Case Study: connecting policy and service design for better outcomes
As public servants across the country work to digitalise, design, and deliver services, how can the different teams working on this - from frontline practitioners to service designers to policymakers - better collaborate to improve outcomes?
“This has been a great session - I've really enjoyed the blend of learning, reflection and discussion. Diolch yn fawr.”
The problem
Wales' policymakers are smart, motivated, and keen to make a difference in the world. But they often struggle to connect with the reality of what policies actually look like in practice. Meanwhile, their operational and frontline colleagues are working tirelessly to improve outcomes for service users - and they've got heaps of ideas about how services could be designed better. But they rarely get the chance to feed that back up the chain.
There's a gap between policy and practice - and we want to close it.
Our solution
Connecting with the CDPS Service Design community, we ran a free interactive online workshop, teaching some of the key tips and tricks for more collaborative policy and service design in the public sector. 20 participants joined us to connect with old colleagues and new faces from across the service design and policy communities and hear examples of best practice for collaborative service design.
Our case studies included:
a Cardiff probation project using co-production to improve experiences for the men, their families, and the probation officers. We heard first hand from policy makers how this approach positively impacted the men’s rehabilitation.
CDPS showcased how user-centered design practitioners and policy makers collaborated on a discovery in taxi passenger safety, leading to Welsh Taxi Bill changes.
We then placed participants into groups and they completed an “Upstream / Downstream” activity, drawing on everyone's expertise in each room to identify some of the exciting “low-hanging fruit” and some of the thornier upstream prevention issues.
Outcomes
This was a hugely enjoyable session, bringing together old and new faces from across the policy and service design community. Participants commented on the useful mix of discussion, case studies and interaction with others, as well as highlighting that they’d learnt a lot of new information. Most of all, we saw several new connections and comments in the chat with promises to follow up after the session - highlighting how important even short sessions like this can be in creating and sustaining that network of like-minded, collaborative changemakers.