Local authorities use innovation to improve public services

A few days ago we went public with the results of the i-team, a pioneering project which shows how the public sector can use cutting-edge innovation to create better, more sustainable services.

Three councils joined us at the Design Council to reveal the ideas they are developing to promote climate-friendly behaviour, the results of a people-centred design process rarely used in the public sector.

The approach uses ordinary people’s insights and real-life experiences to come up with effective, sustainable solutions, and the council teams became enthusiastic advocates. Watch our film to learn more about the process and their reactions.

St Helens Council talked about the web game it’s developing which will allow teenagers to explore a low carbon virtual St Helens. It also plans a campaign using underground, viral marketing techniques to encourage teenagers to take the lead on climate change issues.

Kirklees Council plans to build a low-carbon children and family centre as a showcase where visitors can become familiar with energy saving ideas and devices. It is also launching a scheme to show new mothers how they can save money by doing simple things to reduce their impact on the environment.

Suffolk County Council used the i-team process to come up with a simple but elegant incentive scheme which rewards social workers for cutting their business mileage.

Conceived by Forum for the Future, the i-team project was run as a collaboration with international design consultancy IDEO and with funding from the Local Government Association and the Improvement and Development Agency for local authorities.

We introduced the council teams to the people-centred design approach, which is more commonly used for product and service development in the private sector. It favours one-on-one interviews rather than surveys of consumers, and encourages participants to generate and prototype many concepts before committing to a particular output.

The diversity of the ideas the teams generated demonstrates that innovation and creative thinking can play a key role in helping the public sector deliver better services and meet its climate change targets, as well as the expectations of an increasingly demanding public.

The end of i-team phase one was celebrated at a well-attended event at the Design Council on February 27th. There were talks from Sue Siddall, Head of IDEO London, Peter Madden, our Chief Executive and John Thackara, director of Doors of Perception.

We hope to work with more local authorities and increase the ambition and scale of the projects in phase two.