, the lab is currently supporting the Office of the Mayor’s flagship program, the Oakland Promise. Their mission is to build the financial capability of low-income families by establishing college savings accounts, helping parents build lifelong savings habit to support their children through college. As the Oakland Promise is piloting in 2018, the CDL staff are focused on optimizing onboarding and outreach from an Oakland parent perspective. Furthermore, Civic Design Lab is working with the staff, community partners, and the OUSD to develop strategies for further gamifying parent engagement — since the long-term success of the program lies in its stickiness (families continuing to build financial assets) beyond the initial uptake.
Through strategic project-based engagements, we work alongside public servants all levels of the City, to ensure that Oakland has a strong and nimble government that can rise to complex challenges of the 21st century as well as the necessary skills and resources to enhance the experiences of social services. Simply put, we are the conduit between the community and the local government.
2. Designing Conversations With a Purpose and Process
Second, at Civic Design Lab we design conversations. There has never been a more important time for getting involved in government, and we want to ensure that Oakland has an especially robust process in place for inclusive, racially equitable, and accessible means for engagement. So what does designing conversations mean? For Civic Design Lab, it means to be able to help those we work with make better or more mindful decisions about the impact of their work. It means making better decisions with and for everyone, not just for those who already have a seat at the table.
We executed this principle last summer, when we were invited to support the City of Oakland’s Chief Resilience Officer in designing a supplemental policy for carrying out healthy housing inspection in Oakland. We see policy as how government makes decisions, though the problem is our communities are seldom involved in forming them. We set out to flip this process by putting communities at the forefront of decision-making process to ensure that the critical needs and priorities of our residents are accurately reflected in the City’s services and policies. Through in-depth interviews, surveys, community workshops and process mapping, we were able to set up a strong case for new policy that ensures housing habitability in the housing stock, and begin addressing the issues of childhood blood lead level and asthma rates affecting the Oakland community.
At Civic Design Lab, our goal is to move away from government business as usual, including decisions based on the past that no longer meet today’s needs, while also working collaboratively with our partners on designing policy for people more mindfully: one conversation, one interaction, and one journey at a time.
3. Civic Process Innovation
Third, we are not shy about embracing technology as part of our innovation agenda. We leverage technological tools and strategies to deliver creative solutions that enhance existing systems, so that it can create space for engaging in deeper conversations with people. Often, the unintended consequences of technology leave us with less time to think. Technology often streamlines information too fast, it fills the void of processing new information we are receiving by making it progressively harder to distinguish important signals from the noise. In government, technology has manifested as an uphill battle against the established systems and processes that were built by, for, and with people, which, as it turns out, is a blessing in disguise.
Civic Design Lab views technology as an opportunity to make it easier for non-specialists to engage in meaningful dialogue . Solutions to our challenges may involve a combination of a new digital product, policy change, and communication strategy, but at the end of the day, Civic Design Lab goes beyond what is convenient in the short-term. At Civic Design Lab, technical processes and solutions are the stepping-stones for designing deeper relationship with people. Designing complex systems in today’s urban ecosystem require us to not only leverage the right technology as a tool, but to make room for the underserved and to share the drawing board with everyone in it.
We have exhibited this in our work with Oakland youth, as our city has nearly 50,000 youth between ages 16 to 24, though our current system for providing direct employment opportunities to youth is a small fraction of that. Oakland is fortunate to have many non-profit organizations that work very hard to serve our youth, though our research indicates that current mechanism are not scalable. In the last quarter, Civic Design Lab spent 1,600 minutes facilitating, listening, and learning from the youth, service providers, and employers, to incorporate their perspectives in our work in developing an online platform in summer 2018. This online platform will enhance how youth from low-income households access local opportunities and services, as well as make career development opportunities more open, accessible, and easy to navigate.
At Civic Design Lab we believe that addressing systemic challenges requires systemic solutions. While service design strategies and human-centered design are some of our favorite tools for addressing the complex dimensions of our urban environment, we approach each project with careful attention to the people who use and deliver them.
With one ear firmly on the ground and the other inside City Hall, Civic Design Lab is the conduit between local government and community. It is also a product of robust partnership between the public, private, and the community sectors. Our days are filled engaging in genuine interactions with people — training in the methods of human centered design and systems thinking, facilitating in effective decision-making, and listening to Oaklanders.
Civic Design Lab is committed to continuing to build and create opportunities for civic equity, and 2018 is an especially exciting year. For the first time, some five years since its inception, we are launching a public website and this blog to tell Oakland’s story of resilience. The world has no shortage of good ideas, but we are here to make sure that some of the most critical ones are delivered well.
We invite you to join us in this journey.
