Design into Public Services

And that’s how I started to see design – as ways of opening this up. Ways of saying, actually we can help you.

I am a founding director of a firm that focuses on social, economic and democratic change, and I'm going to talk about my journey into discovering design and the mental shift that is required within government and the public sector.

The reason I went into government was to actually change things for the better. It was a social motivation and a public sector ethos. Any of you that have worked in the public sector will recognise how you can see certain kinds of values there.

But I found when I walked into the DTI or the Treasury that I was completely hampered. I didn't have the ability to change things for the better. So how do you get those different perspectives?

In government, every time we looked at things, we were constantly coming back to the project management triangle of cost, scope and time. And everything that you hear the public sector talk about, particularly when it's looking for efficiency or Lean, is all within that cost scope and time triangle. The officials at the treasury would challenge me at the time to say, if we’re to do zero based budgeting, how do you stretch the thinking? Where is the new starting point?

So the new starting point that we kind of came up with was an new triangle: sustainability, usability and desirability. And I thought to myself, 'Great – that’s a great starting point'. So if you have public services that are both sustainable, both technologically and economically and demographically, that's where you should be looking in terms of your programmes. Usable? Absolutely. We always get that wrong in the public sector, constantly. And desirable and this is the key, key point and the one that people find most difficult to understand when they’re working with the public sector because it comes to that concordat between the citizen and state. What does the tax payer feel that it is owed by the state and by its services? How should it be treated, what is that relationship? That goes right to your voting core and structure.

So now we know this, how do we answer these questions? And that’s how I started to see design – as ways of opening this up. Ways of saying, actually we can help you. How do you look at trends and futures work in a way that contributes to policy making and programme making? Well actually design has that divergent, convergent process that allows you to embed it.

This – let me put my Treasury hat on – considering this year's budget, is even more important. People are going to retreat. They’re going to retreat back to cost-scope-time. They’re going to go to Lean. They’re going to say, 'How do I get my three to five percent [cut]?'

The reality is that unless they are in the NHS or a Sure Start centre, they’re going to be looking for a 25 percent cuts over the next three years. That’s a quarter of their budget. So my challenge, my question to all of you guys today is ‘How are we going to use design to actually sort out both our public services and some of the economic trouble that we’re in today?”

A former Special Adviser to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Emily has provided expert advice, at the highest levels, to both the UK and Canadian governments on public service transformation and innovation policy and practice. At the Treasury, Emily developed strategies on an extensive range of services and policies including local government, child poverty and health, working closely with voluntary and community sectors, businesses and trade unions. Most recently, Emily led the development of the Design Council’s work in public services as Policy Adviser and Programme Leader. As a founding Director of Aequitas Consulting she is working with clients to apply her expertise in innovation and design.