IIPP’s Master of Public Administration: a student perspective
By Charles McIvor and Rachel Bentley
In September 2019, the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose launched its first Master of Public Administration (MPA) cohort. Here two students share their experience of the programme.
The UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose’s (IIPP) MPA brings together policy and economics with some ideas found in MBAs, like systems and design thinking, to help us work in purpose-driven organizations that confront the grand challenges of the 21st century in a more inclusive way.
IIPP brought in some of the top minds of innovation research as well as influential policymakers to help us become future leaders in this space. The breadth and expertise of the many different lecturers was very impressive, and they were able to adapt their lectures to the realities of the day (e.g. incorporating their ideas about COVID-19 responses into the lectures).
The cohort consisted of about 45 people from around the world — including from across Europe, Latin America, North America, Asia and Africa — with a broad range of different backgrounds and experiences. It included policymakers who are inspired to think about their work in different ways, as well as people who are looking to break into the space through the MPA’s work placement. If you want a programme without any math, but want to discuss economic theory and its applications in new ways, this is the programme for you!
Outside of the classroom
In addition to the normal course work, IIPP and UCL’s other departments held some fantastic guest lectures throughout the year. The first night of the orientation, a number of us went to a talk from IIPP on surveillance capitalism, which featured the acclaimed Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff, as well as a number of the people from the Great Hack Netflix documentary on the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Other groups at UCL held talks throughout the year, like the Department of Political Science on universal basic income and universal basic services, the Institute of Americas had one on AI, and the Department of Engineering brought in the founder of Wired to talk about the future of tech. London is also home to many other institutes and universities that held great talks open to the public. Some of us went to the Alan Turing Institute to hear about using AI for government consultations, the Francis Crick Institute to hear from the UK’s Chief Science Advisor, and LSE for a talk on AI and the future of work.
These opportunities didn’t end because of COVID-19; IIPP held some fantastic zoom talks over the summer of 2020, including several star-studded panels that discussed how to respond to COVID-19, and, among others, one on competition policy from Thomas Philippon.
Throughout the year, the students also held their own talks on the side. Charles hosted a panel on Challenge Prizes, Rachel hosted a talk with former MP Paul Farrelly, who was also featured in the Great Hack, and we had a field trip to Brighton to chat with the SPRU MPA students — which is a similar programme.
IIPP also has a podcast, which has brought in the MPA students to discuss their experiences with the MPA, and relevant policy issues.
Finally, IIPP hosted a bunch of evening events with students and faculty, including a holiday party and a bar politica where we spoke about policy issues in a more ‘relaxed’ setting (drinks and snacks and sometimes dancing).
Inside the classroom
In the first semester most of us took two classes, which focused largely on IIPP’s philosophy and Mariana’s past works, while the second semester was more practical and allowed us to take a couple of electives. Some of us took one elective that lasted both semesters. For the final semester, students had the choice to either take a work placement or to write a dissertation.
Each of the courses involved one lecture a week, and a seminar where we discussed the materials or did a hands-on exercise. The courses switched online for the last few weeks of the semester due to COVID-19. Each class involved one big final paper, and then a combination of smaller term papers, group projects and presentations. Detailed summaries of the courses are hyperlinked in their titles, but below are some quick overviews. Charles also wrote one line summaries of the readings he found the most interesting.
Public Value and Public Purpose
This course looked at the ideas of value, who creates it and who benefits from it. Mariana’s core argument is that innovation has a rate and a direction, and that the Government has shaped this direction to create new markets, like nanotechnology, biotechnology, nuclear power, and more. As a result, it should not shy away from this role, but it should also receive some of the benefits from its investments, and certainly not be charged high fees for using the technologies it helped create — especially when it comes to things like pharmaceuticals.
Going forward, governments should take a broader market shaping role to tackle grand challenges — these are big problems that no one actor or silver bullet solution can fix. To set the challenges requires an inclusive approach to build buy-in from society and other relevant actors who can help with the solutions. Governments then set missions, which are more tangible and time-bound but take bite-sized chunks out of the broader grand challenge. Solutions then bring together relevant actors from across and outside government. An example of a mission in the UK is “ensuring that people can enjoy at least five extra healthy, independent years of life by 2035, while narrowing the gap between the experience of the richest and poorest”.
Grand Challenges and Systems Change
While there was some cross-over with this course and the previous one, this course delved more into the ideas of systems-change. In a complex system, there are many places and ways to intervene. Governments often use similar methods, but as problems get more complex we need to think more creatively and consider bottom-up solutions. A great example was to tackle fires, you can either use a fire truck approach by employing more and more firefighters to fight fires, or a fire alarm approach, by requiring everyone to get a fire alarm to prevent fires from getting out of hand.
One of the most interesting readings for the year was for this course, which suggested 12 different intervention points in a system. I think this is a really useful way to look at problems, because instead of relying on funding, we can look to change the goals government organizations work towards or look to reduce the delays in their processes. IIPP also held a talk on how UCL is partnering with governments around the world to apply this approach to innovation policies, including the UK for its Industrial Strategy and the UAE to measure the direct and indirect benefits of its space programme.
Carlota Perez also lectured on a number of occasions for this course, who spoke about her theories of technological revolutions (this piece is a good overview of her thinking). According to Perez, we’ve experienced five different technological revolutions over the last few hundred years, which led to creative destruction and displacement of old skill sets, regions and industries. This has consistently created more unemployment and inequality across society until government regulations and institutions caught up and allowed all of society to benefit from the new technologies. We can see this today with the changing regulations for data.
This course focused on how government works, and then included some issue-focused lectures. It spoke about different models for public administration, and then practical issues regarding coordination, ethics, and more. We also had some great lectures from Francesca Bria on how smart cities can regain control of citizen data from big tech companies, and then from Hilary Cottam on how the welfare state needs to tackle care and poverty differently by empowering local communities.
IIPP had a special lecture on COVID-19, which focused on a mission-oriented approach to unleash a smart, green, healthy deal. Governments should use outcomes-oriented policies that use industrial strategies, infrastructure investment, procurement, and more, to improve the health system, boost care infrastructure, and address other problems in the economy as they recover from COVID-19. At the same time, this crisis is bringing to light many of the patches in the welfare system that we need to fix to properly recover and boost our competitiveness.
This course was broken into two very distinctive parts. The first part was very focused on design thinking and again this idea of tackling various intervention points across a system. It included a number of case studies from Dan Hill and Rowan Conway on how this approach works in real life. The final project involved mapping out and pitching a potential design process for a problem.
The second part of this course was focused much more on digital governance. Mike Bracken gave three lectures on how he founded the UK’s Government Digital Service and then his philosophy for digital government — using design principles to make a standard look and feel for government services, using simple language, and focusing on making it easy for citizens to be able to access any website in a simple way. He talked about his experiences in applying this approach around the world, and how just focusing on simplification can bring huge cost savings.
The dissertation and work placement
Students had the option to do a dissertation or a work placement during the third term. The dissertation was a 10,000 word paper, which students had until the end of August to complete. Students had a staff supervisor to support their work.
Over half of the IIPP cohort chose to do the placement at a partner organisation from IIPP’s Mission-Oriented Innovation Network (MOIN). The participating organisations agreed to host up to four members of the cohort. This was an opportunity for the students to put the theory of the first two terms into action and for the organisations to benefit from the students’ perspectives.
Partner organisations included Camden Council, the Design Council, the Royal Society of Engineering and the Scottish Government. Each student group was assigned a particular project and then given a fair amount of latitude on how to address the challenge. Many of the organisations were already focusing on how to build the IIPP concepts into their organisation and approach, and the Covid-19 pandemic added a new layer of consideration. Unfortunately due to pandemic, all of the placements had to be held virtually but each group found a way to work in the ‘new normal’, and many of the placements were actually modified to help the partner organisations deal with the Covid-19 impact.
The placement was marked on four areas: a peer assessment, a group presentation to the host organisation and IIPP (delivered via Zoom), a blog or vlog, and a written report of 5,000 words. This gave everyone a chance to demonstrate their knowledge in different formats and the opportunity to dig into both the practical and theoretical aspects of the MPA. Doing the placement virtually also allowed some students to return to their home countries but still work remotely. While there is no doubt that joining the host organisations in person would have been incredible, each group found the virtual placement in the heart of the Covid-19 lockdown rewarding and challenging in equal measure, and certainly an experience they’ll never forget!
This is an edited version of a blog that was originally published at Charles McIvor’s Medium page.
