I'm the government communications manager at a political and in today's brilliant workshop we're going to be talking about bridging the gap between policy design and implementation.
It would be really great to hear where you're we're all coming from today. So if you'd want to let us know in the chat, just let us know maybe what country or you're calling in from and what work you do in government.
It's great that we're gonna be talking today about how to improve the effectiveness of your policies and designing them with implementation in mind and then navigating the challenges that arise.
When you start bringing policies into life. So it's going to be a really big chat. We've got 3 brilliant speakers.
We'll give it another minute or so to let people into the room. Hirima, hi Fiona, Ashley, fight Vashali, great to have you all with us.
Please do kick letting everyone know where you're calling in from. Just to get everyone, give everyone some time before we start the session.
My colleague Emily is gonna play a short video, introducing you to a political and what we do as an organisation.
So over to a media.
Will also go through some technical points before we start as well just around. Recording and access to transcripts is should you need them.
They are available during this call. There will go. There we go. There's a video.
Welcome to today's workshop. I'm so glad you decided to take the time out of your busy schedule.
I'm so glad you decided to take the time out of your busy schedules to learn with a political. I'm so glad you decided to take the time out of your busy schedules to learn with a political.
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Yeah, and one of the ways in which you can keep learning with their political is to join our question and answer that platform on our on our website and my colleague Taylor has asked what do you recommend someone does to bridge the gap between policy design and implementation.
So that's something you can start thinking about and add your brought to the chat here or on the discussion board on our platform.
So we're about to start, but we'll just get through a few technical points. So first and foremost, this workshop is being recorded and we'll be hosting it online on the ELBLY, a critical website via Vimeo.
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If that's not working, just message it in the chat and I'll pick it up and we can sort that out.
No worries at all. So today we're very, very lucky to have 3 bullets because we have key Wang, Fro, and, Dan, Dan, Keeley and Kate, Buckshaw, who are joining us on our conversation today.
We'll let them take up, take up most of this base. But before we do, we wanted to run through a few poll questions just to get a sense of where everyone is with this topic and what they'd like to learn today.
So the first question that you should see come up on the screen is does your work involve policy, drop, involve policy drafting, policy implementation, both or neither?
We'll see what these results are and everything's anonymous so feel free to answer as you wish.
Let's see what the answers are. The 4 choices were policy implementation, policy drafting both for neither.
And might take a moment for the results to come up. And if you have any questions related to either of those functions, any of those functions, please do, share them in the chat and as I say, we'll pick them up during our Q&A session.
In the second half of today's call. So the vast majority work in a mixture of both. So that's more than 50%.
And then another sort of like 32, 34% split between drafting and implementation. If perhaps if you work in Neither, please do sharing the chat maybe where you're coming from and what you'd like to know about this topic so we can also make sure that we're a patient to your needs as well.
So the second of our 2 questions is what is your experience with user center design? Never heard of it.
Heard the hype not seen it in action worked with teams applying users into design or done it myself.
I'm something of an expert or other something else. And please do add those answers in the chat.
I'll give it a second. So there's quite a few choices there. So give a second.
What is your experience of working with user center design?
Be interested to see the answers for this one.
My bet is that is a herd of it's gonna be a lot of her the hype but not much seen it in action.
But let's see what comes up.
Maybe a few experts as well. Okay, right. Yeah, heard the hype not seen it in action That sounds about right.
So that's interesting. That's a big chunk of view. Then work with teams, applying design or done it myself, which is really interesting.
Yeah, I wanna say as we're doing it myself, which is really interesting. Yeah, I wanna say as we say, is really interesting.
Yeah, I wanna say as we say we're doing it, but not quite. It's not quite right.
I wonder if that chimes with anyone else's experiences. Please do share in the chat.
We really interested to hear that. Never heard of it, maybe about one in 5 of you, which is very interesting.
And we'll definitely run through that as a topic. So any questions you have, please do shout and if any definitions that you need please do also shout and we can make sure that those are provided. Excellent.
So let's dive into that why the reason why we're all here we have 3 absolutely brilliant speakers.
First of all we have Ki Wang who's a passionate public service, public servant. He feels privileged to be the director of strategic policy and planning at the Canada Council, kind of the Council for the Arts since the spring of 2,021 and rebuilding a more inclusive, innovative and sustainable art sector in
Canada. Prior to this, Key was the inaugural director of the Policy Community Partnership Office, which convenes and enables the Government of Canada's policy practitioners and helps them promote their practices.
He has a strong policy background as you'd expect having worked in strategic policy and policy development in a wide range of organizations including the Privy Council Office, Natural Resources Canada and the Citizens Citizen and Immigration are Canada as well.
He is also an art enthusiast and a runner at a dragon, a dragon boaster, which you might have to explain for us.
And a self-perset, professed foodie. Great to have you with us, Keith.
Second, we have Dan, who's the senior delivery advisor to the Secretary of State of Education Delivery Unit in the UK.
Dan joined Dan joined the UK. Dan joined the UK. Dan joined the UK Department of Education in the UK.
Dan joined the UK. Dan joined the UK Department for Education in 2,022 and helps ministers to drive delivery of their mission to 2,022 and helps ministers to drive delivery of their mission to raise school standards and mitigate the risk of workforce shortages in the UK.
Dan's also passionate about multi-disciplinary action problems problem problem solving and the value of user sensitive mindset in problem solving and the value of user sensitive mindset in tackling real-world delivery challenges.
Dan, very great to have you with us and last but not least we have Kate Brockshaw who's a colleague of Dan at the Department of Work and Pensions in the UK.
Before. Who's now working at the part of education with Dan? Sorry. She has a background in both digital transformation and policy design.
Kate has experience in creating and leading multidisciplinary teams in and across, in across complex, ambiguous policy spaces has a long-term interest in the design.
In public policy making strategy and leadership. So 3 extremely experienced and knowledgeable speakers and for us to speak to hear from today.
He will be talking first about some of the some of the key elements of policy design and implementation.
Thank you so much, Dessie, and thank you a political. So I do have A few slides.
Which we'd love to present when they come on and In particular, I just like to present a little bit of a model for policy that.
The Canadian policy community and a political created in back in 2,020 and this model starts out with a focus on people.
Evidence and outcomes. Hmm. I think we might have, just lost the slide.
Right.
Sorry, I was meant to share. My zoom crashed when I tried to do it. So hoping it will work this time.
Okay, no worries. Thanks then.
Okay, here we go. So, yeah, people evidence and outcomes at the center of this model.
Clearly, you know, we have to keep in mind the people that we serve and also to do anything in a good way.
We have to work with the people, our colleagues inside and outside of government evidence around promoting public interest and for us to be credible and reliable.
We need to use and rely on evidence and in terms of outcomes to, provide value and remain relevant to the people we serve.
We have to focus on achieving, achieving outcomes. So then next slide where we layer on. The policy the various policy functions and a couple of decision points So these are pretty typical policy functions, research and analysis, polo creating developing policy options, providing our advice, getting the authorization and funding and approvals and
then. Moving to beetle design and planning of our policy implementation and monitoring and evaluation. So these are set out as kind of separate steps.
And functions of the policy process, but very much we're looking to kind of integrate them. And in particular, we see the on the left hand side the 3 functions research analysis policy options and advice largely could be referred to as policy development.
And then on the right hand side, the 3 policy functions of detailed design planning, implementation monitoring. Evaluation could be referred to as policy delivery.
So then the next slide where we're looking at integrating, these functions and adding actually this layer of colorful glasses as a reminder of the integration, a reminder to please.
You know, keep on looking in at the people evidence and outcomes. Looking out, connecting within the broader policy context and very much looking across at the other functions in the policy process.
Leveraging learning and integrating insights at every step and throughout the process. And then here I just want to remind everyone even though I, I'm really happy to see that many of you have actually worked in both.
Both sides of this part the policy process but in a lot of cases our organizations are created in more of a siloed way.
With functions in policy development of the left-hand side in different parts of organizations and those that are on the right hand side.
So we must be really deliberate in in integrating. Across policy functions. And so a reminder not to be a policy pirate.
You know, not to kind of have a patch on the left or right hand side of your eyes. And really to develop great policy and to be able to deliver for effect about outcomes.
So back to Jesse.
Thanks, Keith. I will be handing over to Dan who's gonna be talking about some of the potential barriers to policy implementation.
Yep, hi everyone. Lovely to be here. As Jesse said, I work in the delivery unit at the Department for Education.
So our job is to track the delivery of the Secretary of State's top priorities and where we're off track to solve problems, remove barriers to try and close that gap.
And so I thought I'd talk about a few examples I've seen of the barriers that you often come across when you move from policy design into implementation and try and give some examples of where we've seen that and what the problem might be.
So the first 2 are really less about implementation and more about what you do in policy design and then the others are what happens when you get into delivery.
But It's I'd say an overarching theme here that drives a lot of these problems is that policy design is interesting.
And cheap and policy implementation is expensive. And can be tedious and boring. And that drives a lot of these challenges that come across and I'll get back to that at the end.
So number one barrier that we see is just that being too much policy. Given that delivering policy is really difficult and resource intensive, it's easy to over generate policy versus your delivery capacity because you haven't prioritized enough.
The examples we'd see in the Department for Education, for example, is we have loads of great policies to drive people attainment in schools.
And we are hoping that our schools will be part of English hubs, mass hubs, get a support on attendance.
Be part of the national tutoring program, all sorts of different interventions that each individually have a positive positive impact on people attainment and when we plan them in the Department of Education obviously we try and build in the capacity that's needed to implement but it's easy to overload certain stages in your delivery chain
and you'll end up with schools trying to implement lots of different things and then you get a capacity crunch driven at the moment with industrial action and other issues and you find that it's really hard.
The same happens for us with local authorities which deliver a lot of our policy around. child social care and special educational needs.
Number 2 is policy trying to do too much. And a lack of clarity about it. Goals and this is a real common problem where you've set off on a really big transformative policy with some of the lack of alignment not having been ironed out about exactly what you're trying to achieve.
This can be that you've not really articulated what you're trying to achieve in terms of the users you're trying to affect.
And but it could be lots of other things. In our case, as we've been implementing t levels, which is a vocational equivalent to A levels for children.
16 to 18 year olds in the UK. That policy has lots of different objectives, but some that people expect of it is for it to sort of transform the esteem with which people hold vocational education relative to academic education.
And that can mean lots of different things to lots of different people and it's very hard to achieve that with one sort of change to a qualification, even if that's delivered really effectively.
And so that, implementation becomes quite challenging if people haven't really been clear about exactly what goal is trying to be achieved with a policy.
Number 3, insufficient planning. Particularly during policy development. Policy development is really interesting. It moves really, really fast and it can move really fast.
It's very hard to weigh it down with detailed delivery planning, but it's really problematic if you don't.
Examples that those people who pick and on the chat who were part of local government sorry part of UK government might be familiar with is things like our levelling up goals where we set really, ambitious targets.
At speed to try and drive this government ambition of levelling up. We're planning the really detailed delivery planning of how we achieve that like in our skills policy, how we would ensure that the lowest skills areas of the UK deliver incremental skills qualifications.
And I think that didn't happen early enough and so there's had to be interventions afterwards to get back.
There's limited delivery experience in project teams. Policy design is interesting and cheap but also attracts a lot of top talent and you end up with, there not being enough people that have really the hard runs of delivering policy in some of our central government departments that may be different people in different sorts of organizations.
Then the final one I wanted to highlight is a set of processes and cultural norms partly around risk escalation but partly around problem solving and innovation.
So the risk escalation side, everyone will be familiar with this kind of you have to work really hard to get people to identify the really critical risks to delivery and surface them as soon as possible.
And that's been a challenge frequently. The and on the problem solving, I think there's a really important point about innovation.
You will always in delivery face significant challenges. And so if your response is just to accept those as reductions on what you can achieve, you always end up sort of disappointing versus your strategy, your policy intent.
And you have to be really innovative for every setback to kind of find ways to mitigate or or replace.
Yeah.
The bit of outcome that you were trying to achieve that's now no longer possible and I think government organizations and systems often struggle a bit with that innovative approach to sort of both overcoming barriers and then sort of offsetting those barriers with incremental gains so that you net out sort of at the point that you hope to get to, even though some of
what you originally assumed was possible cannot be delivered. So I'll finish that and hand to Kate on user center design.
Sorry, Kate, just to briefly start. Just a quick notice. If your mic is on, please just double check that it's.
Not on so that we don't pick up any background noise. Thanks very much.
Trustee, thanks. Hi, everyone. Really good to be here. I mentioned before, rather, Jessie mentioned before that done and I if you work in the same part of the UK government I might pick up and expand on some of the fantastic stuff that's done and key before that.
Have you said I'm kind of wishing that I'd been on an A Politico workshop with the both of them 3 or 4 years ago it would have been really good help.
Okay someone talked briefly about the value of taking user centered design approach in public policy making. I'm gonna call it UCD, that's how it's mostly described.
And I'm going to try and focus on some really practical Cool stuff. So some some tips. Some things for you to think about.
Before this call I've been on a conversation with some design leaders in the UK government and that really kind of reinforced the need for people, I've been on a conversation with some design leaders in the UK government and that really kind of reinforced the need for people to be pragmatic about user-centered design and try and be that person
today. I'd love to make you a bit curious about UCD. I maybe do some readings and building up with your own thoughts and ideas and I've got a couple of slides that we're going to have a look at in a moment or 2.
Just for context, Jesse mentioned that I've done some work around multidisciplinary teams that are brought together.
Digital people and public teams. I'm going to draw mostly on that experience and some of the stuff that I've also blogged about and I'm gonna talk really in just 3 parts.
So we'll probably start with some some provocation statements I would label them I will then have a look at the value of youth center design and we'll perhaps wrap things up with some hints and tips so let's have a go at provocation statements first off and by provocation I mean saying things that aren't sped very
often. Secondly, user center design is a really valuable, potentially very powerful. Approach to quality making, it can and does help make public policy better.
It's also really hard to Do it well you don't can delete some of that new examples of it done really well because it is very new.
Lots of ways very different. It's absolutely not. A magic bullet so I'm not gonna sit here and advocate for UCD as a magic bullet for every public policy challenge.
And it's not the right thing to do. In some situations. If anybody comes to you and asks you to build a portal or to make an app you should probably walk away from them.
And it's definitely not about talking to a few people a few users and then putting some bullet points in a slide deck.
And the fact is very new. Quite lot of policy people it can be quite abstract and quite academic some ways so there's plenty of theory probably not as much as we'd want around proven practice.
And when you add in the fact that policy making can be a very crowded space with lots of traditions, lots of power structures you can kind of see.
Why it is difficult to do UCD. That said it is absolutely the right way to go. In lots of ways and I would say that is because most public quality exists.
As products or services so things that people use or interact with and if you try and design those that they meet people's needs.
You send a much better chance of meeting the intent in the poverty. So you do get better I think by design.
Let's have a look at slide one, which is already the one with dot and screen. If I was trying to persuade.
A policy maker to take a UCD approach then what you're seeing on the screen there is pretty much where I come from, what I would start to talk to them about.
And if I had to sum it up. In terms of one thing. I would say UCD helps you.
Become less wrong about things. So sure you get all of that creative experimental stuff, so much of that is about making sure you're less wrong about things.
I tend to use that term. Quite a lot. To the next side if that's okay slightly conscious here of time
Yeah, so people have a process a bit of a mantra for me as well. I is junking any job and there's so much jargon.
Around the world of user center design. Don't be the person that goes too big on the jargon.
And when I talk about people over process, you know, nobody really wants to see your double diamond the double diamond is the is the kind of origin I've seen which is what we understand of UCD developed by the Downtown Council.
You know, I think about 15 years ago. It's very valuable. But I'm not sure it's that valuable to policy people.
I think you need to be able to talk to them. And not major on the process. I've mentioned thinking slowly.
On acting fast. I do that because a couple of things that I've been involved in of late, a couple of design projects that I've co-led had been things that have been incubation for a long time.
So we did so much people work in the background to kind of create the conditions. To do a using the design piece.
I'm having created those conditions we acted fairly fast. I'm showing value. Quickly and often really big element I think of a successful UCD approach.
At the very end there, I've mentioned that G word, I'm goin and one of my colleagues in particular is very big on that.
Governance can be very very challenging. My top tip in that area will be to don't avoid.
The governing challenge you kind of need to sort of face up to the fear and and deal with it I think.
Okay, that's probably made under.
Thanks, Kay. Lot to pick up there and lots of questions that we can we can work through.
So to the audience, we have a good 30 min left, where we'll be able to dive into your questions.
There have been some that have been pre-submitted, but please do think of anything in relation to your work.
It's something you work on right now that you perhaps want to talk through with your colleagues or our experts here.
Please bring that here and we'll be very happy to talk about it. So some really interesting points that came up in the conversation there between Kay, Dan and Kate.
I think maybe I'd start with, Something you mentioned there, Dan, around, talking about some of the barriers of translating policy into operations.
What do you see as some of the the biggest ones that you encounter most frequently? Maybe just reiterating some of the points that you made in your in your presentation.
Yeah, so maybe a couple that, I didn't go into in as much depth in the bottom 3.
So, insufficient planning up front. I think it's it's difficult because you don't want to slow down strategy by forcing it to or policy design by forcing it to be sorting it to or policy design by forcing it to be sort of mitigated through people saying that won't be deliverable
digitally we can't do this operationally we can't do this there's a real risk that you kind of blunt your policy but we probably go too far down that path of not having people in the room early enough in the process that can say there will be these major problems in delivery based on our experience previously on
the limited delivery experience i think it's really a talent management question of what does your organization mostly do and the risk for a central government department for us is that the department mostly does policy development.
And therefore once you fill that up to your leadership and in the civil service we tend to not have maybe as strong flows of people from outside in at senior levels, you're just inevitably gonna end up that when you choose the sort of top 100 people to end up being the senior leadership in your organization that their experience skews towards
design versus delivery. And I think that can be a really big challenge and one that leaders should be sort of actively trying to mitigate.
Thinking do we have the people, in our senior leadership positions that have the hard yards and the scars on their back of doing delivery.
It's that's almost certainly gonna kind of build your operational capacity. I know that's different in some departments where they have bigger delivery arms than Department for Education.
I know that's different in some departments where they have bigger delivery arms than Department for Education.
But I think that's probably most people on this call would kind of, have experienced that challenge.
Hmm. And just give you a very, very brief follow-up on that and a question for the audience as well.
Dan, what do you think are some of the essential skills? You talked about some of the lack of experience and what some of the central delivery skills that you think people that are needs on that delivery side of the whole government piece and the move for the audience that you can answer in the chat if you're a policy draft or someone that's working policy design do you feel that
you're collaborating closely enough with your delivery colleagues to kind of make things happen at that early stage.
Yeah, a couple of thoughts. I think there are some, sort of classic craft skills that people would associate with around project and program management.
And I'm as someone that sort of bridges the gap always a bit suspicious of going too far down the sort of prints to project management methodology space but I think there's definitely something in that of having people with the craft skills of project management.
I think that's just the, to me there's a difference in delivery of the model of accountability that can be hard for people that are more strategic to understand because your accountability when you're designing things and in strategy space is kind of for the quality and the shape of a product.
In a in a distinctive sort of space whereas when you're in delivery there's a sort of daily tick of Are you hitting these set targets that we have for you and what are you doing to try and manage around them and kind of get in front of them and I think that's a skill set of just the daily tick of
accountability. The you learn from quite quickly and I have that experience going from a very strategic role to running an IT function in a big conglomerate is just a very different challenge you get run up at sort of 5 in the morning saying that the like gates to the compound aren't working because of an IT failure and you learn
from that even though I have absolutely no idea how to solve that problem myself. And I think the same is true of lots of different areas.
You kind of get these scars from doing delivery type jobs that's not a specific skill. It's more like an experience.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And Key, coming onto some of the points that you made, you talked there about the sort of the organizational silos that can exist and sort of hamper that collaboration between design and delivery.
Could you maybe talk about some of the your experiences of overcoming some of those challenges and some of the methods in practical ways that colleagues can do that.
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I think again, there's some organizations that are very, that would be more deliberate about, dismantling the silos or creating more what I call like Swiss cheese at least, you know, ways for the connections to happen.
And I think there are mechanisms that we can put in place as well, very deliberately like working groups, the bring, you know, collaborators from across these different policy functions together to work on a particular initiative.
But I also think that at the individual level, you know, as the policy practitioner as a public servant that we can all do and we have agency to do which is you know when you start a job or you know even now maybe a few years into your job like do you know your counterparts on the delivery side if you work
in policy drafting or do you know who are the policy drafters. If you're working on the delivery side, are you making those connections early on?
You know, Dan mentioned like we really need to have all of these perspectives. To bear early on in the process.
And, and we try to, you know, are we forging those connections even before we have to tackle a particular problem together.
Do we know who to call and who to reach out to? I think those are actually very easy things for us to do is to know who those people are.
Reach out across our organizations, ask them out for coffee and say, you know, I'm really interested to see what's happening in your policy space.
I have some questions. I'm eager to, to, you know, to, to figure out if you're working on policy drafting again, understanding the operations, understanding those operational constraints and realities.
Would be so powerful in the way that you may even put policy options forward. And then if you are on the delivery side, I mean the things that you are seeing the day-to-day.
And what is working, what isn't working, to be able to bring that and share that with policy drafters for the next iterations.
Again, super powerful to make those to create that bridge and to do that at the individual level. And that's the organizational level.
Yeah, pretty. I think it seems to be something that Aparna seems to chime with saying that she always aims to go and work with a shadow with her delivery, partners to try and learn about what they're doing.
We will circle back to some of the sort of design and delivery connection questions, but maybe we can move a bit onto the UCD.
Users design questions. So Kate, you've already answered the question of whether or not using the design is the same design thinking.
But maybe you expand a bit more on the topic of governance challenge that you talked about towards the end of your presentation.
Yeah, I think that talks to some of the really good points that people have already raised in the chat.
I'm slightly plagiarizing what somebody's posted actually but too often you CD. Is seen as a bit of an afterthought so we've already decided.
What a policy idea or a policy solution might look like and we perhaps started to move into that delivery implementation mode and there's a real risk that UCD then becomes all about endorsing.
Preferred solutions and putting bullet points in PowerPoint. As I alluded to before. So I think when you talk about governments, it's it's about being in there from the start, you know, probably 67% of my time is spent talking to people.
To try and create a sort of trust and the empathy and the kind of conditions that are integral. To making a UCD approach work.
So for me, governance is fundamentally, about people about being able to build a trust and empathy within your networks.
To almost give permission. Take a UCD approach. You know, you think you can be quite scary to some people. It can be abstract.
It can be quite academic. There is a lack I would suggest of really good examples of how it's work.
Those things exist but we do need to do more to kind of promote those. So not shying away from governance being able to kind of build networks and talking to the right people calling things out.
4 hints and tips from me I think.
Yeah, brilliant. And on that point of examples, I wonder if anyone in the chat and the audience can share links in the chat to case studies of work that in your government or your department that has shown really good user center design practice.
Really great for your colleagues to be able to pick that up. And a picking a point that Joe has made here about upskilling, should we be upskilling designers for example interaction with service designers in the UK government to work with policy teams or should or that or should that be a new type of design role in this sort of policy
profession and we can broaden it out. So maybe I'll give that over to Kate first and then over to key as well.
Yeah, so I think the word integration is gonna kind of popping into my head. So in this part of government, in common with other parts of the UK government, what we recognize as you see these started.
In the digital space, it probably had a bike space in which to do that and it's gain traction because so much of what they do is quite tangible.
You know, products and services, they're to be interacted with. And there is work ongoing in the UK to build a policy design community.
You know, there's quite an active blog going on the moment we can share the link for that.
And I checked in the fact there's a design leader set up in the quality space so we're looking to bring people together.
I think that's where the idea of multidisciplinary teams comes to the fore. It's about being able to gain trust permission if that makes sense to start integrating.
Skills and capabilities in the optimal space. That's not about talking to people because of the preferred solution that's about building a portal or an app.
It's about being willing to bring teams together. But an investor. And so we kind of grand challenge type stuff.
So I've seen it before, but now you CD is definitely not a magic bullet. You do need I think to be able to pick winners.
To make it work properly.
Yeah, absolutely. And thanks, Joe. And thanks, and thanks for sharing that example from the, for the Ministry of Justice.
Should we be training upskilling designers in policy design skills?
I think we need to do probably a bit of both. Like I think for, you know, there's the up scaling, there's maybe even emphasis around again the skills and competencies of policy rafters that need to be refreshed based on kind of our our new realities and and I think you
know in maybe a decade or go when we think about policy making, at least in Canada, it was a very kind of linear process.
We didn't really, you know, our processes took. 5 to 1012 years to go through a policy cycle.
We designed something and that we put it out usually out into the into the world without really the iterations.
The prototyping that we are, you know, probably more in an open space to do that more readily nowadays.
So I think we need to. To really think about how we can have even for policy drafters a more user centered kind of mindset.
How can we promote curiosity? You know, these are not necessarily this the things that we, assess for when you're going to a job interview, you know, how curious are you?
You know, Kate mentioned words like challenging or, you know, again, challenging the status quo. I mean, these are probably traits and aptitudes and mindsets that we want to promote more of.
Creativity, again, thinking outside of the box, asking big questions. You know, if we don't ask questions and make sure we get even the problem framing right at the beginning of our policy process, we're not going to get to good delivery or good outcomes.
Yeah, and at Dan, at a point in that.
Yeah, I flag here that sometimes, deliverology and us in sort of delivering implementation units can be a barrier to this because our desire for everything to have really clear targets has sometimes detracted from our articulating policy goals in a sort of user-centered way because we're a bit worried that that might be too
qualitative. And I think we should resist that and try and think what our policy goals are to the point of having a really clear united goal.
Articulating those goals in the terms of the user change we want to see. Not just in a kind of cold, we want to deliver 5,000 more X's to people by date Y.
In the Department for Education they recently released the children's social care strategy and it was named stable homes built on love which I think was actually quite a bold.
Framing that you don't often see in the government space of sort of trying to articulate something in terms of the end outcome for users rather than something very cold and sort of system driven which I think we ought more often articulate our policy ambitions in those terms.
Yeah, pretty interesting. And we'll come back to a few questions on, delivery Dan in a second.
I wanted to pick up this point from Evelyn who talked about be linked between you centre design and the concept of intersectionality and addressing the needs of and integrating the needs of marginalised and discriminated communities and user groups.
Uses a t-shirt remarks that you the center design office often focuses on the lowest hanging fruit to sell or to deliver.
I wonder if you could speak to that either Kate or Key. Any specs on that?
Off we go. So some of the stuff that I popped in the side that, talked about the need for UCD to be inclusive.
I think there are some really interesting examples out where, of where UCD has done something very good.
For otherwise quite marginalized groups of people. You know, the way in which you design, projects I think is conducive to picking up on some of those groups.
Yeah, key any reflections?
I'm not aware of this notion kind of, like low hang fruits. I mean, I'd say that you, Kate has mentioned, users into design is one approach.
One approach I think we wanna see more of that we haven't seen enough of in the past. And I think the you know, often.
UCD can be used in order to. You know, I think this is a really great, phrase that's, coined about being less wrong.
And that in itself should be a great driver for decision makers about you know cutting costs being more effective.
You know, I often think that in government we seem to run out of time. It's always like not enough time to make sure the right people connect and that we we ask all the right questions you know the problem is up on us.
It was yesterday that we needed to find the solutions, yet we always you know it it takes more we don't want to take more time to get it wrong than have to do it again.
So I mean, it's the opportunity cost here that we also need to factor in. So I think there are actually lots of.
Drivers and benefits of user centric design that could be very appealing to to decision makers where you know the heart dollars or the time pressures are very much up on us we can still create the room and the time.
To be able to apply some of these approaches in order to get it get it right as opposed to Do we have it over and over again and not even achieving the intended objectives and outcomes that we we were hoping for.
Yeah. I wonder if you have any effects that you might wanna add in the chat as well, but hopefully that answers that question.
Dan, I was hoping I could put you on the spot for a moment. You mentioned a concept earlier.
Of the delivery change, I think is a really cool idea of which is used in policy implementation but I think can also be helpful in policy design as well.
I was wondering if you could explain what that is and how it can be used on both sides of design and delivery.
Cool. So the way we would normally do it is you think about your policy or your, program that you're delivering in terms of the end user that you want to adopt or influence or change their behavior and try and match back from that person the interaction points.
I think particularly in the Department of Education, but true of lots of the rest of government, there's lots of layers.
Mediating that interaction between sort of central government, which dictates policy generally. To end users.
So we build that chain to map the players that have the biggest influence in the person's like lived experience and that can be a really powerful way of doing a few things.
One is that these systems are extremely complicated and you are often in rooms of people having discussions about them. Where very few people fully understand them.
And so it sounds a bit childlike to put on all the pieces on a piece of paper and use that as the basis of discussion, but it can be really powerful in getting everyone sort of talking the same language.
It's also a powerful way of identifying the real risks or barriers when you're seeing under performance.
So something we've been encouraged to do is kind of, for example, with, local delivery of skills policy, vocational training.
To sort of map regions where the chain is working really well and we're getting the outcomes we expect and at each stage say what is it that means that this organization does the local authority etc.
Is doing a really good job. And then map out another chain where we're seeing failing sort of outcomes and I and articulating what is going wrong in terms of the incentives or the pressure that can be applied to those different actors to achieve the goal you want and that can be a really powerful tool in the problem solving and sort of barrier
removal that I mentioned is one of our jobs in delivery unit.
Yeah, very helpful. And also I follow up question here from Wing who talks about, engaging delivery actors early on in the policy design process this might be more difficult with engaging actors that are outside of the organization or the government, for example, social workers, contractors, other external stakeholders.
Are there any good practice examples of working better with these external stakeholders in the policy design process? Every question for you, Dan and for you key as well.
Thank you.
I can give some thought so I think design thinking approaches can be really powerful here because the I think the way we tend to do this in government is kind of mass consultations.
We throw something out and we get hundreds and hundreds of people to respond and then some poor person has to try and integrate all that plus ministerial guidance.
I think the the art of getting people together and creating a sort of an environment in which people are willing to contribute and creating a sort of an environment in which people are willing to contribute their thoughts, but also you kind of collaborate in a sort of an environment in which people are willing to contribute their thoughts, but also you kind of collaborate in designing an idea is
a really, really powerful one. And part of the reason for that is that you should not just take the direct feedback of your delivery chain to design a policy, like fundamentally you won't get to the right outcome, you do like.
You don't make omelettes without breaking eggs and that's bit like aggressive but to achieve transformational policy, we have to do things that people don't think in necessarily the right things to do, but you can still integrate their points of view and actually use the way that you get their points of view to kind of sell
the policy to them by doing it in a more creative and design what I would call the design thinking way not being an expert in these things.
So some of those techniques basically help people go on the emotional journey. Thinking that a change might be better than they would if they just responded to a questionnaire or a request for consultation responses.
Hmm. And I wanted to add if you can respond to, question in the chat just in response to what you said.
Any insights on? bringing in external voices early on in that design process policy design process.
Yeah, I mean, I think There are some real challenges in doing that, especially in a government environment where we're trying to mitigate expectations about and so where I think they're hesitations about revealing our hands so to speak when we're doing policy thinking and policy drafting about you know what options may be
on the table and so we try to guard it and you know and keep it kind of within the government sphere as opposed to going outside of government but I think we can address this in a few different ways but one of which is to actually have ongoing processes to actually tap those who are outside of government whether it's advisory groups or advisory
councils that are constantly providing us kind of the feedback and the input from from externally as opposed to going out and seeking and revealing, you know, policy thinking that we're not ready to, to go public on or to do these mass consultations.
On. So I think there are these constant feedback loops that we could. We could consider like building and actually having the input come in at a on an ongoing basis as opposed to these distinct points in time and that will allow us to ensure that that feedback is integrated in whatever part of the iteration that we're in.
Hmm. Hey, do you wanna, do you wanna, we should add to that as well? That point.
Yeah, say very quickly. I think it's a great question. Because what's been described here is a very real problem.
If I go back to some of the stuff that I was doing perhaps 12 or 15 months ago. That's been with teams.
I'm that that really involve putting a premium. On the type of work that we were doing in the organization, which actually was another government department and making sure that the sponsorship.
From the very beginning came from the quality space. We had people on the digital side who were active in that kind of the making and the building is stuff.
And I think I talked before also about how it actually took a long time. To do some of these things, you know, thinking slow acting fast.
Making sure that the thing was properly embedded within the quality space making sure we had sponsorship at the right level to quite a senior level that was integral to getting people on board but also being quite clear.
About terms and conditions are in things like ways of working. You know, we knew we needed to work in particular ways.
We have to introduce those. To policy people sometimes for the first time so yeah no excuse to start took some time to do that but I think we worked out eventually that it was time well spent and both of those big projects started a whole lot better.
Yeah, and I think upon it he asks, very, very helpful for the, I think Fana has asked maybe the 64 million dollar question is how do you balance lots of this sort of these design considerations alongside the ambitions of ministers and other senior stakeholders within the department.
I want to key if you have a perspective on that first.
Yeah, I mean, I think again the, there are political, you know, imperatives or pressures that we, we as public servants, may need to.
To very much take into account but I think at the end of the day we also should remember that we are not only fearless like implement not only a loyal implementers but actually fearless advisors.
And so, you know, foremost we need to make sure that, you know, we have well considered policy, in order to be able to and then connect that with with sound and thoughtful implementation and delivery in order to achieve the outcomes.
And I think when back earlier to these notions of, you know, how do we achieve those outcomes being and how do we do that with in service of the people that we are all trying to serve whether politically and elected officials or public servants.
So at the end of the day, I think we, we kind of cut those considerations front and center.
The risks. I mean again, you know elected officials also don't want to be exposed to to undue risks so being able to identify those risks early on in the process.
Finding ways to mitigate them. Yeah, and I think at the end of the day to put our best advice forward, whether that's around different different options for different delivery models.
The timelines involved, where the cost, etc. So I think it's a it's a balance, but at the end of the day we need to, make sure we deliver fearless advice.
Yeah. An excellent point to conclude on. I know there've been a lot of questions, shared.
Unfortunately, we don't have time to get through all of them, but you can continue the conversation on our website.
If it's cool.com. My colleague Emily will be sharing a link to our Q&A function where you can speak to our community of more than 200,000 public servants and policy makers from around the world who would be more than happy to answer them.
I know there's been a lot of links and resources shared that we've we've done where we've made a note of all of them and we them as well in the follow up email as alongside the speakers notes and presentations.
Before we conclude today, first of all, I'd say a huge thank you to both Key, Dan and Kate for a brilliant, conversation and some really interesting answers to your questions.
Before we end, just a quick poll to get a sense of how you felt about today's session.
So your secret question come up which says on a scale of one to 10, rank your agreement with the statement, one meaning complete agreement, 10 meaning, 10 meeting complete disagreement, sorry, and 10, one meeting complete agreement, excuse me, and 10 meaning complete that you completely agree that this workshop was available.
Use of my time. That's an anonymous poll that we'll just use for internal purposes.
And if you did enjoy today's workshop, please do consider joining us for future live events. In the next few weeks, we've got 2 coming up which would be I think of interest to lots of you.
The first is how can public servants and policy makers prepare for the age of AI? So that'll be bringing in some really interesting policy making voices on the topic of AI, which is obviously hugely relevant right now.
The second is a new initiative we've launched called design delivery and it speaks to many of the topics we've talked about today.
Every month we'll be bringing in policy designers and delivery specialists talking about some of the work they're doing.
In governments around the world. Last, a few weeks ago we had Andrew Knight who was the head of the UK Policy Design and in a few weeks we'll be talking to some colleagues from the Australian government about the work they're doing on quality design.
So you can sign up for that Australian government about the work they're doing on quality design. So you can sign up for that on the 20 fifth of July.
And we also have one more event coming up. On mastering the art of public speaking, coming up later in the month.
My colleague Amelia just shared a link to all of those and we'll include them as well in the follow up email that you'll receive.
So in the last few minutes, just leave me to say a massive thank you again to all of our speakers for leading.
Such a brilliant discussion and sharing so many valuable insights. Enablical tradition that we have about all of our workshop is to share a one-word takeaway.
Just one key insight or nugget that you feel is going to help you in your work. So we'd love to hear some of those from you in the chat.
And maybe one each from Dan Key and Kate want any key takeaways from you from today.
John first, maybe.
Hello.
Amazing. Key.
I feel heartened. I feel heartened that so many of you are coming to this workshop and are eager to to integrate.
Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Okay.
When I say persevere is I know it's it's really hard work and if it was easier if it's easier, if it was easier, it would have been done earlier.
So keep at it.
Absolutely. Okay.
I'm gonna cheat. I'm gonna go for 3 words. So, empathy, understanding, connectivity I think.
All standing out and what I've heard today. Some great questions.
Yeah, some really really excellent questions and thank you for everyone that did share links to other resources. As I said, we'll definitely make sure we share those.
Don't give up says Helen. Thank you Sizapana inclusive, Diane, starting small as well and great idea there from Helen.
Excellent. So we've got finished 2 min early, so hopefully that gives you enough time for any extra calls.
Thanks again to our attendees and our speakers. Hopefully all have a brilliant day or afternoon and thank you for joining us today.
Bye