Student Learning Experience (LX) at Kodolányi János University

The Service-Design-methodology-based (SD) development project, aimed at improving students’ learning experience (LX), was requested by the university in December 2017. The contracted partner was an external consultancy company specialized in public, higher, and further education.

As a private university, Kodolányi must face high pressure from students’ side to be responsive towards “customer expectations”. The main goals of the project were to uncover (1) how students perceive their learning process at the university, (2) what their impressions are about its operation, (3) how far they are satisfied with the services provided, and to see (4) in which areas they wish for changes and improvements.

The project is viewed as an ongoing development process and has two data collection periods completed already (2017, 2019).

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

The main beneficiaries are the students of the university. The university has three campuses in Hungary, which are located in Budapest, Orosháza, and Székesfehérvár. It has full-time, part-time, and distance education programs, primarily at BSC level, however, some MSC programs and further education short programs are also offered mainly on the field of humanities and management, both in Hungarian and English. Inner stakeholders are the university leadership and staff. As an outside stakeholder, the Hungarian Accreditation Committee can also be mentioned, responsible for the accreditation process of all Hungarian universities, mostly because of its expressed interest in the SD development concept.

Co-creation process

The university engaged with the SD development project inspired by an SD workshop of the consulting company. The company brought its expertise on SD-based assessment and service-improvement and through the project they refined their tool for the university. The lead consultant educated the university leadership about the SD concept and reported the results in written reports and presentations. The project measured students’ LX with an SD methodology-based questionnaire (created and validated in previous research and updated after the first data collection) and provided an overview through customer satisfaction index (CSI) and net promoter score (NPS). Students were asked about the importance of certain touchpoints as well as how good their experience is with those touchpoints. Additionally, open questions were also offered to gain further insights. After the 2017 data collection, an SD workshop was organized with four groups using inspirational board, montage, and value proposition canvasing. Results of the assessment were brought further and got implemented by the Welfare Cabinet that involved students mainly from the student board.

Digital Transformation Process

Not applicable.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

Survey results provide feedback for teachers and staff at the university. Educational material about SD, the questionnaires, and the survey reports are accessible via the Moodle system for all the teachers and university staff. The reports had been discussed in meetings of several departments as well. Changes have been implemented based on the 2017 survey, including:

Thematic weeks: The new thematic week system (previous educational innovation) was not at all well taken by students: it was perceived as meaningless and forceful, not taking into consideration students’ working life outside of the university. The concept of the weeks was completely redesigned.
Distance learning programme: Many students choose the university because of its distance learning programme, however, they got more and more dissatisfied with several features of the programme. While earlier online materials available for full-time and part-time students had been separated from those available for participants of distant learning programs, this limitation was lifted and online consultations had been recorded. The university plans to produce more pre-recorded and edited online materials in the future and has already organized Skype training for teachers.
Administrative services: Based on the results both the Study Office and the Welfare Cabinet revised some of their administrative processes.

The 2019 report contains a comparison to 2017 results. The overall, institutional-level NPS changed from -9 to +18, while NPS for the second degree also changed from -12 to +10.

Challenges & Bottlenecks

The primary problematic aspect was the scarcity of free time for workshops and further investigation that could give explanations for the survey results received. Difficulties in the inclusion of educators in the problem-solving process are quite problematic, as the essence of the method can get lost if not every party is represented and engaged in the process. However, some colleagues of the university feel the project unnecessary and expect the consulting company to solve the existing issues. The survey fill-out rates are to be improved for better overview and engagement. A challenge during the implementation process is that students’ expectations are controversial: while they demand practical approaches in education, they often resent creative tasks and group works, making it unclear how to step forward in this question. The deeper involvement of students might start a tendency of complaining, thus, it is very important to “direct” these co-creation events so that they contribute to development, keeping a positive and proactive stance. If the opinion of smaller groups gains more attention, it might lead to a bias – this should be avoided, too.

Transferability & Replicability

The initial assessment has been repeated in 2019 at the university and the continuation of the development process is expected. As the consulting company’s LxLab (Learning Experience Lab) service is dedicated to educational Lx projects, further cooperation of the higher education sector and the business sector is possible.

Success Factors

One of the main success factors is the engagement of the university’s leadership, especially the vice-rector for education, who acted as an initiator and owner of the project. Another important factor was the trustful relationship between the vice-rector and the lead consultant. The external professional expertise and the internal organizational support for change, carried out mostly by the Welfare Cabinet leader, were a great combination to make focused improvements in students’ Lx happen.

Lessons learned

Through the project and the SD methodology, the university learned about hidden aspects of students’ learning experiences, enabling university staff to come up with improvement ideas they had not been able to do themselves. The project itself points to the importance of a dedicated and united leadership front that can engage and include the staff and studentship of the university and an external partner that is familiar with impactful service development methodologies but are familiar with the sector’s unique characteristics and context. Quick wins regarding first implementations also seemed to support the continued commitment to the project.

Development of a school-based health education program

This project was aimed at creating a curriculum for an 8-session-long health club for primary education, that could be used by schoolteachers and school nurses to provide health development activities in a classroom setting. The sessions covered the following topics: (1) Introduction, health, (2) Dietary habits, (3) Physical activities, (4) Sleeping, (5) Relationships, (6) Television, computers, phones, (7) Health care, (8) Summary.

The main and novel idea of the project was the direct inclusion of parents in the activities of the health club. This idea was supported by the fact that family background (knowledge, attitudes and actual health behavior of parents) is a significant influencing factor of the health behavior of children. This way, health clubs were considered in schools as extra-curricular activities, held in afternoon time slots, when one parent per child could be present. Participation was voluntary. This setup was unfamiliar for all participants (pupils, parents, teachers, school nurses), but also created unique opportunities to enhance family-school cooperation.

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

The beneficiary of this project part was the University of Szeged, with four local schools recruited as pilot sites. Schoolteachers and school nurses are considered as the key stakeholders in promoting health in primary education. Participation in the pilot was considered as extra-hour work for them, with additional remuneration. The target group of the program was 8- or 9-year-old children, however, we can consider their parents as a secondary target group as their involvement was one of the cornerstones and distinctive attributes of the health club. Service users were not involved in the preliminary design processes, their feedback at the end of the club meetings was the way they contributed and got involved in the shaping of the current and later health club activities.

Co-creation process

The project consisted of the following steps. University researchers began the development of curriculum by reviewing literature and available evidence. It was decided that a workbook would be the central “organizing force” of the activities. It was clear that the workbook had to be designed to fit pupils’ and parents’ needs (both content and outlook) so that a designer was contracted. Schoolteachers and school nurses as well as students from the medical and district nurse programs were involved in further development activities during six workshops (the last one focused only on the administrative tasks required for project documentation). Those experts who participated in the development process, teachers and school nurses, medical students, school nurse students made a “test-run”: all the assignments had been tried by the experts and educators themselves (for example, children had “fruit names” during the health club, so “fruit names” were used during the trial as well). The health club was piloted at four schools. All of the sessions were visited by an observer (the above mentioned students from the medical and the health sciences faculties), who took notes. Assignments and sessions were evaluated by teachers and school nurses as well as the children. Health-related knowledge of participants were measured before and after the intervention so that the pilot project could have been evaluated.

Digital Transformation Process

Not applicable.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

A pre-post evaluation of health-related knowledge of parents was measured by using a questionnaire. The average score grew from 6.78 to 7.16, however, this change cannot be considered as a significant change. Due to voluntary participation, the preselection of children and parents with better health-related knowledge might have played a role here. While the health club itself was discontinued after the pilot, several assignments are still used by teachers, and some skills acquired or strengthened during the pilot are evaluated positively (e.g. the school nurse communicates with parents more frequently and more easily).

Challenges & Bottlenecks

Due to the voluntary nature of participation, a selection bias occurred in the class: those pupils and parents who had already been more health-centric were more willing to participate. Although the design builds on parents a lot and it is part of its key success factors, it also emerges as a bottleneck: it needs a lot of time and attention from them. This way not everyone can participate, only those, who can attend club activities in the afternoon on a weekly basis (e.g. working parents with less flexible schedules have difficulties). The sustainability of the programme is mostly endangered by the required high resource use: the programme is quite time-intensive from the perspective of both parents and the school staff. It requires preliminary trainings and week-by-week preparation from school nurses and teachers. This amount of after-school activity for 8 consecutive weeks is quite difficult to manage for parents as well. Even though kids enjoyed the activities and did not regard the club as an obligation, it was a serious commitment from all the other parties.

Transferability & Replicability

The main outputs of the project are a workbook and an accompanying teachers’ manual (as well as additional materials, like evaluation sheet, leaflets, “key messages to parents” sheets, or a further education short program for school nurses). As intended, any school would be able to reproduce the program based on these materials. However, there was no school continuing or reproducing the program after the pilot. The main reason for this seems to be connected to the high resource use the program requires.

Success Factors

The development process was very user-centric and relied on expertise about how to communicate with children (strengthened by the participation of a service designer). This way, the program was tailored to the needs of children (and parents). On the other hand, the pilot was not followed by a wider-scale implementation (see Challenges).

Lessons learned

The main innovation of the programme was the inclusion of parents in health education activities in schools. It is rare that the children and their parents spend time together in school; this feature of the health club had an immense positive impact on the success of the programme by creating a safe atmosphere for the kids at school and engaging them at home, too. It also strengthened child-parent relationships by spending focused quality time together and creating common experiences. The situation was also new for school nurses and teachers because of this model, however, the novelty of the applied interactive methodologies provided a source of innovation for their practices. However, there was a selection bias: those children (and parents) who wanted to participate in the pilot had already been interested in living a healthy lifestyle, and had already deeper knowledge about health. High-risk groups (e.g. children struggling with obesity) were not participating. Moreover, the sustainability of the programme is endangered by the required high resource use: the programme is quite time-intensive from the perspective of both parents and the school staff.

The PwC Experience Center

Development and technological innovation are changing the way people live and especially work. In 2015, to accommodate this shift, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) launched its first Experience Center in Hallandale, FL to serve as a space where collaborative, dynamic, and user-oriented business models could be developed and tested – ultimately helping bring together diverse stakeholders for innovative, multi-perspective solutions.

Since 2015, PwC expanded its Experience Center unit and now employs 3,000 people across 50 Centers and 5 key European hubs to support private and public industry as they evolve to meet the changing needs of their customers. At their core, the PwC Experience Centers promote iterative, user-centric problem solving strategies and their staff facilitate essential and transformative client interactions throughout project design stages. The Centers function as independent intermediaries where PwC can reach non-traditional clientele and experiment with participatory design processes. Further, its operations are dual-purposed as PwC Experience Center staff advises internally and externally – supporting PwC consultants while also offering services to outside clientele.

PwC advances several initiatives at its Experience Centers including, application of Design Thinking in workshop settings, product/service usability testing for clients, and trainings for how to implement the Centers’ agile and responsive on-demand approaches. In addition to consulting on local projects across sectors, the PwC Experience Centers allow critical exchange of information and produce crosscutting connections, thereby enabling an innovative PwC-wide network of service offerings.

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

There are several examples where PwC Experience Centers engaged multi-stakeholders and served as platforms where users/citizens could express their needs and wants of certain products/services. In the Lombardy case, for instance, in addition to the co-creation session PwC helped organize a call-for-feedback session, where Lombardy citizens were able to submit their opinions on the new public portal. Through this process, the Regione Lombardia could collect responses and better understand the fundamental issues of the application based on the user experiences. Another example, the Meet Sweden project pioneered by the PwC Stockholm Experience Center in partnership Swedish Industrial Design Foundation (SVID) and Swedish public agencies, highlights how the public sector is growing increasingly interested in the role of users/citizens in service model development. Asylum seekers in Sweden often struggle with long and arduous processes when trying to resettle and legally immigrate to Sweden. Information is lost between multiple visits to disjointed public organizations and refugees does not feel in control of their own asylum journey. To remedy some of these issues, PwC Stockholm brought together private and public actors as well as the migrants themselves at the Experience Center to participate in co-creation sessions and generate human-centric solutions. Assessing the needs of the migrants was essential when developing the layout and in-app design features in the Meet Sweden mobile application. As a result, the participants jointly created a new mobile application that streamlines the asylum process and saves time, money, and energy of all involved actors. This is just one project where livelihoods were improved based on co-creation design thinking and it exposes the potentialities of Experience Centers in enhancing public service delivery models.

Co-creation process

Through iterative activities at the Centers, including group brainstorming in the Sandbox rooms, usability tests of company products and design thinking exercises, PwC works jointly with the public sector, its providers and the citizens to develop approaches that align with the above pillars. PwC intentionally outfits each Experience Center with adjustable, client-friendly workspaces and focuses on developing efficient and agile solutions. While Centers in every country belonging to the PwC network abide to a shared set of methodologies and approaches, each has its own focus and peculiarities. PwC structures each physical space differently to match regional and cultural characteristics. One example is the PwC Rome Experience Center. Inside the Center, there are flexible spaces with adjustable walls and moveable tables to accommodate activities organized for and with clients. It has a work café with objects of Italian design to create a familiar environment conducive to make people unwind and spur a positive ideation and reflection process. Additionally, the interactive technology and writeable walls incorporated in the central Sandbox meeting room offer clients unique spaces for meetings, workshops, and trainings with PwC UX design and technology professionals. The Testing Lab and Observatory Room include a unidirectional mirror so clients can carry out usability tests and observe real time client reactions to services/products. The Rome Experience Center also has AI technology, 3D printing, and contemporary digital programming to collaborate with clients in the development of prototypes.

Digital Transformation Process

Scholars envision Living Labs as the generators of concrete, tangible innovations based on contributions from users and communities, rather than just simply functioning as brainstorming spaces. The PwC Experience Centers propel forward several iterations of innovation by recruiting diverse job profiles, applying co-creation methodologies, and prioritizing the human experience in all project designs. Dynamism and functionality are consistent features across all PwC Experience Centers and this allows innovation to manifest in a variety of ways at different stages in the development process. Namely, we will detail out how the Experience Centers incite business model innovation for its public sector clients, and how they understand service/product and touch point innovation throughout the design process. Innovation is transient across levels and, at PwC Experience Centers; it is contingent on the end goals of the client.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

PwC Experience Centers’ principal objective is to bring together customers and businesses in dynamic spaces to establish business models that incorporate user feedback at all design stages. In occupying this intermediary role, Experience Centers help identify user needs and the root causes of customer dissatisfaction through co-creation processes so the resulting business model used by the client satisfies needs of end-users. This open-innovation environment attracts private companies and public organizations looking to modernize and transform the business-consumer service delivery relationship. Their human-centric nature makes these spaces distinct and helps concentrate varied perspectives and problem solving tactics in a central meeting location. In joint collaboration with other stakeholders, PwC helps clients rethink their mission and generate innovate business models to meet end users’ needs. By asking questions centered on how to alter current business practices for greater customer satisfaction, clients can identify areas for growth and ultimately find a new path forward. The PwC promoted business models are considered innovative, especially for the public sector, given that they reconfigure the model to meet new objectives established based on consumer input. Thus, by enabling conscious changing of an existing business model or the creation of a new business model, clients can strategically elevate models to better satisfy the needs of the customer. The associated organizational structures and methods for service/product delivery reflect a shift in mindset of the client and focus on impact and growth.

Challenges & Bottlenecks

Typically, larger organizations have more rigid organizational hierarchies and learned cultural habits, which can make implementation of flexible methodologies difficult. The objective of the PwC Experience Centers are to function as testbeds and incubators for entrepreneurial design thinking and help PwC evaluate hybrid/agile managerial approaches to public sector challenges, in-house. By having the Centers operate in this way, PwC can overcome organizational challenges and share niche-consulting expertise gathered through Center activities to internal PwC consultants. This sort of ‘Agile Desk’ unit of PwC is transformative for internal work cultural – both enhancing workflow and teaching nuanced strategies for managing client relationships. There is a tri-fold benefit from PwC Experience Centers as clients, their customers, and PwC, learn and improve from the co-creation sessions and find solutions to broad, complex problems.

Transferability & Replicability

The PwC Experience Centers can also serve as intermediaries and network enablers between actors that have struggled to communicate productively. According to researchers James Stewart and Sampsa Hyyaslo in their analysis of the role of intermediaries in the development and appropriation of new technology, intermediary organizations, such as PwC, configure the users and involved actors yet maintain a position of separation from the decided end use of the technology. This enables intermediaries to influence through workshops and co-creation sessions, however, the participants have the final decision-making power. Thus, as an intermediary PwC drives the new partnerships through six key “bridging activities” (Bessant and Rush 1995):

Articulation of needs, selection of options
Identification of needs, selection training
Creation of business cases
Communications, development
Education, links to external info
Project management, managing external resources, organizational development

When broken down further, it essentially tasks the intermediary with enabling transfer of knowledge, sharing knowledge across the user community, brokering to a range of suppliers, and diagnostic/innovation – trying to identify what end users actually want. These tasks are driven by three main social learning roles occupied by the intermediary: facilitators, configurers, and brokers. In the PwC context, Experience Centers are living out these archetypes as they bridge gaps between customers, companies, and the public sector. In practice, we have seen the importance of PwC occupying this intermediary role and facilitating critical client-customer interactions at the Centers. Contamination of approaches between the private and public sectors, knowledge transfer, and elevated understanding of shared challenges are just a few of the benefits in having PwC as an intermediary network enabler.

Success Factors

Social learning and/or contamination of techniques/approaches during interactions at PwC Experience Centers is another key way that public value is realized. Social learning refers to two simultaneous, complementary, and intertwined processes: innofusion (Fleck, 1988) and domestication of technology (Sørensen, 1996). Fleck defines innofusion as the innovation that takes place during the diffusion of new technology amongst participants. In this phase, users discover their needs and wants through a process of technological design, trial, and exploration. The other component, domestication of technology, addresses the pre-existing “heterogeneous network of machines, systems, routines and culture.” Essentially, it recognizes how cultural consumption habits influence user behavior and underlines the value of incorporating users’ creativity in product design processes. For PwC Experience Centers, a transfer of co-creation approaches and design thinking techniques to its participants is valuable for ensuring sustainability of solutions and enabling shared sponsorship to anticipate possible resistance to project implementation. Additionally, there is a cross contamination of techniques between participants as they originate from diverse backgrounds and bring to the workshops different views for how to solve problems. In this process, divergence in ideas and incorporation of distinct actors allows critical knowledge transfer that often precludes innovation and helps identify overlapping challenges. Outcomes generated from co-creation activities at the Centers have included the use of private sector business models by public organizations. By seeing the design elements of private sector models implemented by PwC, clients can interpret and apply similar structures in their own operations – thus initiating a transfer of proven strategies between private and public actors.

Lessons learned

Living Labs play a critical role in displaying the mutual value of co-creation approaches for public and private actors. In the public sector, there is a hesitancy to welcome consumer engagement throughout the service design process. Governments and public organizations are fearful that actively seeking consumer input is too cost and time intensive and are unaware of the potential benefits for engaging customers in the earlier design stages. Therefore, it is essential to understand the PwC Experience Centers’ role in helping enable public-private mutual understanding and fostering innovative co-creation solutions. They add value by acting as a platform for idea exchange between all actors, inciting and analyzing customer feedback, and promoting multi-perspective discourse. The resulting improvement in services and increase in public value benefit the supply-side and user-side equally, and substantiates the importance of intermediaries in opening communication channels. It enables organizations and companies to explore how to improve their own services and/or processes with consumer engagement as the central focus and at the Centers they can test, fail, retest, and optimize proposed strategies before actual implementation.

L.I.V.E. – A Living Lab created by 3 cities to Co-Create Digital Urban Services with Citizens

L.I.V.E. is the acronym for “Lab pour Imaginer la Ville Ensemble” (Lab to Imagine the City Together). The Living Lab approach is a methodology to co-design “user-friendly digital (public) services” with inhabitants and to imagine the “Smart and inclusive City”. L.I.V.E. was a political initiative of the mayors of 3 medium-sized cities in the Lille Metropolitan Area (North of France), composed of 95 municipalities with independent administrations, except some common services supported by the Lille European Metropole (MEL) administration. From a geopolitical point of view, L.I.V.E. was an innovative project that encouraged public officials of three municipalities to share their practices and to create digital urban services for and with citizens. Doing so, L.I.V.E. was a political innovation because municipalities are not used to share experiences with other municipalities. It was also a social innovation because the social profile of citizens in the three cities is very different: Marcq-en-Baroeul (a upper-class city with business and financial services) “against” – politically speaking – two declining industrial cities, Tourcoing and Roubaix (a working-class city with a high proportion of foreign-born population and high unemployment rate). So a Living Lab approach was chosen to go beyond the traditional political, administrative and social divide between the three contiguous cities. The project was launched and tested in 2017 then operationalized in 2018-2019, supported by the MEL within the framework of ERDF funds. But in the end of 2019, L.I.V.E was still a «work in progress».

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

The key stakeholders included policymakers and public agents from the three municipalities as well as agents of the Lille European Metropole (MEL) to check the coordination between the policies and the scales of service implementation. Private stakeholders were associated according to the themes of the workshops (real estate companies, car parks managers, craftsmen, local shops,…). Local service designers or digital startups were associated to the Living Lab to help public agents and citizens during the design sessions or the prototyping of new digital services. They participated to the knowledge transfer and to co-creation practices for digital transformation. Beneficiaries were twofold: citizens and public agents. L.I.V.E. addressed citizens in order to invent new digital services that were solutions for “real needs” in the city (local e-commerce, car parks, digital application for leisure, co-working spaces, connected urban furniture…). But the Living Lab addressed public agents too for them to better understand the “real needs of citizens”, to share new knowledge and competencies about open data and social media and to create new public policies in the three cities.

Co-creation process

The co-creation process was divided into two stages: an experimental phase in 2017 and a structuration phase in 2018 and 2019. During the experimental phase, inhabitants were invited to discuss about their needs: 30 to 70 inhabitants per workshop “played the game” to imagine what types of digital tools could be created through a Living Lab to “imagine a better city together”. During the structuration phase, there were less inhabitants per workshop and sometimes only public agents and stakeholders according to the themes of the sessions, even if incentives to participation was diffused through websites and social networks. Co-creation process was considered by public managers and stakeholders as a “pleasant way of working” to solve problems by an innovative methodology. There were no dedicated place for the Living Lab but workshops were alternatively organised in one of the local community in respect of a “political equilibrium”. Agents of each collectivity were invited to share their different competencies with the help of designers specialised in design thinking or service design. Some startups were invited to prototype some digital solutions according to the ideas of inhabitants and stakeholders, and only some of these solutions were tested with inhabitants.

Digital Transformation Process

The digital transformation process concerned two types of users. On the one hand, citizens were the main target of the Living Lab project: L.I.V.E was a method to imagine a “better life” in the city thanks to new digital services, not created by American firms (GAFAM) or by Parisian Startups but co-created with citizens and local Startups to meet what they called “real needs” of citizens. On the other, public agents of the three implied cities were the secondary target: in place of digital services imagined by IT public services in a Top Down approach, the L.I.V.E. project was a methodology to help public agents to better understand the “real needs” of citizens or public agents following a bottom up approach. It was also a methodology to transform IT public departments of the municipalities, that have no skills about open data, social media or API tools.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

As the experience lasted less than three years, it was too short to obtain significant results in term of new digital public services or even private digital tools for inhabitants. The main outcomes could be political as three mayors accepted to work with citizens and allowed their public agents for sharing time and local data. COVID-19 was a barrier to finalise some projects during the consolidation phase of the program. Value creation was less in the domain of public cost savings, neither in the creation of new digital public services than in a change of mindset and the discovery of service design and design thinking with inhabitants and stakeholders.

Challenges & Bottlenecks

A first challenge was the participation of inhabitants. If they were mobilised during the experimental phase, in 2017, to discuss about their needs, it was more difficult in the structuration phase of the Living Lab (2018-2019): citizens had not always time to participate to all the co-creative workshops, in particular if they were organised in the afternoon. A second challenge was institutional even if elected people were at the origin of the Living Lab project. Each local community constitutes the territorial and administrative framework for public services to inhabitants. So co-creation of new public services could face to administrative or legal barriers. Organising workshops from place to place without any dedicated building to the Living Lab was a way to mobilise inhabitants but was finally a barrier for mixing the population of the three cities. If, on the contrary, geographical mobility was not a problem for public agents and stakeholders, some public managers consider that a dedicated place for the Living Lab could be a “symbol of the political will” to work together and could be a lever for attracting potential (private) investors. Bottlenecks are linked to administrative traditions. Design workshops are important to identify real needs, to imagine new scenarios, to test prototypes and to identify irritants with inhabitants. But public managers consider that it is difficult: 1) to make “quick and dirty” with public procurement; 2) to «co-manage» new services with users. If validation of new policies is the role of elected people, production of digital services is the role of IT service Directorates of the local collectivities. Usual routines of service production and delivery are the main attribute of IT Directorates: if they agree with the role of users in the co-design phase, they are not ready for co-production and co-delivery with inhabitants.

Transferability & Replicability

The L.I.V.E. project is not at a stage of transferability. The scale of replicability could be the transferability of design processes from a public service to another public service in the framework of the three municipalities. Nevertheless, the aim was to diffuse to “other cities” new practices experimented through the Living Lab, because the project was co-financed by European funds and had to promote the results at a larger scale. But the end of the financial support and because of COVID-19, experimentations were stopped: the last news on Facebook or Twitter was posted in June 2020. Impossible to find any other information about “L.I.V.E” or “www.imaginezlaville.live/” on the Net in 2021. Transferability and replicability seem so to be largely compromised. Nevertheless, the Living Lab approach is still applied through a place dedicated to public service design in the building of the MEL. In 2020, Lille Metropole was also the World Capital of Design to improve public policies through a Living Lab approach at the scale of 90 local communities and more than 1.2 millions inhabitants, when L.I.V.E. project concerned 3 local collectivities and 250.000 inhabitants.

Success Factors

For local public managers, a criteria of success would be better public services thanks to Open data. L.I.V.E was an opportunity to test in real life with inhabitants some solutions and tools usually developed by Startups. Local collectivities can use data of their internal professional services in order to create new piloting tools before a larger openness of public data. For local authorities, data can lead to a revolution in public services and “doing together” with inhabitants and stakeholders “makes sense because nobody knows everything”.

Lessons learned

L.I.V.E. was imagined in the context of the digital transformation of public policies and local administrations. How to improve the relationship between citizens, elected people and public agents? How to switch from existing ICT tools (websites of municipalities) to online public services? The originality of the L.I.V.E. project is that workshops were organised in 2017 with the inhabitants to define the themes to explore and invent “the City of Tomorrow together”. The Living Lab workshops in 2018-2019 were planned to work on the priorities previously defined by citizens in 2017: family recreation, car parking, co-working, local trade, data for local collectivities, connected urban furniture, nature in the city, digital at school. Even if the project lasted for only three years, conditioned by the funding, the important outcome is not new digital services (still at a stage of “work in progress”) but the change of cultural mindset for public agents and inhabitants. Nevertheless, elected representatives have to take final decisions for public policies but co-creation of services through Living Lab methodology is difficult to integrate in a traditional political process. So, for transforming public services and public policies through co-creation with citizens and users, it is often “necessary to go under the radars”, working in small groups to encourage co-design. Then administrative managers have to list the priority projects to be proposed for a political validation.

New Social Security Agency in Scotland

This case study looks at the development in designing the new Social Security Agency in Scotland and the experience of the current system which has been provided by the UK government. Social security is currently an area of change and reform in the UK, with the provision of the service being devolved from the UK Government to the Scottish Government under the Scotland Act (2016) which has permitted Scottish Ministers to develop new policies of social security entitlement. Subsequently, the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 has established the framework for the new system being developed in Scotland. It is with this Act that Social Security Scotland have been founded. This case study focuses on the design of new social security services in Scotland but reflects on service users’ experience of the social welfare system led by the system administered Department of Work and Pensions.

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

The key stakeholders include the Scottish Government, policymakers, stakeholder organizations, and frontline staff of the social security system under the Department for Work and Pensions. The key beneficiaries include the service users of the social security system, organizations and wider society.

Co-creation process

Two key points of value co-creation have been identified in this case study. The first point is service design, where ‘experience panels’ are established to draw on service users’ experiences of the current social security system. At the same point, Stakeholder Reference Groups have also been organized for local authorities, third sector organizations and, to some extent, for-profit organizations to share knowledge about social security. These processes have engaged stakeholder organizations in providing an important perspective and knowledge to shape service improvement while connecting service users who have lived experience of the services. The second point is service delivery, where the service users access appropriate services and interact with frontline service staff knowledgeable and capable of supporting the service users. Positive relationships developed from the interaction are regarded as contributing to value creation. The service users’ families and friends are also seen as facilitating value creation by helping service users with complex procedures to claim benefits.

Digital Transformation Process

The digital transformation process was not examined in this case.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

The main impacts are twofold. First, at the service design stage, the involvement of individuals who have directly experienced services has greatly contributed to service reform. A lived experience-based approach has been described as outweighing any value that could be created by professionally designing the service. Second, at the service delivery stage, service interactions between the frontline service staff and the service users influence the service users’ service experience and thus shape their perceptions of value. A trusted relationship developed between the service users and the frontline service staff would contributed to the effectiveness of the service and ultimately facilitate value creation for the service.

Challenges & Bottlenecks

Four challenges have been identified for the service design stage. First, the involvement of public service users in the experience-led/based service design has raised concern over excluding stakeholder groups. Second, there are incongruent perspectives of value and goals. Third, there has been concern over whether strong political leadership is in place to effectively manage and preservice the involvement of service users. Finally, the legacy of the UK social security system has been found constraining the value creation process. At the service delivery stage, constraints on value creation and co-creation are mainly reflected on barriers to service interactions, including the inaccessibility of services, a lack of support for vulnerable service users’ interactions with frontline staff, a lack of knowledge, expertise and a caring approach among frontline staff, a lack of continuity in service provision, and the stigmatizing, inhumane and adversarial culture in the current system.

Transferability & Replicability

The experience of developing the new Social Security Agency in Scotland may be transferred and replicated in other public service settings.

Success Factors

During the service design stage, a progressive approach, such as capacity building sessions, has facilitated and encouraged vulnerable service users to share their knowledge and ‘unique perspective’ on service experience to make novel service solutions to having the opportunity for value co-creation. During the service delivery stage the frontline staff’s knowledge and capacity to support service users are perceived as critical to the process of value co-creation by making the application for social benefits easier and developing positive service relationships with service users and frontline staff.

Lessons learned

Three practical lessons have been learnt from this case study. First, the frontline service staff play an indispensable role in co-creating value during service interactions. They need to manage the service relationship and possess the necessary soft skills to engage with and understand service users’ narratives to co-create value. Hence, appropriate staff training is emphasized. Second, service processes need to be accessible and support value creation for individual service users. Third, the organizational culture translated through both the approach of frontline staff and the supporting service processes has implications for the extent to which service users view themselves and public service staff view service users as capable of contributing to value creation processes. Thus, the organizational culture was important in supporting value creation.

Design of the new Social Security Agency in Scotland

This case study looks at the design of the new Social Security Agency in Scotland and its services. The design aims of this case include creating a system that is distinctive from the one that have been administered by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP); creating a seamless experience or journey for service users for the new social security services; enabling easy access to the social security system for service users; and developing effective backend processes.

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

The key stakeholders include the Scottish Government, policy makers, agency staff working on the operational level, and service users and external stakeholders participating in service design and testing. The key beneficiaries are public service users of social security services, the agency itself and wider society.

Co-creation process

Digital Transformation Process

Not relevant

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

Since the case is still at the design stage, it is too early to evaluate the outcomes or impacts of the service design. However, the analysis of evidence shows that the service design has supported a cultural shift within the Scottish Government towards a user-centred narrative.

Challenges & Bottlenecks

Three broad challenges for service design have been identified in this case study. First, the setting of social security services is extremely complex. Although it is necessary to divide this large-scale task of service design into small and manageable chunks, it is challenging to fit the design of each chunk back together without losing the sight of a big picture. The complexity of the service setting has negatively affected the effectiveness of service design. The second challenge is also related to a public service setting where it is difficult for wider cultural change to take place. There is an understanding that public services could produce incremental improvement rather than complete solutions. Therefore, there is a bottleneck of the scope of continuous improvement. Third, the case study has revealed a lack of service designers and other user-centred professionals in public service context, which leads to a lack of input from a professional service designer in some parts of public service design process.

Transferability & Replicability

The methods of service design in the new Social Security Agency in Scotland may be transferred and replicated in other public service settings.

Success Factors

The success factors are twofold. First, the case study reveals that the service design process has supported a service user perspective, which focuses on the needs of social security service users and enables easier access to the services for them. Second, the service design process in the case has supported a holistic view of services, which provides a strategic overview of how different services under the social security interact and facilitates the creation of a seamless service experience for service users.

Lessons learned

Four practical lessons have been learnt from this case. First, service design is facilitated by a degree of flexibility at the operational level. Second, a holistic view of the service experience needs maintenance throughout the design process. Third, service design in practice requires capacity building and organisational learning. Fourth, the rationale of human-centred design approach needs to be balanced against the protection of the public purse.

Madrid Central: Without green life flourishes

“Two weeks ago, my wife and I where strolling around Madrid Central. Waiting to cross the street at an intersection with lights, she argued: “If what we look for is improving the mobility of pedestrians, we should suppress the green light for vehicles and pedestrians should be able to cross a street at any time.” This powerful idea gave way to the ‘Madrid Central: Sin verde la vida florece’ (‘Madrid Central: Without green, life flourishes‘) workshop (MCW).

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

MCW is a workshop within the InciLab of MLP. As a PSINSI, its focus is on non-technological innovation and it created a space to connect different actors who experiment together to rethink the life in the city. In MCW, five citizens, four civil servants, one promoter and one mediator collaborated over 15 days to create solutions to improve pedestrian mobility in the heart of Madrid downtown.

Co-creation process

MCW is better understood within the new public governance paradigm, as a prototyping workshop within a living lab. It constantly produces networks that fit into the PSINSI’s definition (Desmarchelier et al., 2018). The MCW, being one of those PSINSIs, focused on innovations related to products, namely interventions in public space. But beyond product innovation, MCW also aimed at other type of innovations:

new forms of collaboration and co-participation;
new methodologies, tools and protocols to reduce the distance between public institutions and people;
new forms to optimise resources thanks to the exchange of information between the municipal departments themselves and social, civic, and educational entities.

Digital Transformation Process

Not applicable.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

This initiative produced a meeting place for citizens and municipal officials to experiment and learn together around initiatives that contribute to improving life together and optimising resources in the city of Madrid. Its main contributions were (are) along three lines of action:

Open research group about experimentation in public administration, to build case studies. Based on successful experiences in other regions and countries, participants in this line reflect on what tools and strategies are useful to develop public intelligence and innovation (under public values and placing social justice and equity as referents).
Motioning around the city is a series of workshops open for the collaboration between public servants and citizens to develop initiatives around moving and motioning in Madrid.
Working group to support municipal transformation. This is a space for a learning and practice community set up with HR managers from the municipality to identify key changes and intra-innovation areas within the municipal organisation.

Challenges & Bottlenecks

For citizens, barriers were:

Fear of being used (do a volunteer or unpaid work for people who are paid, the public servants).
Frustration of earlier projects or initiatives that did not prosper (fear of losing time): “The idea of coming to work for free for the City Council is present. And then I’m not even going to be the one to take it forward.” Or another workshop that does not move forward.
“it is difficult to manage the expectations and wishes of those who come to participate: Everyone wants the official’s phone number.”

For public officials, barriers were:

To find incentives (define when to do it, where and the extra services they demanded like children playroom or snacks).
The fear and vulnerability they feel when facing neighbours asking them for explanations.
To engage different public servants than those aware or related to the initiatives.
Officials who participated did so more as consultants than as true participants.

Overall barriers:

The workshop demanded an enormous effort of animation and diffusion. For promoters it is not easy to invest that much energy without success or some reward..
Expectations and wishes of those who come to participate are difficult to handle: From those who aspired to come with a solution and its implementation to those who were satisfied with generating a favourable climate on the subject.
Participants tend to think beyond the prototype and want to achieve results: “achieve more than a bunch of good intentions and reach future commitments”.

Transferability & Replicability

Our case, beyond the relevance of the prototype developed by a group of agents that got together by the workshop, serves to expose the practices to routinely produce PSINSIs with a two-fold aim:

Produce social innovation and prototype solutions for wicked social problems of any sort
Arrive to those solutions putting together individuals that do not know each other, but who after the process have discovered the power of networking, agreement and co-creation. In this context, each new community of agents built this way – i.e., the PSINSI itself – is an innovative product itself

The MCW lasted from February 5 to April 25, 2019 and the network formed followed the established practice of the workshops of the InCiLab (Citizen Innovation Laboratory – Laboratorio de Innovación Ciudadana). In there, citizens, public servants, promoters, mediators and a guiding team met for 15 days to experiment on ways to allow pedestrians to move freely in the area known as Madrid Central – the central district of Madrid. But their generic aims were:

To explore new forms of collaboration and co-participation in public affairs that contribute to the generation of more democratic, inclusive and diverse citizen services.
To test methodologies, tools and protocols that help reduce the distance between public institutions and people.
To detect opportunities to optimise resources thanks to the exchange of information between the municipal administration and social, civic, educational entities, etc.

Success Factors

Most collaborators and all proponents had participated in similar activities and, in some cases, have years of experience in participatory processes.
They valued the importance of this workshop as a space to share ideas, generate empathy and open the mind.
The experience has helped them to clarify their original idea of the project and focus their energies on the most important aspects.

Participants came motivated because they could learn more about the operation of the Administration: “this is a physical meeting space where we can talk, beyond the counter window, conflict or haste. We can create new dynamics and see what we have in common”.

Lessons learned

Mobility in a city is critical in its day to day and mediates the quality of life and social relations in it. Today, municipalities and citizens alike understand that motioning around the city has a fundamental impact on the configuration of the city, on social equality and on citizens’ rights. It is then a key issue when configuring new options, or keeping old standards affecting culture, education or health. The MCW addressed this in a very novel, participatory way. The MCW raised debates and participatory processes, organised experiments and prototypes (participants in this workshop set a physical prototype in a street-crossing in Madrid), analysed and visualised preliminary data and documented the process to report their findings: “If what we look for is to improve mobility of pedestrians, green lights for vehicles should be eliminated giving right to pedestrians at all times”, can summarise the prototype of this workshop. “The strategy to implement this prototype starts with communication. Then selection of simple targets, and measuring impact, and then scale it within the central district of Madrid, and later to the rest of the city”. “They [the Mobility Department] will study the proposal to test it in September 2019”.

Observatory of the City

The Observatory of the City case study describes how the municipality of Madrid embarked in a radically new form of citizens’ participation: the citizens’ jury or assembly or as they called it “The Observatory of the City”. This case explores this Observatory as a services design example aiming to capture the general interests of the citizenry of Madrid through the individual opinions of a permanent group of randomly selected citizens that meet regularly.

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

After the national government passed the law 39/2015, and most specially, due to its article 133, developing article 23 of the Spanish Constitution, any new norm in Spain is subject to public scrutiny by the citizens. Expanding this requirement, the municipality of Madrid embarked in a radically new form of citizens’ participation: the citizens’ jury or assembly or as they called it “The Observatory of the City”. This case explores this Observatory as a services design example aiming to capture the general interests of the citizenry of Madrid through the individual opinions of a permanent group of randomly selected citizens that meet regularly.

Co-creation process

This complex case is representative of two different levels of co-design of public services: 1) public and private agents got together to co-design the format of this citizens’ jury aiming at proposing public services and policy, mandatory for the government of the city; and 2) the jury’s members – 49 randomly-selected citizens – co-design public services and policy aided by city officials, outside experts and other citizens in working sessions, mediated by specially trained facilitators. We address both levels to enrich the view of this relevant case of value co-creation in the public sector.

Digital Transformation Process

Not applicable.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

The Observatory performs three functions: Analysing and approving – rejecting – the most voted citizen proposals for new services on the Decide Madrid participation digital platform; reviewing municipal decisions and public policies and suggesting related actions; and calling for public consultations and proposing any type of new public service or policy. Summarising the innovative outputs of the Observatory case, we identify the following:

“The city of Madrid had no experience in putting up a random, lottery-like selection and a deliberative process. It was through MediaLab and the involvement of NewDemocracy that both became real. Without the two processes, Decide Madrid would have stayed as the individual participation digital platform it already was.”
The stages of design and development of the Observatory probably have been innovative from day 0: The idea in the Area of Participation and how the team in the government formed; the design and prototyping in the Collective Intelligence for Democracy workshop and the interaction with the Area; the design of the logistics of the Observatory; the design and implementation of the facilitation of the sessions; and the processes the members of the Observatory are following to reach agreements. All have been examples of innovative processes and finally public services in Madrid.

Challenges & Bottlenecks

The main problems we identified in the set-up of the Observatory and work of the participants seem derived from a very initial stage of this municipal organ:

“As far as the operational part, the potential issue that we can see is the lack of diverse information for citizens to make decisions. We tend to think that the Council would give citizens just limited information from limited sources.”
“Another potential problem is related to the selection process: We have not seen a properly diverse room. In Australia, we diversify based on education level and things like earnings, but that was difficult in Madrid; they allocated quotas to certain parts of Madrid trying to cover the economic certification in the room. People who are more educated and better off are more inclined to participate in this process, and they tend to group together in the decisions.” Coincidentally, “after the first draw and election of the members of the Observatory, we realised that certain groups of people have voluntarily declined participation (blacks and other ethnic minorities). We have spotted people that are not feeling part of the city, and we would like to know if this is something we could facilitate. Being aware of the potential biases influencing the decisions, we in the municipality government needed to be trained in how to prevent them.”

Transferability & Replicability

We might highlight the following as the most transferable outcomes of the Observatory case when confronting the reality of collaboration with citizens for service design:

“After testing and validating our design methodology for experimentation, we have four big projects (ParticipaLab among them) that could have their autonomy and start an ecology or network of labs to reach a larger population and transform it. They could even propose new ideas and adapted methods.”
The most evident outcome of the processes described here is the Observatory itself – Madrid has now the first permanent citizens’ jury with the aim of reviewing citizens’ proposals, public policies and any topic they choose. “The process went really well. There was a confluence of interests and desires and they all fitted well (once in a lifetime this thing happens): from a prototype in a Lab, it went all the way to being implemented as a service development and public policy instrument. Some things we would have changed, but the final Observatory is part of a new way of negotiating by the public officials. Also, making it happen and in this short time was a big success. Ideally, this will continue and improve over time, since a design of this magnitude cannot have everything right from the outset.”
Other complementary outcomes, some more subtle, are related to the new relationships the government has established with the experimentation practices of MediaLab (Madrid’s government-owned living lab), the internal shortcuts they have designed to establish participation in the municipality, and the learning they have got from the actual jury meetings.

Success Factors

The complexity of the Observatory case is mostly based on its reach. As a complementary “chamber” to the elected members of the municipality council, the Observatory was made possible by merging several initiatives. As of January 2018, the Area of Participation began to work on a new regulation for the Observatory; in parallel, ParticipaLab (a living lab) began to collaborate with external experts in participatory processes and juries and co-designed the final draft of the Observatory. Both the design and the regulatory processes fed each other for several months. The co-design process, which had started with the Collective Intelligence for Democracy workshop (also a living lab) months earlier, concluded with the presentation of a final proposal or advice (https://www.newdemocracy.com.au/2018/11/15/the-city-of-madrid-citizens-council/) to the Area of Participation. It significantly influenced the final design of the Observatory (mostly, composition and times of the deliberation process). On January 29, 2019, the city council passed the new regulation and the new Observatory format had its legal framework as the first permanent deliberative chamber of citizen participants in any European local government – and definitely a pioneering experience worldwide. On the one hand, it regulated a lottery-elected citizens’ jury, with annual rotation. On the other, using a digital platform, it connected citizens’ initiatives for new services (collected through Decide Madrid) with citizens’ deliberative practices (the Observatory) which produces a double representation system for citizenry decision making. Complementary, the deliberations of the citizens’ jury are also connected with the entire population (through the Decide Madrid platform).

Lessons learned

Being this a complex project, with such relevance for the city and government of Madrid, we have experienced certain disconnections in the representatives of each agent we have talked to. Although everyone knew what the others were doing, their connections with the public agent were not always clear. The language barrier might play a role here, not only because of different actual languages, but because of different uses of the same language. A participatory process like the Observatory, both in the design and the operational parts, would initially be thought of as plagued with statistical assurances for getting the right quotas, segmentations, and the like. But it is not. The statistical significance is probably less relevant and what really matters is to have the right distribution of citizens that actually participate and show up for each session. The goal then is to avoid spontaneous groupings by economic or education achievements that can bias decisions. On the other side, there are no control groups to check whether the actual selection makes significantly different decisions than a proper statistical selection of citizens. An interesting point is the confusion of participating citizens. Probably, we must understand that we face different degrees of maturity or readiness in those willing to contribute through participation. A first stage might be participation as a means to have their voices heard – whether they are complaining, requesting or merely criticising; a second stage might be the realisation of participation as interaction with other peers, with equal voices but different intents; a third stage might be the confirmation of the need for consensus or agreement, which might imply knowledge acquisition, sharing, prioritising and decision-taking; a final fourth stage might be the setting of certain control tools and processes to ascertain their agreements are met and differences or deviations are understood and acted upon. It would be interesting to understand the transition from one stage to the other, as results certainly emerge in stages three and, specially, in fourth, and the time involved in maturing from the early stages to the latest.

Library of San Fermin

The Library of San Fermin case study is about how the The Madrid City Council started the construction of the library of San Fermin in response to a local demand that under the slogan “Library in San Fermín NOW” had been active for more than 25 years (since 1994, and more effectively since 2008). A neighbourhood with a desire for culture and books is the backbone of the new proposed services to different population groups, including the marginalised or in a situation of exclusion: Kids from families with few resources, elderly willing to bridge the age gap, or young people at risk. These services had the objective of completing an offer of culture and leisure of quality.

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

The stakeholders formed a multidisciplinary team with the technicians of the Directorates, the Neighbourhood Association, other neighbourhood entities and individual neighbours. The team was organised and dynamized by external consultants (GEA21 and Basurama). The beneficiaries of this project are the neighbours of the San Fermin neighbourhood in Madrid, Spain.

Co-creation process

The Area of Culture and Sports of the City Council (through its General Directorate of Intervention in the Urban Landscape and the Cultural Heritage and the General Directorate of Libraries, Archives and Museums) and the Municipal Company of Housing and Land (EMV), pressed by the long-standing neighbourhood’s demand, decided to start a process of participation with different agents to design the new library and its uses. The content of the participation process included three related elements:

The library model. What library do you want for the neighbourhood? What services, activities, functions should the facility fulfil and how should they be produced? How will the future library be related to the other facilities, entities and projects of San Fermín?
The library building. What spaces should the library have? How should the distribution of spaces be, considering their future uses and users, and also including the public employees and management and volunteers?
The surrounding public spaces. How should the library relate to its surroundings? How to get the best out of the public space surrounding the library?

Digital Transformation Process

Not applicable.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

The designing, developing and management processes of the library in the San Fermin neighbourhood (LSF) has become one the symbols of the past government of the municipality of Madrid. San Fermin is a modest neighbourhood located in the south-west outskirts of the city of Madrid[1] and the LSF became one (if not the most) relevant example of collaboration between public institutions, private facilitating entities, civil organisations and individual citizens that can be found in the municipality of Madrid, from 2015-2019. Out of the information we have gathered about it, the Madrid City Council started the construction of this library in response to a local demand that under the slogan “Library in San Fermín NOW” had been active for more than 25 years (since 1994, and more effectively since 2008). A neighbourhood with a desire for culture and books (promoted by the initiatives of the Neighbourhood Association of San Fermin) is the backbone of the new proposed services to different population groups, including the marginalised or in a situation of exclusion: Kids from families with few resources, elderly willing to bridge the age breach, or young people at risk. These services had the objective of completing an offer of culture and leisure of quality that helped achieve the overall ideas of “confluence and dynamism” [7] currently driving all agents of the LSF project. [1] The neighbourhood covers an area of 1.47 km2 and 23,794 inhabitants, 23,5% of immigrants (Padron municipal, http://www-2.munimadrid.es/TSE6/control/seleccionDatosBarrio. Accessed 4-6-2019).

Challenges & Bottlenecks

As a pilot project, LSF participants faced a very steep learning curve, motivated by the initial distrust between each side. In fact, in the beginning, they felt as two sides. But before engaging in the first meeting, “internal opposition [within the municipality itself] was the first hurdle. We solved it selecting for the team those people we thought were more open, flexible.” Then, they needed to generate trust, externally and internally. They were helped by professional facilitators, because there are a lot of amateurs regarding methodologies, approaches. Still, “although everyone was called in to participate, the ones that did not participate were the technicians of the District Council. We had some decisions to make about the facility, which ultimately is theirs, but they didn’t come. Still, they are informed of everything.” Another internal issue needing clarification was “to check if this participatory type of design differs from the design made by the municipal architect that adds one more facility to the 50 he has already planned and which those differences are.” It resulted in a process that “lasted longer than usual due to the technical adaptation of the municipal architects. And probably the one that suffered the most was the architect, because he was the more reluctant to work this way. It is much more complicated to change management than design.” The issue of the over-extended design and execution times seems contradictory: “Probably, the only drawback was the time that was probably over what is conventionally usual. But we didn’t go over the nine months that were expected.” But the overall feeling is that “The process has been long, at times disappointing but with commitment we have achieved the result.”

Transferability & Replicability

LSF has left an invaluable legacy for Madrid and how facilities can be designed and built: “What it is that we have learnt about this process? The learning about silence, noise, or the collaboration with neighbours are in the requirements of the new bids (tenders) for the six new libraries in Madrid. In these new projects, the Architects Association of Madrid firstly were worried about the new public tender requirements based on the learning from LSF, but then they were especially happy with them.” The role of community or neighbourhood symbols: “The facility needs to be distinctive, a banner of the neighbourhood. A place everybody loves, where everyone is welcomed. Needs to be physically different to the rest of the district buildings. And this is a ‘strong idea’.”

Success Factors

Specific success elements of a co-design process are generally related to the level of attachment of each participant to the project. In the LSF case, since the number of participants was so high, the project caught on the spark that the neighbours’ association had started years ago and really produced a significant social impact. They expressed this as: “Our experience with participatory processes was similar to someone’s who comes and asks what’s your opinion on X? In this case, they came and said ‘there is nothing planned’. And this had an extremely catalysing effect. Also, the work relationship was horizontal, without hierarchies, interchanging experience and information (including telling where the limits were). This was very rewarding.” But other benefits were also exposed by our interviewees:

“The good co-design may be seen as slowing the process of decision making. If everyone has an opinion and shares it, that enriches the discussion; and then through discussion, the project gains trust and commitment. Participation shows people that they have authority. The rest, the results, are secondary.”
“It has never before happened to me. The collaborative process was so engaging, so wonderful, and the people were so nice. We were a great team. There was not a single problem. Four months were enough time to accomplish many things.”
“Co-design may mean to work on-demand, but with the regulative limits of an administration, and that resulted in tolerant, knowledgeable neighbours.”

Lessons learned

This project’s agents perspired satisfaction. They were proud of the work they have done, the output, and process they created. And they believed this new alternative to design public services arrived to stay at the municipality of Madrid. From a public policy perspective, the case presents the following highlights: At the tactical level:

Co-design with users is engaging for every agent
All agents must agree on every decision; formal decisions are as important as content decisions, and co-design involves both
All agents need a constant process to educate them along the co-design process
Finding a common language is a need of every session. More than games and other dynamics, it is videos and pictures that make this work
Members of the working team do not need to represent all potential users or public agents; members though need to have access to several sources of information
Non-users, such as consultants or members of the community, should be involved anyhow. They enrich the project, both in form and content
Public services, from the neighbours’ perspective, are more than the coverage of a number of needs: In the LSF case, neighbours see the library as a main driver of community cohesion, and the bridge to enact the connection of elderly and youth

At the strategic level:

The public team must be carefully selected.
A champion facilitates¾not necessarily makes it easier¾the project. Without her/him the PSL paradigm might not be feasible due to its richness and unexpected outcomes.
Time is not an issue. Co-design processes do not take longer than conventional design.
Neighbours become absolutely engaged and supportive using co-design.
Service co-design might be lacking from a complete set of metrics that connect the social and framework outputs with the economic and political ones.
The connection between this type of citizen engagement and the effectiveness in terms of votes is not clear. We know the satisfaction levels with the Council have peaked to maximum. But we have not asked how much of that satisfaction is linked to having participated with the Council in developing Madrid.

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

Stakeholders include:

Consejería de Educación, Formación y Empleo (the Department of Education, Training and Employment)
The unions (UGT, CCOO)
The regional association of enterprises (FER)
Other relevant social stakeholders in the region (Asociación Promotora de personas con Discapacidad intelectual Adultas, ASPRODEMA, Consejo Estatal de Representantes de Minusválidos, CERMI, and the political parties)

Beneficiaries include:

The citizens of La Rioja

Co-creation process

This was a project that aimed at providing citizens with services, co-designed and co-produced with them (through the unions and most representative companies’ association in the region). This is demonstrated in the 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 (out of 6) objectives stated by the working group for this Plan: (2) To set specific priority objectives in terms of PE and employment to guide the development of skills through-out space and time along the current office term, and promote them among citizens. (3) To lead the strategic approach of all the actors involved in PE and active employment policy in La Rioja, seeking to link their actions to the proposed objectives. (4) To integrate and coordinate the available resources in terms of PE and employability, both in the educational and employment markets, so that they support the objectives more effectively and efficiently. (5) To improve the interrelation between the different PE-providing subsystems and modes and, essentially, between all of them and actual employment. A greater involvement of the regional production system is essential. (6) To reach the highest degree of consensus in the formulation of the Plan from the technical, social and political points of view, so that public and private actions are mainly oriented towards shared strategic objectives.

Digital Transformation Process

Not applicable.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

The general guidelines that grouped the results of this project aimed at improving employment qualification of human resources were:

To reduce structural unemployment and to promote employment of quality;
To achieve a qualified active population through lifelong learning;
To improve the quality and results of education and training systems at all levels;
To promote social inclusion and to alleviate poverty reinforcing social protection systems, lifelong learning and active and comprehensive inclusion policies, with special attention to women.

Additionally, the EU 2020 Strategy helped identify other results along the objective of smart, sustainable and inclusive growth:

Smart growth, through the development of an economy based on knowledge and innovation;
Sustainable growth, by promoting an economy that uses resources more efficiently, that is green and more competitive;
Inclusive growth, through the promotion of an economy with a high level of employment that results in economic, social and territorial cohesion.

Challenges & Bottlenecks

Regarding R&D and innovation investment, La Rioja presented certain weaknesses. According to Eurostat data, it reaches 0.87% of regional GDP. This is lower than the national average (1.33%) or that of the European Union (2.02%) and far from the 3% target of the Europe 2020 Strategy. La Rioja had 23,083 companies in 2015. Out of the total, 99.92% were companies without employees, micro-enterprises and SMEs. More than 50% of business units do not have salaried workers (12,314, according to the latest published statistics). This atomization is also reflected in the fact that most of the companies in the region are legally formed as solo-corporations or freelances. Likely, this bears an individualization effort to promote and engage these individuals into employment and training policy.

Transferability & Replicability

The Plan FP+E is a complex strategical project. Our selection of this case is justified as an example of the tremendous impact that PSINSIs may have in all sorts of public sector initiatives. In this case, a strategic plan for a social issue of major relevance such as unemployment and your professional education was handled with such a type of network. What surprised us from this case, beyond the formation of the network itself, is the publicity and openness of the initiative. It is true that it was subject to criticism, but the Working Group developments and final version of the plan was publicly and easily available from the regional government website. Moreover, the sessions of the Working Group, being a heterogeneous group including less qualified organisations, or certainly, not used to develop strategic political and operational plans, must have been rather complex to coordinate. Still, using the European, Spanish and earlier regional mandates and frameworks, they put together a complex plan that includes not only young people entering the labour market, but also long-term unemployed, disabled people, and those willing to re-qualify to improve their employability.

Success Factors

One of the major drivers for this Plan FP+E is the willingness of all economic actors to regain the competitiveness of the economy of La Rioja. Even along the economic crisis of the 2008-2013, the greater weight of the secondary sector justified that the economy of La Rioja was more productive than the Spanish economy. Measured through the relationship between GDP and the number of hours worked, La Rioja’s productivity was 36.37 in 2012, compared to 34.75 in Spain as a whole (Regional Accounting, Base 2008, INE). Another decisive driver of this Plan was the (EU) 2015/1848 Decision of the Council (October 5, 2015) on the guidelines for the employment policies of the member states for 2015. It set the following guidelines in terms of employment within the EU:

Boost the demand for labour.

Improve the job offer, qualifications and skills.

Improve the functioning of labour markets.

Promote social integration, fight poverty and promote equal opportunities.

Lessons learned

The 3rd Plan for Professional Education and Employment (Plan FP+E: Plan de Formación Profesional y Empleo of La Rioja) for the 2016-2019 office term represented an effort towards facilitating access to employment of the citizens of La Rioja, a region in the central northern Spain, World-famous for its wines, shoes and agriculture. The new federal government of La Rioja soon declared the care for its youth and unemployed a priority of its policies and public actions. And it embarked in a new plan towards improving professional education and employment in the region. This initiative was led by the Consejería de Educación, Formación y Empleo (the regional Department of Education, Training and Employment) and was the result of a very close temporal collaboration with the most representative unions (UGT, CCOO), enterprise association (FER) and other relevant social stakeholders in the region. Together, they built a Working Group to design and implement a new plan for professional education (PE) and employment for the 2016-2019 term. This has been a project then that can be associated with the new public governance paradigm (NPG) paradigm, and fits into the public sector innovation networks for social innovation. Besides the specific context described earlier, there have been several news concerning the implementation of the Plan FP+E since its inception. Maybe the most relevant is that the Spanish Court of Auditors, in its evaluation of the different instruments for employment policies in La Rioja, 2016 has observed a degree of implementation of the objectives of the Annual Employment Policy Plan higher than the average of the Autonomous Communities. In the case of Plan FP+E though, there is an absence of an evaluation. Also, some criticism from the political opposition publicised the plan was delayed in some of its proposals.