What is public sector innovation and how do you actually do it?
'Innovation' is a hot topic in the public sector at the moment. But in more instances than we might like to admit its meaning often falls somewhere between intangible jargon and opaque academic speak. The aim of this guide is to make innovation in the public sector real, practical, and action-oriented.
A place to start is with some definitions. While we may not be able to provide the official definition-to-end-all-definitions of Public Sector Innovation, we'd like to lay out in plain English how we are using this term and why it genuinely is worth caring about.
At its core, innovation means doing things differently from how they’ve been done before. This can range from small, incremental improvements to bigger, bolder transformative changes. One of the most common drivers of innovation is technology, which can open up new and more effective ways of solving existing challenges.
Innovation also involves a degree of uncertainty. If the need for change were obvious and the solution clear, it likely would have been implemented already. As a result, innovation is about testing whether new approaches can deliver better outcomes and add real value. While uncertainty is something that many services avoid because of the risk it poses to services that people deeply rely on, innovation done well creates opportunities to fail safely.
Innovation in the public sector does exactly what is says on the tin: government and public sector bodies exploring new ways of doing things that have impact and ultimately improve public services.
Public Sector Innovation is about helping public organisations respond to real-world challenges more effectively.
Innovation has the power to fundamentally improve public services and the lives of the people who use them. When public bodies explore new approaches or make better use of technology, they unlock ways to deliver services that are more efficient, more personalised, and easier to access.
At the same time, it strengthens public sector bodies by building their ability to adapt and respond to change. This could be through engaging more with private sector organisations, deploying emerging technology, working with innovative suppliers or simply becoming more agile and user-centred.
In the end, the result is better value for taxpayers. Innovation can help ensure that public funds go further, and the outcomes delivered have a greater impact.
Innovation is successful when it is no longer innovative. When a new way of doing things becomes the way to do things. If you, people you work with, or people you are trying to help are finding things easier or getting better results because of a new approach then you’re innovating.
Innovating is something that’s easy to say and hard to do. The gap between trying something new and seeing meaningful results can stretch from days to months, or even years. During that time, it’s tempting to fall back on familiar ways of working or to abandon the new approach altogether. That’s often when promising ideas lose momentum and their potential is lost. The reverse of this is that sometimes innovation does not deliver the outcomes you want and the gap between taking action and this becoming clear creates space for wasted efforts. We will take a look at how you can overcome this challenge in different innovation activities below.
Innovation can take many shapes and forms. But, to help make sense of what can often be an nebulous concept, you can think about public sector innovation in two categories. These categories reflect the role you - as a civil servant or public body - can play in relation to any given innovation.
What does this mean? Let's take a look at the two categories below to get a better sense of how we've broken it down:
Enabling innovation within government
Public or civil servants doing their job differently using tools that are readily at their disposal. This looks like you or your team implementing innovation yourself within government and the teams you work in.
Engaging with innovation outside of government
Creating an environment for innovation to happen in line with your objectives outside of the public sector. This can look either like you or your team using new programmes to support others - such as industry or academia - to do the innovating or using ways to bring that innovation into government to help deliver your priorities. Sometimes it can be both!
This is by no means a scientific way of categorising innovation and there are certainly overlaps between the two. But, it is useful to imagine how you can bring innovation into what you do in a practical and action-oriented way; this can help avoid the all too common trap of using the word 'innovation' to somehow mean everything and nothing at the same time.
In each of the two sections below, we look at a set of activities that you can do that drive innovation in the public sector. Each activity will answer these questions:
Each activity you can dive in to will answer these questions:
Sometimes the most effective innovations can be achieved within the confines of your own work, your team or your department.
Outcomes can be more efficiently reached from changing the way you problem-solve, manage projects, collaborate with others or collect data. Often, this type of innovation is widely applicable to public sector organisations who run into common problems like inefficient processes, a high-demand on user centricity of services and a need to demonstrate good value-for-money.
Critically, when public services are too important to risk uncertainty but also too important not to transform through innovation, enabling innovation is about creating space to fail safely. This theme is also looked at in the Engaging with innovation outside of government section but you should prioritise this in these activities too. Ultimately even creating simple risk-free and playful environments when talking with colleagues can start to help teams become more agile, data-driven, design-led and build innovation maturity.
To find out more about innovative activities you can start in your organisation, click below:
Enabling innovation has two distinct goals.
The first is about creating ways to leverage external ideas and solutions for public sector transformation. This complements internal "Implementing Innovation" efforts by proactively bringing in private or third-sector innovations through specific activities.
The second objective aligns with central government departments, local authorities, and regulators who may be tasked with fostering innovation and economic growth in the sectoral or geographic areas they oversee. The benefit here isn't always public service transformation, and can be in delivering other policy objectives, like economic growth. However, as we explain in "Run an accelerator" and "Create new innovation environments and sandboxes," promoting innovation outside government can circle back to public sector transformation.
