Design Exchange Programme
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The intent of the Design Exchange Programme (DEP) is to offer government new tools for delivering on its commitments and responsibilities.
Through a placement programme, strategic designers are embedded within project teams in Finland’s ministries and municipalities. These designers joined existing teams, working as full time employees.
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Why?
Governments face tremendous transformation challenges that they are not equipped to deal with. Built to administer, the public sector needs the capability to innovate the way it 'does business.' We believe that to have impact, innovation has to come from within public sector organizations. The Design Exchange was focused on helping build innovation capability, by placing strategic designers within the public sector.
Goals
1. Build design/innovation capability within national and municipal government in Finland
2. Prepare a new generation of promising, capable strategic designers in Finland
3. Create career paths for designers to work in the public sector
4. Help develop more design-enlightened public servants
5. Quick win: Accomplish more effective services through direct use of design methods
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Public sector innovation has a long way to go: a snapshot from the Directorate-General for Research & Innovation within the EU
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Project details
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Partners
City of Lahti; City of Helsinki, Department of Social Servcies; Finnish Ministry of Employment and the Economy; Finnish Ministry of the Environment; Helsinki World Design Capital 2012
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Sitra/HDL's role
We conceived and set up the programme. This included: Finding potential public sector “host” teams that have a need & willingness to bring on board a designer; funding 50% of the host organization’s yearly DEP salary to lower the barrier of adoption; Recruiting the best possible designers for the task at hand; Meeting weekly with designers to provide support; Meeting monthly with full public sector teams (including designer) to review strategic objectives; Helping bring public awareness to the work and the need to build innovation capability within the public sector
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What's happening now?
We are actively looking for opportunities to transition the pilot leanings into a robust public sector program. One vision would be to build a program to scale up the placement across government, but also to start to work the exchange “the other way”: placing public servants within design led NGOs. The program could also be scale internationally, ultimately helping create mobility between countries, experiences, design, innovation, and then public sector.
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Meet our embedded designers
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Sara Ikävalko
City of Lahti, Department of City Planning
February 2012- February 2013
Co-creating city planning: new master plan ideas competition for the railway area of central Lahti
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Jaana Hyvärinen
City of Helsinki, Department of Social Services
August 2012—August 2013
Better public services: prototyping online family assistance
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Sirpa Fourastie
Finnish Ministry of Employment and the Economy
November 2012 – November 2013
Energy Efficiency: engaging citizens to create more effective solutions
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Hella Hernberg
Finnish Ministry of the Environment
November 2012—November 2013
Energy efficiency and the built environment: engaging citizens to create more effective solutions
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Outcomes (as of June 2013)
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We recruited four designers into four public sector organizations (Social Service for City of Helsinki, Planning office for City of Lahti, Ministry of Trade and Employment, Ministry of the Environment)
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Sara in Lahti has delivered a successful co-creation model for city planning, running a first city planning effort with broad citizen engagement. There is now will and interest within the city's top leadership to make co-creation a part of all service delivery within the city.
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Jaana in Helsinki Social Services has redesigned and launched a new online service concept for families with children. Built on the logic of family needs, not of municipal organizational structure (as was the old way), the web service quickly prototyped a more effective and lower cost way of engaging citizens.
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At the time of HDL’s closure Hella and Sirpa in the ministries where busy bringing their efforts to fruition, focusing much of their efforts towards redesigning the engagement interface between government and citizens.
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Broadening the spectrum of citizens involved with government decision making was a central aspect of many of the Design Exchange projects. Here Sara is bringing children into a discussion about urban planning—what the kids take home to their parents is equally as important.
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One of the focuses of the Design Exchange was using new means to engage with citizens. This is a view from a meeting held in the market square in Lahti, for instance, which brough the technocratic urban planning dialogue to new venues with a more casual and approachable attitude.
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Design Exchange participants were not consultants or outside collaborators, they became part of the public sector organizations as official employees. In this way, the programme was not only about delivering more effective public services, but also prototyping a government that has design capability built in.
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For more, see the project blog InsideJob.fi
