10 Examples of Design Thinking in Government

Government’s role is to provide essential services for its people. Using the methodology and mindset of Design Thinking in government projects can help to clarify for whom, what problems need to be solved and test and improve the resultant ideas quickly before huge resources are applied to rolling out the new or improved government services.

Governments mandate is clear and so is the target customer: it’s citizens. All of them.

The problems of government are complex, i.e. affordable healthcare for all, simple collection of taxation, etc, etc. The task becomes all that much more challenging when you add the inevitable and mostly ugly politics that comes with government work into the mix.

Affordable healthcare for all. Three components.

• Provide healthcare: we know how to do that. BUT there is a lot of opportunity to improve it.
• Affordable: that adds many more challenges.
• For all: now we are deep into big hairy audacious problem solving territory.

Governments need to develop services in order to meet the needs of their citizens, so a lot of the problem solving of government involves the successful development and delivering of services. Governments are not set up like start-ups or even traditional product/service delivery organizations so the product/service creation function does not often exist in any real form within government. Using Design Thinking in government projects can help to set up projects for success. 

Here are a number of resources and examples from taxation to healthcare, education to libraries and cities to strategy that can help you to get a better understanding of how to use Design Thinking in Government problem solving projects.

1. Dave Robertson presents two case studies with the British Columbia Government (Canada) which discuss how to more effectively engage with constituents.
2. Jeffrey Ho, Executive Director of the DesignSingapore Council discusses how the Singapore Government is using design thinking to improve Law and Order, Health centers and services and how Design Thinking is influencing policy making.
3. In another article The Ministry of Manpower’s Work Pass Division (WPD) used design thinking as a tool to develop better ways to support foreigners who choose Singapore as a destination to live, work and set up businesses. The case reveals: Design thinking can potentially transform the perception and meaning of public service.
4. The US Tax Office has used the methodology in their Tax Forms Simplification Project.
5. The US White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has been working with agencies to identify and share best practices to promote innovation and make government work better and cost less. 
6. In 2004, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) decided to design and build an enterprise content management system to streamline its publishing process. The first attempt revealed the technology of the day was inadequate for the design of this complicated project. However, 12 years later the ATO now has a world class website which is shaped by daily user feedback and longitudinal unmoderated usability benchmarking.
7. The Public Libraries in Aarhus (Denmark) and Chicago (USA), with funding from the Gates Foundation, created the Design Thinking for Libraries toolkit to introduce a way of working that will help you understand the needs of your patrons and engage your communities like never before.
8. Also take a look at IBM’s four case studies which demonstrate design thinking in government public service delivery improvements
   1. Engaging Employees at the Department of Health and Human Services (US Government: HHS)
   2. Aligning Diverse Stakeholder groups at the Food and Drug Administration (US Government: FDA)
   3. Improving solution quality at the Good Kitchen (Danish Government)
   4. Fostering Experimentation and Change at MasAgro (Mexican Government Collaboration with agriculture groups)
9. The US Government has also used Design Thinking quite extensively in projects, but also in work done by the Office of Personnel Managements “The Labs” facility to define Design Thinking skills, a field guide for Design Thinking and a roll out of training across all government departments.
10. Design Thinking in Elementary School – David Lee discusses 3 projects his students did using design thinking.

In this short 5:44 video, Hailey Brewer of IDEO offers some guidance on how to start working on problems of government. It is worth a listen. Hailey suggests 5 ideas for starting points.

1. Beyond efficiency – START WITH PEOPLE
2. Beyond surveys – OBSERVE PEOPLE IN CONTEXT
3. Beyond the official process – PIGGYBACK ON EXISTING BEHAVIORS
4. Beyond the middle – LOOK AT EXTREMES
5. Beyond demographics – DESIGN FOR BEHAVIORS

Using Design Thinking in government projects can help create new services as well as improve existing services within government. It provides a new way to look at problems from the users point of view rather than from a political, business or technology point of view. Suppliers of services and services design to the government tend to be more focused on the former 3 than on the people they are designing for, so anytime you can focus the creation and design of services from the government on the actual needs of the people is a good day for us all!