On the 12th November 2008, the Design Council held the launch workshop for the Public Services by Design programme.
Attendees’ best experiences of public services were sketched and exhibited.
David Kester introduced the workshop aims.
Chief Executive, Design Council
Today we are going to be exploring the relationship between design and public service innovation, and that’s fundamentally because we at the design council have our own service to design.
Design can enable a new approach to service design.
Chairman Design Council
Design can help us in the public services to be more innovative. We need to be conscious that today’s problems are just not going to be addressed by yesterday’s ideas and yesterday’s solutions; because the problems that we’re now facing, and the problems that we’re going to go on facing for the next five or ten years, are not going to be solved by the better delivery of more responsive services certainly if we do that in the traditional style. We need responses which are much more joined up, which are much more about influencing behaviour; we need a whole new approach to public policy over the 10 years
John Denham MP set out the challenge to the design community
Secretary of State DIUS
We know that government, civil servants, local government, local government officials need to be innovative in exploring solutions to the big challenges that face us. We know we’ll only be able to do that by effectively engaging the people that deliver services and the people who use them. The challenge that I repeat today to the design community is to show the added value that you can put into that process in enabling it to happen
Service design firm Live|Work presented ‘Make it Work’ a project that used design to tackle worklessness in Sunderland.
We’ve been working with Sunderland for two years, we’re aware that there is huge value to be made in services that improve the journey back to work for people and our prototype that we’ve been running for 12 months has managed to get over 200 people into work at a cost of under £5,000 over the year.
Over the next two years the Design Council are developing a programme using good design to improve public services
The programme has been given full government support
The reason we’re behind the pilot, the reason we want to see it actually happen today is to show to a wider audience the contribution that design can make, so it becomes part of a standard set of tools that people work with.
The programme uses design to address the rising challenges of public service delivery
There is no better time for us to be doing this, to be seeking to apply design more effectively to our public services, than when we enter into a recession and when frankly resources are going to be very scarce and we need to make sure that they are spent to the best of our ability.
This service is being co-designed over the next two years
We are not taking anything for granted, so you’re are going to be helping us not just today but I hope over the next couple of years in developing the right service that’s fit for purpose that’s going to help you and others across the landscape of our public services.
Email us to find out more: publicservicesbydesign@designcouncil.org.uk