Policy making through a prism of service design

KEY TAKEAWAYS

·???????Public policy and service design processes have many similarities

·???????Policy makers can learn from the tools and methods applied in service design

·???????Advanced digital adoption is a strong enabler for both processes

·???????Creative thinking, extensive stakeholder engagement and adaptive experimentation should be explored further to bring policy making to a new level

PUBLIC POLICY MAKING IS NOT A TRIVIAL PROCESS

Analogous to corporate strategizing, policy making involves meticulous analysis and planning that ultimately leads to measures?that affect broad groups?of stakeholders over extensive periods of time. A wide spectrum of policy instruments is already quite well-known and widely used across the board; however, not all of them prove to be successful in certain circumstances. Issues may typically lie somewhere around selection-applicability, design-usability and implementation.

On the other hand, service design is a field that has significantly progressed in the last years as the private sector keeps pursuing higher gains by adopting customer-centric business models. Interestingly, there can be quite a few similarities found between policy making and service design. Fundamentally, people have to be at the core.

There have already been some works done focusing on the benefits of design thinking in the public sector. However, this article encourages to explore further how different service design tools can be used to shape government policies in order to maximise value for the affected groups.

?COVERING KEY POLICY MAKING STEPS

Nowadays, there are multiple ways of approaching policy-making: from standard linear designs to custom complex models, catering for various types of challenges and stakeholders. Most of them are focused on current issues (as they justify resource allocation based on direct needs); however, it is becoming more common to focus on future issues, though relevance and potential returns might be opaque.

In both cases, traditionally the process starts with (#1) challenge / ambition definition, whereby various inputs, such as statistical data, trends, agency reports and broader strategic directives are analysed to determine core and adjacent areas of focus. Those are prioritised respectively to set the agenda for deeper study.

Consequently, the (#2) landscape analysis helps to define the status quo and refine the vision. At this stage, key actors are usually identified and engaged in interactive discussions, deriving insights and multi-level interdependencies. Those are typically matched with external research, aligning with the global outlook and drawing best practices from leading players. Nowadays, digital technologies become a strong enabler for studying broad data sets and pooling opinions of larger stakeholder groups.

Following a structured approach, more informed (#3) policy design can be achieved. Based on pre-identified challenges and future ambition, different solutions can be proposed, selected, designed and refined, considering capabilities and timelines. At this stage, it is critical to identify target groups and how they will be affected.

Once the policy is ready and approved, it can go through rounds of (#4) testing, followed by (#5) full-scale implementation, whereby responsible actors should be onboarded with respective responsibilities, reporting mechanisms and allocated authorities. Throughout the implementation, continuous (#6) performance monitoring is used to identify gaps and report lessons learnt into further roadmap revisions[RLC1]?. With successful implementation, there can be (#7) extensions (in terms of scale and scope) and further spin offs feeding into new policies and initiatives.

SERVICE DESIGN PHASES HAVE SIMILAR THINKING AT THE CORE

?On the other hand, the traditional service design process resembles a very similar process:

1.?????It starts with Discovery of the challenges or the opportunity space, where service users face issues or would benefit from an improvement. Depending on the organisation size and capabilities, this phase can cover a wide spectrum of tools and methods to identify customer needs and pain points. With better understanding of the current setting and the broader landscape, potential solutions are proposed.

2.?????In the Definition phase, solutions are clustered into a set of projects that involve detailed design of service constituents, including:

a.?????Personas, i.e. the audience collectively encapsulating characteristics of related solution recipients;

b.?????Design features, i.e. detailed characteristics of a solution;

c.?????Customer journey, i.e. the direct interfacing of the affected group with the solution, and related emotional experience, i.e. expected reaction of the group on the proposed solution at different stages;

d.?????Backend processes, i.e. mechanisms of delivering the solution translated to direct actions undertaken by service delivery team;

e.?????Related channels and systems, i.e. the embodiment of a solution into tangible and intangible assets;

f.??????Stakeholders, i.e. all entities responsible for successful delivery of the solution at each customer journey step.

3.?????With a primary concept in place, the solution goes through detailed Development, whereby it is prototyped in suitable test environments. Here, business implications have to be studied to make sure the solution produces the expected outcome for the organisation, target audience and related stakeholders.

4.?????Finally, the Delivery phase serves to bring the solution to light. Once the team and resources are allocated, implementation rolls out with continuous performance monitoring and gradual scaling up, allowing for adjustments by need.

WHAT ARE THE COMMONALITIES BETWEEN THE TWO

By looking at the two processes, key commonalities can be extrapolated:

1.?????People at the centre

While public policy design aims to achieve the public good in the long term, service design serves to create the best customer experience. Thus, the target audience should always be the key factor in both

2.?????Multi-actor interaction

Policy making typically involves delegation of duties and resources to executive agents; meanwhile, service design involves in-house cross-functional interaction as well as engagement with vendors, suppliers, partners and other stakeholders. Therefore, close attention should be paid to comprehensive stakeholder mapping and their effective onboarding

3.?????Iterative process

Most of the steps in both processes include similar components, from the assessment of status quo to detailed design, testing and scaling up. For successful implementation, it is important to allow for extra flexibility and adjust initiatives on the go, incorporating of in-progress outputs

4.?????Data driven design

Statistical and performance data analysis are no longer foreign to most decision makers, covering various aspects of business. The next level of differentiation comes from the quality of data and intelligent processing

Although there are clear similarities between the two, the approaches and tools used for each are not the same. At the same time, policy makers could in a way learn from best practices in service design. Methodological frameworks and tools can be used to map resources and capabilities, detail key interactions between actors responsible for policy delivery and affected recipients. Experimentation and agile adaptation of initial solutions could improve the effectiveness of initiatives by incorporating initial feedback and lessons learnt. As policy making keeps advancing as a practice, service design could become a valuable source of practices and use cases to inspire creative thinking.