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Created by the Public Governance Directorate

This website was created by the OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (OPSI), part of the OECD Public Governance Directorate (GOV).

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On the 21st and 22nd of November, over 500 participants from all around the world gathered in Paris to share skills, experiences, practices and knowledge at the OPSI conference, with the one focus in mind: making innovation in government the ‘new normal’. The theme of the conference Innovation in Government: The New Normal (#opsi2017) came from the belief that innovative people and practices certainly exist in government, but they are not yet mainstreamed as they should be....
We are living in an age where access to government and politicians is ever increasing, educational levels are rising, and yet we trust government institutions less and less. On 11 October 2017, OPSI ran a workshop exploring “Trust in Government in a Digital Age” as part of the OECD Global Parliamentary Network meeting. The workshop had three goals: first, to introduce parliamentarians to new methods of working on complex problems; second, to put these methods...
In September, OPSI launched the report “System Approaches to Public Challenges: Working with Change” on dealing with complexity in public policy. To take this work forward, we launched a series of workshops with leading countries to discuss how systems approaches could change the everyday functioning of government. We held the first one on September 6, 2017 in Brdo pri Kranju in cooperation with the Prime Minister’s Office of the Government of Slovenia. This work was...
This blog was guest written by Wouter van Acker, PhD, KU Leuven Public Governance Institute I should know better than to write a blog starting with a ‘how-to-title’. One conclusion after writing a PhD on public sector innovation, which is what I did and why I’m writing here, is that there is no such thing as a ten-tip-recipe-for-success in innovation. But we all succumb to the appeals of clickbait. So here we are. In 2014...
What roles can a politician play if they want to help promote, push or steer public sector innovation? Our focus here at the Observatory on Public Sector Innovation tends to concentrate on the public service side of things: what government organisations can do to develop and implement more sophisticated approaches to innovation. That involves looking at institutions (what are the frameworks and settings that allow/inhibit innovation), at organisations (how can different administrative practices…
When public sector innovation is talked about it can often seem like a new focus, or something that governments have only recently paid attention to. Yet on a recent holiday I had a reminder that governments have been innovating for a long time, and that many of the issues that we face today when innovating are not new. In this case the reminder was a Swedish naval vessel built early in the 17th Century. The...
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Remembering Innovation Month

This guest blog was written by Rob Thomas Communications Officer, BizLab, Australian Department of Industry, Innovation and Science “It is the responsibility of every APS officer to explore the opportunities that are available to you through initiatives such as Innovation Month, the innovation labs and teams…” – Glenys Beauchamp – Secretary, Australian Department of Industry, Innovation and Science Was Innovation Month really last month? At time of writing it feels like…
This blog was authored by former OPSI intern, Théo Bourgery. In the context of the OECD’s “Evidence-Informed Policy-Making” conference, I had the opportunity to interview Kaisa Lähteenmäki-Smith and Camille Laporte on the role of experimentation in the drafting of evidence-based policies. As part of the ‘Evidence-Informed Policy-Making’ conference, co-organised by the OECD’s Directorate for Public Governance and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, Piret…
This blog was co-authored with former OPSI intern, Théo Bourgery “What does innovation mean to you?” This is a common topic when you speak to public servants about innovation – what is it really about, what does it really mean. And it is always interesting to hear the different views and perspectives, and the degree to which the answers vary. Yet these differences in opinion are not mere curiosities – they matter and can have...
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Playing to Innovate

Wouldn’t it be great if you could play games at work? Sorry, I meant, wouldn’t it be great if you could play games at work and learn new skills at the same time? Here at the Observatory we’re interested in finding out more about how playing games can help public servants learn new ways of thinking and doing things. As part of our innovation lifecycle work, we want to better understand how to support public...