As the Treasury launches its campaign to ask for citizen's views on which functions the government should perform and which could be done by other bodies to save money, we can start to see the powers of co-design in play.
The public rightly expects public sector and government to do more with less. To respond, we must use the ideas and energy of frontline staff and citizen to the full in order to deliver ever-improving services to the public.
I passionately believe the people who use and deliver services have the experience and ideas to make them better, what we need to do is give them tools and platforms to make this happen.
The notion of self-improving public services aims to move away from arms length improvement projects or pilots and toward public services that embed these skills within their teams and systems. This enables more responsive services that have the skills and tools to engage, listen and innovate rapidly by listening to citizens and frontline staff on a daily basis.
In times of budget cuts, we need to make the most of what we have and develop existing resources, ie the capacity and talent of public sector staff to deliver efficient and high quality public services that understand the needs of citizens. This can be achieved by using a range of design, media and social research processes to train and enable frontline staff to engage, listen and innovate alongside citizens.
Making staff key partners in the process identifies where efficiency savings can be made, engaging and enabling them to work with citizens gives them the extra motivation to understand where services can be improved. This is followed by supporting staff with tools and processes to think in radically different ways about how the services could be delivered and rapidly testing these ideas to measure impact.
The three main ways we are helping develop the skills and confidence within the public sector include:
• ethnographic research – to help staff gain a deeper understanding of how people live their lives, drawing out people's experiences regarding particular issues or use of public services. This helps pinpoint what works and doesn't work within the service, identifying inefficiencies and touch points for re-design
• co-design – to bring a range of stakeholders together to identify, priorities and co-create solutions and services that meet the needs of people using and delivering public services; and
• prototyping - enables ideas to be tested quickly with citizen and potential users. This enables continuous improvement, development and testing of concepts to ensure they are fit-for-purpose before implementation.
We have applied these approaches with a range of public and third sector organisations including Lewisham council, Croydon council and Barking and Dagenham council, plus a range of NHS trusts and the Alzheimer's Society.
By empowering public sector staff to have the skills and tools to engage, listen and innovate alongside citizens it helps them:
• reconnect with the values and enthusiasm they have for their work;
• gain a genuine understanding of customer needs and how services can be shaped to best serve the citizen;
• rejuvenate their motivation, contributing to better working environments; and
• improve and develop public services to be fit for purpose.
Training frontline staff with skills in design, media and social research can radically reconnect people to the ethos of public service and result in people powered, self-improving public services.
Deborah Szebeko is the founder of thinkpublic.com
From Flip Chart Fairy Tales
From Bubb's Blog
Comments
There are no comments yet for this article.