PS: I… want to tell you a story!
a public sector tale.
Public Sector Innovation is a difficult and huge topic, we already said that. But, we will try our best to use this journal to make it simpler and understandable.
To introduce better what PSI means, today I would like to tell you a story. MY own story.
ONCE UPON A TIME, there was me — a younger me — in my hometown in Sicily. You know, we live in a world full of stereotypes, but some of them are quite true. Italians complain (they do that a lot), but in the south of Italy is even worse!
So, back to my hometown, when I was living there, I got in touch with those little, daily tasks strictly connected to the public routine. Queuing at the post office, queuing to pay bills, queuing at the municipality offices (where, after hours of waitings, you usually discover that you are missing some compulsory documents), waiting for public means of transport (that weren’t ever on time!) and many of those little things that made me think that something wasn’t properly working in my city.
Later on time, I understood that all of those little problems were actually part of a bigger issue called “public sector malfunction”. But, at that time, I was too young to have such a wide overview of the situation. At that time, I thought facing those problems was a normal thing along with your daily routine, as well as complaining because of them.
Some years later, I moved to Milan to follow my own “design-dream”. Once there, I discovered a new world of services and public systems that I thought couldn’t either exist — ok, this sounds too much, but believe me, the first time I saw the digital panels in the metro showing also the waiting time for the next vehicle, I was kind of shocked.
Despite this new public-service-friendly environment, also in Milan people were complaining and, in the beginning, I couldn’t understand why. When I started the service design master course, I had the chance to go deeper in the comprehension of both the structure and problems that Milan municipality was (and is still) facing and, despite the appearance, local administration has many glitches, especially in some fields and in the management of “difficult” areas of the city. Moreover, I also understood how complex and difficult becomes to manage in an efficient way the big reality of the “metropolis”.
As a designer, all of this struck me and I suddenly felt the desire to do something to improve this situation.
Something real, something to help. Something to make people stop complaining and to improve — also with their help — the current public sector administration.
This motivation brought me here, to tell you my own story and, above all, to share with you what I’ve learned until now, during my initial analysis of the public sector and what its innovation is about.
By definition, the PS is “that portion of an economic system controlled by national, provincial or local government” which is in charge of providing public services and managing public enterprises. Even though its structure significantly varies from country to country, PS is mainly linked to some areas, such as infrastructures, healthcare, education, transportation, communication and policy making.
That’s where innovation comes into play: increasing expectations and demand for better services by citizens and communities are continually pressing public sector organizations to provide services with increased user focus and lower costs.
Innovation is no longer just a buzzword: it is now seen as a potential solution to all problems! — EY
This new, disruptive way of interpreting the PS, is strictly connected to the service design field since it aims at making processes more accessible, user-centered, collaborative, but also creative and experimental since governments are more and more open to try and prototype innovative methodologies and approaches.
Innovative approaches include improving accessibility, engaging users in service design, and targeting user needs more accurately. — IPP (Innovation Policy Platform)
Of course, adopting an innovative approach in public sector dynamics is not easy and requires time, since it implies not only the adoption of different methodologies or new solutions, but a bigger and more radical mindset shift. In fact, service design helps people think differently about the challenges they face and how to move away from starting with a solution, focusing more on long-term outcomes rather than immediate outputs.
Service designers working in this field are trying to facilitate and speed up this shift, also by simplifying concepts and complex processes of the PS and hopefully this journal — in its little — can be part of this global service design challenge! So stay tuned and see you at the next PS story!
As a practice, service design allows designers to bridge the divides that too often characterize government services, and tackle organizational change in a holistic way.
.have a look at this inspiring article and at the Innovation Policy Platform!
