For policy makers and policy implementers, design challenges abound. Every design challenge presents an opportunity for change and transformation. To get from policy intent to policy outcome, however, is not a straightforward journey. It involves people and services as much as it involves policies and organizations. Of all organizations, perhaps government agencies are perceived to be the least likely to change. They are embedded in enormous bureaucratic structures that have grown over decades, if not centuries. In effect, many people have given up hope that such an institution can ever change its ways of doing business. And yet, from a human-centered design perspective, they present a fabulous challenge. Designed by people for people, they have a mandate to be citizen-centered, but they often fall short of this goal. If human-centered design can make a difference in this organizational context, it is likely to have an equal or greater impact on an organization that shows more flexibility; for example, one that is smaller in size and less entangled in legal or political frameworks. Transforming Public Services by Design offers a human-centered design perspective on policies, organizations and services. Three design projects by large-scale government agencies illustrate the implications for organizations and the people involved in designing public services: the Tax Forms Simplification Project by the Internal Revenue Service (1978-1983), the Domestic Mail Manual Transformation Project by the United States Postal Service (2001-2005) and the Integrated Tax Design Project by the Australian Tax Office. These case studies offer a unique demonstration of the role of human-centered design in policy context. This book aims to support designers and managers of all backgrounds who want to know more about reorienting policies, organizations and services around people.

For policy makers and policy implementers, design challenges abound. Every design challenge presents an opportunity for change and transformation. To get from policy intent to policy outcome, however, is not a straightforward journey. It involves people and services as much as it involves policies and organizations. Of all organizations, perhaps government agencies are perceived to be the least likely to change. They are embedded in enormous bureaucratic structures that have grown over decades, if not centuries. In effect, many people have given up hope that such an institution can ever change its ways of doing business. And yet, from a human-centered design perspective, they present a fabulous challenge. Designed by people for people, they have a mandate to be citizen-centered, but they often fall short of this goal. If human-centered design can make a difference in this organizational context, it is likely to have an equal or greater impact on an organization that shows more flexibility; for example, one that is smaller in size and less entangled in legal or political frameworks. Transforming Public Services by Design offers a human-centered design perspective on policies, organizations and services. Three design projects by large-scale government agencies illustrate the implications for organizations and the people involved in designing public services: the Tax Forms Simplification Project by the Internal Revenue Service (1978-1983), the Domestic Mail Manual Transformation Project by the United States Postal Service (2001-2005) and the Integrated Tax Design Project by the Australian Tax Office. These case studies offer a unique demonstration of the role of human-centered design in policy context. This book aims to support designers and managers of all backgrounds who want to know more about reorienting policies, organizations and services around people.

In Change by Design, Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, the celebrated innovation and design firm, shows how the techniques and strategies of design belong at every level of business. Change by Design is not a book by designers for designers; this is a book for creative leaders who seek to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization, product, or service to drive new alternatives for business and society.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Design Science Research in Information Systems and Technology, DESRIST 2020, held in Kristiansand, Norway, in December 2020. The 28 revised full research papers included in the volume together with 7 research-in-progress papers and 9 prototype papers, were carefully reviewed and selected from 93 submissions. They are organized in the following topical sections: digital public services; data science; design principles; methodology; platforms and networks; and service science. Due to the Corona pandemic this event was held virtually.

This powerful new book provides a clear framework for understanding and learning an emerging management practice, leading public design. Drawing on more than a decade of work on public sector innovation, Christian Bason uses his extensive practical experience and research conducted among public managers in the UK, the US, Australia, Finland and Denmark to explore how public organisations can be redesigned from the outside in, shaping policies and services that are truly experienced as useful and meaningful to citizens, and which leverage all of society’s resources to co-produce better outcomes. Through detailed case studies, the book presents six management practices which leaders in government can use to involve citizens, staff and other stakeholders in innovation processes. It shows how managers can challenge their own assumptions, leverage empathy with citizens, handle divergence, navigate unknown territory, experiment and rehearse future solutions through prototyping, and create more public value. Ultimately, Leading public design provides a pathway to a new and different way of governing public institutions: human-centred governance. As a more relational, networked, interactive and reflective approach to running organisations, this emerging governance model promises a more human yet effective public sector.

Governments have been using technology to modernize the public sector for decades. The World Bank Group (WBG) has been a partner in this process, providing both financing and technical assistance to facilitate countries’ digital transformation journeys since the 1980s. The WBG launched the GovTech Initiative in 2019 to support the latest generation of these reforms. Over the past five years, developing countries have increasingly requested WBG support to design even more advanced digital transformation programs. These programs will help to increase government efficiency and improve the access to and the quality of service delivery, provide more government-to-citizen and government-to-business communications, enhance transparency and reduce corruption, improve governance and oversight, and modernize core government operations. The GovTech Initiative appropriately responds to this growing demand. The GovTech Maturity Index (GTMI) measures the key aspects of four GovTech focus areas—supporting core government systems, enhancing service delivery, mainstreaming citizen engagement, and fostering GovTech enablers—and assists advisers and practitioners in the design of new digital transformation projects. Constructed for 198 economies using consistent data sources, the GTMI is the most comprehensive measure of digital transformation in the public sector. Several similar indices and indicators are available in the public domain to measure aspects of digital government—including the United Nations e-Government Development Index, the WBG’s Digital Adoption Index, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Digital Government Index. These indices, however, do not fully capture the aspects of emphasis in the GovTech approach—the whole-of-government approach and citizen centricity—as key when assessing the use of digital solutions for public sector modernization. The GTMI is not intended to be an assessment of readiness or performance; rather, it is intended to complement the existing tools and diagnostics by providing a baseline and a benchmark for GovTech maturity and by offering insights to those areas that have room for improvement. The GTMI is designed to be used by practitioners, policy makers, and task teams involved in the design of digital transformation strategies and individual projects, as well as by those who seek to understand their own practices and learn from those of others.