Public sector organizations around the world face many pressures including budget cuts, high expectations from the public, and increasing challenges in vital areas such as health and education. While innovation in the private sector has constantly produced new products and services, the public sector is often slow to respond and even slower to adapt.

However, there are several examples of public agencies around the world who are constantly innovating by developing imaginative policies and introducing creative products and services through smart cities. The purpose of this course is to introduce approaches that can help public sector organizations become better innovators by combining greater creativity with more focus on evidence and impact.

Course Objectives

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Support the need for public sector organizations to better create, improve and adapt through the implementation of innovation systems
• List the stages of innovation needed to positively impact public sector policy decisions
• Apply human centered design principles to public sector policies and procedures
• Outline different benchmarks of successful smart cities around the world
• Identify the crucial innovation blocks needed for a mature public sector innovation system

Course Outlines

• Overview of public sector innovation
• The definition of public sector innovation
• Innovation in the private sector
• The importance of public sector innovation
• The ability to adapt and improve
• Obstacles to public sector innovation
• Stages of innovation
• Opportunities and challenges
• Generating ideas
• Developing and testing
• Making the case
• Delivering and implementing
• Growing and scaling
• Changing systems
• Human centered design
• Having the right mindset
• Creative confidence
• Learning from failure
• Embracing ambiguity
• Using the right methods
• Framing your design challenge
• Creating a project plan
• Building a team
• Secondary research
• Group and expert interviews
• Defining your audience
• Creative ideation
• Creating frameworks
• Brainstorming rules and guidelines
• Creating a concept
• Rapid prototyping
• Integrating feedback and iterating
• Idea implementation
• Resource assessment
• Building partnerships
• Staffing your project
• Funding strategy
• Pilot project
• Creating a pitch
• Monitoring and evaluating
• Continuous feedback
• Smart cities
• A brief history of the smart city
• Piloting smart city technologies
• Using city resources
• Smarter ways to collect data
• Smarter ways to make decisions
• People-Centered smart cities
• Crucial innovation building blocks
• Leadership support
• Budget and finances
• People mix and attitudes
• Organizing innovation in the public sector
• The right culture
• Governance accountability
• Risk management
• Innovation as part of a broader system
• Future technologies

Who should attend?

Research analysts, associates, managers and directors in government organizations who would like to learn more about government innovation methodologies and approaches.

Methodology

This course relies on the use of interactive public sector case studies to demonstrate the different components of effective innovation in the public sector. In addition, this course utilizes individual debriefs, group discussions, role playing, and presentations as well as best practice benchmarks from different countries.