How can we bring more radical theories of change to public sector innovation ?

By Stéphane Vincent (la 27e Région, France), Giorgia Curtabbi (Politechnico di Torino, Italy)

If we are to address complex challenges such as climate justice at their root, then we need to look beyond the dominant paradigms, structures and systems that have created them, such as new public management, capitalism and colonialism. In order to explore these challenging questions, in October 2023 we co-initiated the international program Pushing the boundaries of public sector innovation alongside the University of British Columbia (Vancouver), States of Change, the Bloomberg Centre for Public Innovation, The Lab in Auckland (New Zealand) and the City of Vancouver Solutions Lab.

From November 2023 to February 2024, the 27th Region was given carte blanche to launch the program by hosting three videoconference sessions around the notion of theory of change -please read this article by Lindsay Cole to get a better understanding of this notion. To reflect on this, we have chosen to start with concrete achievements, each time asking how they might inspire more radical theories of change. You can find all of the recordings here.

Each session began with an inspiring talk, followed by exchanges with a community of practice of 20 to 30 participants, public innovators from all over the world. Our journey took us from the city of Nantes to the Island of Réunion, and to Sciences Po Lyon. We take a look back at each of the projects presented, what the participants learned from them, and conclude with some ideas for the future.

The markers of the City of Nantes

The first session focused on the City of Nantes, based on a presentation by Virginie Thune and Magali Marlin (see video replay). While the theory of change is an increasingly widespread concept in the world of social innovation and social economy, it is still relatively little used in the public sector. In Nantes, the idea was born in 2021 out of the desire to improve the convergence of politics and administration around the transversal priorities of the mandate. To achieve this, the city’s teams have organized themselves around markers. Technically, the markers are a few-page reference manuals designed collectively, describing precisely the theories supported by the city on its 6 cross-cutting priorities : ecological transition, social justice, but also inter-territorial reciprocity, proximity, citizen dialogue, experimentation and innovation. These are cross-functional doctrinal elements, in a way, which are subject to evaluation and updating, all developed collectively and led by the civil servants.

What we can learn from these initial lessons is that markers act exactly like theories of change. They infuse the organization, circulate between elected representatives and the administration, and unite people around a common vision. According to feedback, the markers do indeed produce a “systemic” effect between the city’s 26 public policies (urban planning, social, transport, etc.). They provide a common horizon, clarify priorities, and improve symmetry between support services and public policy departments. Markers also have a few drawbacks: they fuel the feeling of a proliferation of documents and strategic reference frameworks, and can occasionally generate endless debates and conflicts between priorities. But on the whole, the Nantes teams find the experiment conclusive. The next step should be to evaluate an initial selection of systems against the criteria defined in the markers.

What prerequisites need to be met for such an approach to produce truly transformative effects ? Among the suggestions made by participants is the idea that the markers should be able to draw on both internal data and external audiences (this is a priori the case in Nantes, where there is a high level of consultation). There also needs to be a strong culture of trust and freedom of expression within the administration, and the level of conversation needs to be such that taboos can be lifted, notably by involving non-decision-makers in the conversation. It would also be necessary to overcome the risk of the language barrier that markers can pose, for example by mobilizing other formats such as narrative or experience. Participants also wondered whether it was possible to go even further: for example, by making the desired change more explicit (not just the marker or the theory), by adopting radical innovation approaches (e.g. thinking about desirable futures in 2030 or 2050), by focusing on the enabling conditions, the “how” (more than on the “what”), and finally by including more embodied practices, by going beyond a cerebral approach to “get into our bodies and feelings”, by confronting different worldviews more…

Cultural resilience on Reunion Island

How can we bring about radical change in contexts of injustice and extreme inequality ? The second session took us to Reunion Island (see video replay), into its Creole culture and French colonial past. Initially destined to become a slave colony, Reunion succeeded in becoming a multi-cultural society and a land of opportunity and freedom. Today, however, Creole society is deeply divided between those who have integrated, those who feel excluded and those who are opposed. Behind the paradisiacal postcard and the folkloric vision of Creole culture, Réunion Island is suffering from a major identity crisis, the corollary of which is the island’s economic and social situation, marked by very high rates in all areas: poverty, feminicide, unemployment, school drop-out rates, etc.

As part of the ISOPOLIS project, aimed at reorienting the Reunion model around resilience and well-being, Isabelle Huet has designed a training course for public officials with the training agency for civil servants (CNFPT) of Reunion island. Entitled “Faire peuple” (“Making people”), the course aims to help participants discover Réunion’s popular history, which has been marked by multiple identity conflicts but has become taboo or ignored by the inhabitants themselves. The three-day course combines history, sociology, anthropology and literature. It represents a first step towards understanding the island’s history, but also the origins of its problems. Evaluation of the course has shown that it acts as an eye-opener for participants, a real emotional shock, and a path towards reconciliation and the desire for commitment, the only way to build a common destiny.

What do the participants think ? Is it the role of public innovators to act in favor of cultural reconciliation, in contexts such as Creole society, or the indigenous peoples of North America ? Participants tend to answer in the affirmative. Some believe that the past and the history of public policy must be made visible: to move forward, today’s public sector must recognize its past actions, its transformations, its historical omissions, the institutional abuses it has engendered and rendered invisible. Recognizing this is the public sector’s responsibility. As for public-sector innovators, they must work on ways of integrating these issues, providing tools and keys to understanding, revealing differences, and showing co-existing situations so that public-sector agents can better grasp them. They invite us to transform ourselves in a more personal, profound and intimate way: training in innovation and reconciliation is commonplace today, but how can we more intimately and radically question our positions as colonizing populations? Finally, we need to move beyond folkloric visions of culture, and recognize the cultural practices of each individual (not unlike the concept of cultural rights in France).

Radical transformation and public debate

How can we bring about more radical transformations, at a time when public debate around the world is tending to become impoverished and polarized to the extreme? In the third session, we looked at the reasons why public policies are unable to move towards different or bolder social choices (see video replay). For researcher Cécile Robert (Sciences Po Lyon), most public decisions are taken without democratic debate, and without being questioned as societal choices. She has identified five mechanisms of what she calls “depoliticization”: naturalization, when the decision is presented as “imposed” by law, economic and health constraints (Saez and Zucman, 2020), like Margaret Thatcher’s famous “There is no alternative!”; neutralization, when the differentiated effects of the decision on social actors are denied (Gaudillière et al, 2021); individualization, which consists in decontextualizing problems, obscuring their collective dimension to avoid their construction as public problems (Morel, 2014; Codaccioni, 2019); distancing: elected representatives are sidelined from political responsibility for decisions; finally, the role of secrecy and forms of confinement in discussions and consultations. The challenge is to learn how to better identify these mechanisms and devise strategies and tactics to limit their effects.

Many participants report having already experienced these situations. Public servants themselves often fail to see the political dimension of certain subjects, which they consider minor (e.g. inclusive language) and not worthy of debate. This attitude is so deeply rooted in the work culture that everyone contributes to it without realizing it. As for citizens, they’ve become accustomed to so-called “technical” governments, treating political choices as if they were purely technical, and neglecting political options because “there’s a single, reasonable way” to act. Participants also cite the rise of “participatory fatigue”, and the fact that a consultation can imitate public debate without really being one, and lead to disengagement. Some even proposed a sixth mechanism of depoliticization, that of the “performative”, when commitments to social justice are made but no significant action is taken. In the end, some claim to treat their political convictions as unshakeable constraints, “even when they make it extremely difficult to dialogue with certain groups of very important stakeholders who are disproportionately affected by our work.”

How can public innovators help unlock public debate, reopen options? Perhaps first by recognizing the intrinsically political nature of public innovation, the fact that there is no single way to transform the public sector, and that we need to make explicit the values and theories of change we intend to carry forward collectively. If we fail to exploit existing margins for manoeuvre (even when they are narrow), we run the risk of participating in this depoliticization. Even when points of view are very far apart, we shouldn’t be afraid of them, but rather find an interest in them! As far upstream as possible, we need to try and set up controversies, use the power of history, remind people of collective responsibility, talk about responsibilities, geopolitics and current power structures. The aim is to hold up a mirror to the organization, to show it the concrete effects of the paradigms in place.

Where do we go from here? Four ideas for the future

Our hypothesis is that we need to continue investigating the many existing communities of practice, because the beginnings of solutions have already been invented there, but we can’t see them. To achieve this, we need to document them more conscientiously, redouble our attention to detail, look into the communities next door, and learn to put on each other’s cultural spectacles. We also need to fight against the linguistic domination of English, which during our intercontinental exchanges sometimes appeared as a difficulty. Here are just a few of the ideas that inspire us, organized around 4 themes.

Idea 1: Pursue the “experiential bricolage” approach.

In all communities of innovators, methodological tinkering and participatory formats are invented on a daily basis, with the aim of producing more transformative effects in the making of public policy. At our small level, this is what we’re trying to do at 27e Région. How, for example, can we engage elected representatives in an effort to repoliticize ? In 2014, with designer Jacky Foucher and the Pays de la Loire Region, we came up with the Friendly Starter, the first link in a scheme to reintroduce debate into political commissioning. More recently, in 2021, we tested The Little Story of Big Public Policies, a format that allows us to call upon the controversial past of public policies to better think about their future. It’s important that all these forms of methodological tinkering continue and expand, and that they be better documented, translated and shared between different communities of innovators. In France for example, this work is carried out by L’Ecole du terrain, a “field school” which documents the best ways of doing things in terms of habitability.

Idea 2: Codifying breakthrough transformation.

Beyond tinkering, it is possible to better codify radical transformation. In the ’80s, NASA invented the “Technology Readiness Level”, a 9-level scale for progressively moving a technological innovation from fundamental knowledge to its use and the development of concrete applications. These were followed in the 90s by “Concept Maturity Levels” to deal with non-technological innovations, such as the 4-level scale (Eng) we designed as part of the Labonautes program to help public innovation labs become more radical. Today, social innovation pioneers such as Ellyx are inventing Societal Readiness Levels (French) to better manage disruptive social innovations. Could we draw inspiration from them in public innovation?

Idea 3: Adopt more collective approaches to evaluation.

Traditionally, public and social innovation have had a difficult relationship with evaluation. But things are changing, thanks to motivated groups. In France, under the aegis of Plateau Urbain and French Impact, 1,500 “tiers-lieux” are currently launching Commune mesure (French), a national initiative designed to help each “tiers-lieu” better measure its impact, and generate a dynamic of transformation that is both individual and collective. Could such a collective approach inspire public innovators?

Idea 4: Pay attention to (re)mobilizations.

We also need to take an interest in what is currently happening within professional communities that are having to question the meaning of their actions in depth. In the philanthropic sector, a number of players are collectively taking stock of the systemic difficulties that prevent them from producing positive, lasting effects, and inventing ways of overcoming them. In France, for example, this is what the Fondation de France and some thirty social entrepreneurs are trying to achieve as part of an experimental program called Acteurs Clés de Changement (Key Players for Change). We’re trying to see whether this “reset” work could give local authorities ideas, particularly in their dealings with public and social innovators…

A few ressources :

• The markers in Nantes : more details in this presentation (from slide 15 to 22)
• Culture resilience training in La Reunion : more details in this presentation (from slide 11 to 41)
• Cécile Robert’s presentation about de-politicization in public policies (slide 10 to 19)
• The friend-starter (in French) : https://www.la27eregion.fr/cas-pratiques/le-crash-test-des-politiques-publiques/
• The little history of big public policies : more information in French here https://www.la27eregion.fr/il-etait-une-fois-la-petite-histoire-des-grandes-politiques-publiques/

Do these ideas inspire you? Join in our discussions! The next sessions of the “Pushing the boundaries of public innovation” program will be devoted to identifying “what works” to transform more radically. We’ll be talking successively about codification (April 24), evaluation (May 15) and mobilization (June 12). Read more about it here and don’t forget to register on the website: https://www.transformingcities.ca/pushing-the-boundaries-of-psi