Your perspectives on design and public services

Andrea Siodmok

Chief Design Officer, Design Council

Public sector organisations are subject to many of the same pressures as their private sector counterparts, including managing increased demand, responding to technological change, coping with environmental legislation, and attracting and retaining staff. But customers' expectations of the public sector have risen just as they have of the private sector. The lack of a culture of creativity  in many public sector organisations makes it very difficult to successfully prototype, develop, test and deliver new products and services - which is compounded by a lower tolerance for risk taking and failure. Clearly we need to use design in new, smarter ways to tackle the unprecedented challenges facing public services.

Hillary Cottam

Director of Particple and Designer of the Year 2005

Current approaches to public service reform are reaching their limits. And the issues addressed by public services are themselves in flux and changing. We need a different way forward: not further incremental change but rather radical transformation and a new approach - co-created services which differ in terms of their design, content, systems, their structures of delivery and their approach to resources.