Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

The key stakeholder organizations in this case study are the Consultancy Agency and the Council while in detail, the stakeholders include the Council staff, consultancy staff and service users involved in the user research and the testing of website. The main beneficiaries of service design are citizens who use Council services and the Council itself since clear information and improved communication would make the service experience easier for both sides, by managing the expectations of customers and easing staff workload.

Co-creation process

The Consultancy agency has facilitated the Council to employ three main service design methods. The first one is journey mapping, in which a professional service designer from the Consultancy has supported the Council staff to establish the ‘as is’ and ‘to be’ of services from a customer and staff perspective. The second is personas method to inform the discovery phases. The Consultancy agency has purchased Experian data to develop various personas of fictional residents of the Borough. Some of personas have also been selected to guide the journey mapping sessions with Council staff, which is the third service design method. These service design sessions have encouraged the Council staff to understand user needs. Nevertheless, no real service users have been involved in these sessions and all the pain points for users have been articulated by the Council staff.

Digital Transformation Process

Digital transformation in this case study is mainly reflected on the service re-design task of developing the Council’s website. The Consultancy agency updated and aligned the website with Government Digital Standard guidelines. Through service design, the Council’s website has been modernized to ensure the effective provision of information and digital forms to support users to self-serve themselves.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

In this case study, the service design process has generated positive and concrete results in three aspects. First, a triage system has been created with the re-design of reception area. The improved reception area is seen as more aesthetical and enhancing the internal efficiency since it changes the interconnection in the services, which allows staff to better manage their time. Second, the digital improvement has been viewed positively. The new website makes services more accessible for customers while the improved technology supports backend business processes, leading to greater efficiency from an operation perspective. Third, the service design methods, with the journey mapping sessions in particular, have been seen as helpful for rethinking about user needs and gaining perspective on the aims of the service and the implications for staff and customer experience.

Challenges & Bottlenecks

Several challenges have been identified within this case study. A central one is that service re-design in one area potentially impacts another dimension of the service journey, particularly where services are interconnected. In this case, for example, the redesign processes have led to new tasks for and new kinds of pressure on the frontline staff in the reception area, and they have not received sufficient training in how to handle the new tasks. Another key challenge identified is related to resources and time constraints. The Council staff in this case study have limited time and resources to spend on service design, which has affected who could attend the service design sessions. As a result, the council staff could not be sufficiently involved in the service design process. Also, user involvement is absent in the service design, which has been highlighted as a weakness of the service design approach. Lastly, a challenge in relation to continuous improvement has been identified as concerns have been raised around whether there has been sufficient testing or there will be resources and momentum for continuous service improvement.

Transferability & Replicability

The experience and the lesson learnt in this re-design of council services may be transferrable to service design practices in other public service settings.

Success Factors

The service design approach is considered as the key success factor, which has enabled the Council staff to shift their focus towards a user perspective of services rather than on the internal efficiencies of business processes.

Lessons learned

Four practical lessons have been learnt. First, clear communication between the Consultancy agency and the Council staff is essential for the collaborative approach. Second, a strategic and holistic approach to service design would support the change process. Third, the inclusive involvement of the Council staff in the service design process is necessary. Fourth, an emphasis on a user perspective and a focus of internal business processes need to be both taken into account.

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 and Beneficiaries include:

the Primary School of San José Obrero (SJO)
the Antropoloops group
the Carasso Foundation
the Instituto de la Cultura y las Artes (ICAS) of the Seville Municipality

Co-creation process

This AW project is an example of process innovation to promote cultural inclusion in a primary public school in the South of Spain (Seville). Its main aim is to transform the teaching and learning processes to prevent stigma, dropouts and exclusion right at the youngest possible age. This idea was put into a project by Antropoloops, a NGO focused on combining music, education and technology. It consists firstly of an exchange of musical life stories between students (ages 10-12) of the CEIP San José Obrero School (Seville, Spain). Secondly, the students leave the School and record sounds and later mix those sounds and musics with other students, even from foreign schools. This mode of collaboration between the CEIP San José Obrero and Antropoloops seems to fit well in the rapid application model as the planning, delivery and innovation processes are one. It is an unplanned innovation, that was originally designed to find funding, but then changed into this other loose, less formal structured and spontaneous process, given the nature and aims of the project.

Digital Transformation Process

No digital transformation process involved.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

The specific objectives of the project are:

To promote the interest and knowledge of other cultures through music and personal stories;
To improve musical listening skills and an emotional and cultural interpretation of music;
To promote creativity and imagination through narratives and stories generated from music and images;
To improve English language skills through the translation into English of student-produced texts;
To improve the knowledge of students with examples of traditional music in different locations in the world.

A summary of the seven impacts and goals identified and achieved through the first year, fully described in the case, is:

To expand the musical knowledge of students and to awaken their curiosity for the diversity of traditional World music as a source of inspiration for new creations. Students understand this heritage is not something parked far away and fossilized, but it is something alive and reusable;
To develop new ways of composing music. Use of tradition from creativity and remixing, with an approach that combines electronic music with traditional music to foster student interest in the proposed repertoire.

Challenges & Bottlenecks

The main barrier outspoken by our interviewees is the level of flexibility required to get the most of the project. “Only in a school like ours, devoted to work by projects, that is not opposed to changes of class schedules, class contents, and with faculty that is willing to take the extra step to work and be available beyond expectations, is AW possible.” The project is extremely rewarding for teachers and motivating for students. “But it is a lot of hard work and dedication.” A second potential barrier comes from the perspective the project produces in kids. While at their early education stages they experience teaching and learning through integration, practice and playful experiences, later stages do not seem to follow and build over the same perspective. This breach and the abilities they receive to cope with it seems a matter of concern for the design team.

Transferability & Replicability

The AW project uses a pedagogical approach based on working by projects. As with any of this type of projects, it requires that the School adapts its teaching curriculum to the needs of students – in this case, more than 32 nationalities. The AWs are run in a public institution with a managerial team that has understood its potential as an integrating element of many of the programs and teaching currently being carried out. Also, and from this institutional perspective, the project might help deepen the position of the school in its district as a cultural and relational reference.

Success Factors

One of the major drivers for this AW project has been the support of the Carasso Foundation. Through their regular calls for projects to innovate in nutrition and feeding, and in education, they shaped the individual contributions of a group of seven friends and colleagues into a prototype to innovate the integration of school’s boys and girls. They put together an original design combining education, integration, music, experiences and remixes. But it was through the call from the Carasso Foundation that they formalized the prototype and were able to get the funding. A second driver is the commitment of the school management and faculty. “A project like this involves a lot of flexibility, changing schedules, topics, and it could not be successful in another environment where management and teachers are not fully committed to it.” It is through it, developed over time, with results, and evident in the sheer number of active projects being run in the school at any given time, that AW has received full support from all the agents. This commitment is seen beyond the participation of the teachers in the activities of AW. They are adapting their own classes according to the experiences they and the students are being exposed to in AW. Even non-participating teachers, being aware of these experiences, are expected to modify their own approaches and behaviors thanks to AW. Thirdly, the AW network is constantly evolving the original design. Not that this design is no longer valid. It holds as the centerpiece of the project: Music and remixes for integration. But the project now involves exposure to neighboring institutions (a chorus of elder people, the local mosque, the local stores), language and verbal expression in Spanish and English, body coordination, or teamwork. This evolution is the result of the constant interaction of the two operating and design teams.

Lessons learned

This is a case reflecting a top-down network with a social aim. The distinctiveness of this case is its initiation: The call for projects of the Carasso Foundation aiming for social innovation. The call is won by an informal group of musicians and IT technicians that put up a project that, through music, teaches inclusiveness and cultural emotions. The project found an immediate welcome in one of the most committed schools of Seville, and its management saw in it a transversal project to help kids aging 10-12 years. It has served not only as teaching tool. Teachers involved in the project use some of the techniques in less soft classes. And it has enacted the school as a means of generating community in the neighborhood. Out of the interviews, we perceived that the principal of the school, is the champion of the project. Her commitment to innovate socially is paramount; she is driven by inclusiveness and making an impact in the neighborhood through the kids and their engagement with their families. The rest of her team, and the willingness of the Antropoloops team has leveraged the school principal’s drive to motivate themselves and produce significant benefits for the kids and their families – that large that they are planning to expand the experience to other locations.

Stimulab

‘Stimulab’ is an incentive scheme, initiated in 2016 as a two years trial program, but is now prolonged for at least three more years. It was set up to stimulate public sector innovation by focusing on the citizens’ perspectives and user-oriented experimentation. It was an initiative from the political leadership in the Municipality and Modernization Ministry (MMM) aimed to innovate public sector.

In the assigning letter to the responsible Directorate (Difi) in 2016 from the Ministry an important task for Stimulab should be: “Stimulate public agencies to use innovative methods, included service design, aimed to develop complete services which is an improvement for the end-users, and gives efficient use of public resources” [1]

The task was given to The Agency for Public Management and eGovernment (Difi), who has the administration of the scheme, in collaboration with “Design and Architecture Norway (DOGA), who has high competence in service design. Public sector organisations (municipal or central government organisations) can apply for participation in the scheme. Projects that are accepted receive financial support ( 1-2 mill. N.kr) to be used for procurement of service design and innovation competence. Moreover, the projects are supported with professional guidance on how to work with service design and service innovation based on the ‘triple diamond’ process, which is used as the Stimulab method. 14 projects are granted support through Stimulab thus far (Stimulab Report, February, 2019), and eight of these have been completed and finalised. The remaining six projects were initiated in 2018 and are still at a development stage. Seven projects are accepted for 2019.

[1] ) all translations are done by us

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

The scheme covers and supports projects in a wide range of service areas, but included projects are somehow meant to lead to improved services, processes or systems. Hence, the broad objectives of the scheme is to support development of more holistic and improved public services for citizens, and to enhance efficiency and effectiveness in public administrations. All parts of the public sector can apply, and the applications are controlled and rated by the Stimulab actors. “Wicked” problems (tasks that are shared between several actors and where the actors do not see an easy way out), are seen as particularly important to support. The Government is a stakeholder, and all public agencies. They can also be the beneficiaries, together with the firms that win the contracts, and hopefully the citizens who can get improved services.

Co-creation process

Stimulab demands several co-creation processes. They support the first part of a process to improve public services. First, some projects (among the applications) are selected for a next step, a project pitch where Stimulab wants to make sure that the selected projects have an innovation potential and can have a benefits realization. The projects that will be given support are selected, and a contract is signed between the applicants and Difi. The demanded next step is a dialogue with the market, where the project owner should find private partners with competence both in service design and leading the process for change. The experience so far has been that specialists in service design have made alliances with consulting firms. But some actors now (such as PwC) have competence in both fields. When the private partner(s) are chosen, the cooperation between the public agency and the partner(s) can start, using methods of the triple diamond, where the intention is that the actors should use extra time in the beginning of the process. The triple diamond method used by Stimulab is an adaptation of the Double Diamond developed by the British Design Council. In the Stimulab version, the third diamond is included to highlight the need for taking time to properly understand the problem, coined as ‘setting the right diagnose’. It is also underlined that this process of understanding the problem needs to be carried out in collaboration with agencies/ consultancy firms with innovation and design expertise. This is meant to ensure that the public service organisations and the external consultancies have a shared understanding of the problem, which in turn is expected to strengthen the likeliness that the developed solution will meet the actual problem and needs (thus, the third diamond adds an extra step in the start of the process).

Digital Transformation Process

There has not been any systematic digital transformation process in the projects.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

Stimulab uses three different categories of projects in its discussion of results:

Projects with concrete ( and measurable gains) after the projects are finished

One project about renewing driver licences has a calculated saving of 940 m ill. N. kr. in ten years. In a project for the Archive Service they have no exact number, but state that they now can conduct more supervisions with the same resources, to take two examples.

Projects who have developed tools already in use, but where the results will come later

Improved air quality may be a case where they have to wait for the results.

Projects were gains are identified but further development of the project is needed before a take out is possible

These will be the more complex projects, and even if the gains are identified, they do not know if a gain will be realised. The impact of Stimulab can be seen in a wider context, because the establishing of Stimulab itself can be seen as a reminder of the need for innovation, using service design to be user-friendly. Positive feedback from those who have participated can stimulate other services both to apply for support and to start innovation program themselves. Stimulab has got to be a symbol for user-oriented innovations in public services.

Challenges & Bottlenecks

In the projects supported so far, Stimulab`s activities have mainly been in the initiating phase. Stimulab`s platform is to be an active facilitator, who stimulates co-creation between public services and private enterprises. What they offer and demand is the active use of service design and of spending time in the beginning of the process, to understand and diagnose the situation. Seen together we are left with the impression that the main attention has been given to the procedures, to conduct the service design process properly. No recipes were given for the implementation process, and the actors had to apply for additional financing for this stage. The floor was left to the project-owners and the private consultants. But the project owner could stop the implementation when the money ran out. Lack of money and extra funding can therefore be a barrier for the implementation of good and innovative ideas. Support money can be given (after application), but cannot be taken for granted, and they may not be sufficient. It may give non-stimulating signals to the rest of public sector, if several of the initiated projects crash before they have given any results. If the interest for service design driven innovations should grow fast, the economic support frame will need to be scaled up.

Transferability & Replicability

The models and principles of service design can easily be transferred and replicated in all other parts of the public sector.

Success Factors

The success factors were the needs among the applicants to find new solutions, the possibility of economic support, and the inclusion of dialogue processes in the initiation phase of the projects.

Lessons learned

Public services need assistance to start and implement innovation processes where service design is meant to be an important part of the project. To make sure that initiated project can be realised, a project leadership – that is responsible for the whole project, from initiation to implementation, and has a realistic plan for financing it – is necessary.

Anonymous – An internal innovation and quality unit in a middle-sized municipality

The unit has two main focal areas; quality assurance and innovation; the former is seen as ensuring order and securing the quality of service offerings, whereas the latter is understood as experimental and risk-driven. The case study has taken to innovation unit as point of departure: The main activities of the innovation unit are; to mature the whole organisation in regards to an innovative mindset, to disseminate and share knowledge externally, to monitor projects as either project initiator, project lead or as sparring partners and to manage a yearly innovation fund. Both public (that is, from within the municipality itself), private and civil actors can apply for project money via the fund as long as the projects are finalised within a year.

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

Key stakeholders are the internal functions in the municipality, private sector organisations and, despite to a lesser extent, academia. Beneficiaries are both elderly citizens and care takers.

Co-creation process

The unit is based on the logic of living labs – understood as a certain innovation methodology. From the perspective of the municipality, this living lab approach is seen as a platform where especially external actors can get an entry to collaborate with the public sector and herein access target groups, such as elderly that they could not otherwise have approached. Hence, most innovation processes are inherently co-creational since citizens, users and employees across sectors are engaged. Mostly, and across types of projects, the unit is primary lead regarding the research design, which is based on traditional user studies e.g. citizens interviews in their private homes or at care centres and public servant interviews and feedback, whereas the experimental aspects of living labs are enacted as test set-ups in homes and care centres – which seems to be part of most projects. In the projects the initial phase is considered crucial, which is why the unit emphasises how idea generation and herein reality checking need to involve various actors. This way they want to ensure that perspectives and input from the ones who are going to enact the solutions, and hence make the solutions live in the organisation, have been part of the development processes. Thus, even though the projects are inclusive processes with different stakeholders collaborating during the projects, and not necessarily with a dominant partner, the municipality is the sole decision-maker regarding the outcome of the processes.

Digital Transformation Process

There has been an outspoken focus on welfare technology, as both a means to make the citizens more self-reliant and as a way to address that there might be fewer employees in the sector prospectively (the idea is to replace all the work routines that do not imply human interaction with technological solutions). But despite the unit’s focus on technological development, it is emphasised that technology is not solely a solution in itself, but that the organisational change that might follow, be that cultural and/or procedural, is key.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

All projects should create value by addressing the following three bottom lines: increased quality for the citizens, better work environment to employees and value creation for the organisation – as either money or resource savings or increased efficiency or quality. These are the three main success criteria written into all projects, but they do not need to be fulfilled equally or have the same weighing in all projects. Besides the three bottom lines, it is emphasised that the activities of the innovation unit, and the municipality in general, hopefully support community building by creating new jobs and making it attractive to live in the region. Also, the overall societal challenge of more elderly and a reduced work force is understood as a concern and a responsibility that reaches beyond the single projects.

Challenges & Bottlenecks

Barriers to conducting co-creation processes for innovation are both internal and external. Internally, the on-going focus on resources makes it important to the unit to be able to argue for spending time and money on the specific projects carried out. Externally, the collaboration between a huge public sector organisation with 6000 employees based on political leadership and e.g. a small one to two persons company is sometimes challenging – basically due to profoundly different work processes.

Transferability & Replicability

An important dimension regarding the value of a project is the ability to spread and disseminate the outcome, be that technology implementation or work processes. On the one hand, the innovation unit has been able to create a demand within the organisation and in the entire administration, which was not there from the beginning. But on the other hand, it is also recognised that change does not happen by itself and that both knowledge sharing and implementation can be a huge challenge, even though it is within the same organisation. Moreover, there is a focus on spreading in a wider sense not bound to the local context of the municipality; to other municipalities in Denmark and internationally. The reasoning behind is that if the unit is able to share best practices, hopefully they will also receive ideas and inspiration from the outside – and as such upscale both the solutions and the approach to innovation.

Success Factors

Increased quality of life for elderly citizen.

Lessons learned

To the innovation unit, the term and the initiatives that living labs comprise legitimise the municipality as a matchmaker between and translator of public and private sector logics. Moreover, it is revealed that living lab both refers to and enables a certain discourse and a sort of organising – making the perceived strength of the living lab concept – that it is a signifier – open towards a variety of interpretations without influencing the shared experience among the actors involved; that the collaboration is highly meaningful.

Bybi – Citybee

Bybi is a social enterprise and association that enables co-production of honey by renting beehives to public, private, and social organisations in the city of Copenhagen. Bybi is in charge of processing and selling the honey produced by these rented beehives, and moreover Bybi conducts beekeeping and honey production courses in both the collaborating and other organisations, such as schools and non-profit housing organisations. The association is founded on an urge to find a model of production that contributes to a richer environment and inclusive communities.

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

Key stakeholders are the companies and organisations that rent beehives and the municipality of Copenhagen. Beneficiaries can be understood as both the employees of Bybi, but also the customers of the honey products.

Co-creation process

The production of honey is inherently based on a co-creation process; Bybi-employees work closely together with the employees from the different organisations, and when customers buy Bybi products they also receive seeds to plant – to ensure biodiversity for bees.

Digital Transformation Process

No digital transformation process is going on.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

Some of the people who work at Bybi are at the edge of the labour market. However, they are not treated as people that need to be re-integrated into the labour market, since the outset is that all people contribute to society. Hence Bybi aims to build an inclusive community of people with a shared vision of bees and honey production.

Challenges & Bottlenecks

There are some challenges related to communication, that is, to communicate what the company is all about and that it takes time to communicate identity. Another type of challenge is related to the ambitions of turning a factory on its head making space for consumers to act as co-producers – but it can also be understood as a driver, since it triggers an urge to find new ways and solutions.

Transferability & Replicability

Still, Bybi only exists in Copenhagen, but the idea and form of organisation are not limited to this context.

Success Factors

The objective of Bybi is to change humans from passive consumers into active co-producers of a richer natural environment and a more inclusive society. More concretely, Bybi’s influence can be described with regard to areas where Bybi has potential contributions: Creating opportunities for people to contribute to society, improving the experience of the environment, helping organisations to carry out CSR strategies and turning the factory on its head.

Lessons learned

Bybi grows out of social economy, but is confronting a wider societal and public problem of transforming the labour market and enriching the environment. It argues that this goes far beyond the Danish system of social enterprises. Hence Bybi is more an institutional entrepreneur than a social entrepreneur aiming to reconfigure relationships between labour and pleasure, production and co-production, humans and non-humans and consumption and production.

Mind Your Own Business (MYOB)

The organisation Mind Your Own Business (MYOB) is organising and facilitating development projects for young boys, between the age of 13 and 19, from marginalised housing areas. The program is centred around entrepreneurship and, in cooperation with voluntary venture pilots from civil society and business partners, the young boys are given the opportunity to start their own micro-enterprise. The philosophy behind MYOB is that the program further develops the professional and social competencies of the young boys and thereby enables a stronger association to the educational system and the job market.

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

To be able to operate, Mind Your Own Business relies on a well-developed network of volunteers, mentor companies, non-profit housing associations, and public sector collaborators. The program is based on external funding. The main beneficiaries are the youngsters who participate in the program.

Co-creation process

Internally the program relies on a form of organising where there is no specific owner of the process and hence decision-making is made jointly among the actors involved – MYOB employees are solely acting as facilitators. A such, the program is itself based on a logic of co-creation.

Digital Transformation Process

No digital transformation process is going on.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

To MYOB, the overall aim of the program is personal development of the boys, based on the understanding that the competences they gain from participating can be transferred to other contexts and hence increase their social and professional abilities, also prospectively.

Challenges & Bottlenecks

Historically, the main barriers are related both to the internal and the external environment of the program. Internally the boys are struggling with both low support and understanding from their families and with the acceptability from the other boys in their neighbourhood. Externally the adult lack of confidence in the competences and abilities of the boys is leading to mistrust. Hence, a barrier is to change the ‘outside’ story of the boys. Nevertheless, these barriers seem to decrease both during the course of a program and since the success stories of the program are now spreading.

Transferability & Replicability

At the moment the program is starting out in Greenland, and despite the need to develop and tailor the process to a new context the main idea does not seem difficult to transfer.

Success Factors

The process and the learning of the boys in the program are the main success criteria, but also there is an awareness that, from the perspective of the boys, an important success criterion is related to the micro-enterprises – the aspect of entrepreneurship is crucial for the boys to become engaged.

Lessons learned

MYOB is based on a planned network to function. As such the relationship building, and hence trust among actors, has been key in developing a functional network that over time can be seen as innovative cross-sectorial collaboration. The innovation network is bottom-up, since it is founded on an entrepreneurial initiative and still relies heavily on releasing local resources. Nevertheless, the network was from the outset conditioned by having an existing and recognised platform to develop from and still it is dependent on MYOB as ‘system integrator’ in realisation of the MYOB programme.

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

The foundation mainly relies on income as a subcontractor to the public sector, offering education within the ‘special planned youth education programme’, thus a key stakeholder is the municipalities using the program. Other stakeholders are the customers of the social enterprises and other organisations that are part of Grennesminde’s network. The key beneficiaries are the young people, but to some extent also the municipality, since Grennesminde as subcontractor offers a public service.

Co-creation process

The way Grennesminde functions today is based on a development process initiated by a change in legislation that the organization needed to respond to. Hence co-creation of the public service has developed over time, both due to systemic changes and due to a hiring process focusing on recruiting candidates with a business mindset.

Digital Transformation Process

No digital transformation process is going on.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

Despite being evaluated upon the measurement and quality criteria in the formalised inspections, the managers of Grennessminde furthermore distinguish between impact at a micro or macro level. At a micro level, the managers stress all the little success experiences during the everyday life at Grennessminde. At a macro level, the success is also understood as two-fold. On the one hand it is to support or trigger a cultural change in the municipalities where the employees (as representatives of the system) meet the youngster with respect and in this manner open up the doors of the system. On the other hand, it is believed a success criterion to push and actively engage in the debate on social economy in Denmark.

Challenges & Bottlenecks

A main driver that eases collaboration is clear expectations from the municipalities, transparency in the referral and assessment process, and trust from stakeholders and partners. In opposition, a key challenge has to do with navigating in diverse realities with different quality parameters; the public sector and the third sector. Also, the aspect of clashing logics is also mirrored in structural settings, where it becomes hard to operate and change practices due to municipal silos and silo thinking. This can e.g. be between different administrative bodies or between different groups of professionals.

Transferability & Replicability

The case in itself is not easy transferable, but the idea of establishing work integrated social enterprises is not new, and as such the case can be an illustrative example.

Success Factors

The overall aim of Grennessminde is to create a meaningful life for young people with special needs. To be part of the job market is perceived key in this regard, which is why Grennessminde supports the development of their social and collegial skills. Hence the value lies in the experience of the youngsters as being important relative to colleagues and their job function. Thus, the success is not measured in people getting a job, but rather in empowering the young people.

Lessons learned

An overall challenge regarding the understanding of success criteria and measurements is that, in Grennessminde’s view, most municipalities focus on the degree of youngsters that have entered the job market – despite not being able to undertake ordinary jobs. A circumstance, which is especially in a long-term perspective hard to identify, since it is illegal to keep civil registration numbers and hence Grennessminde cannot know, or show, how the young people are doing after e.g. a two years period. Therefore, Grennessminde urges the municipalities to make as specific measurement parameters as possible, while the youngsters are at Grennessminde, e.g. to be able to do a bus ride alone and hence support that the youngsters become ready for the job market – whether as an employee at Grennessminde or at another work place.

“Cycling Without Age” (CWA)

Cycling Without Age is a foundation that was established in Denmark 2015, but is now represented in 47 countries.

The main idea is that elderly people living in care centres or elderly people offered home care are given the opportunity to get a bike ride in a trishaw. The trip involves what is referred to as the three P’s: pilots, passengers and personnel. The pilot (driver) is either a volunteer or an employee from the care centre or home care, the passenger is the elderly person and personnel refer to the employees and/or administration at the care centre/home care. The main objective of Cycling Without Age is presented as giving the elderly the right to wind in the hair by ensuring mobility and active partaking in society.

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

A key stakeholder in a Danish context is the municipality, and more specifically the managers and employees at care centres and home care. The service of the bike ride cannot be outlived without these. Another key stakeholder is thus the politicians, who have been part of pushing the idea forward. Besides the public sector stakeholders, a key actor is the volunteers and the beneficiaries are the elderly.

Co-creation process

The idea and the service of getting a bike ride is not the outcome of co-creation, understood as deliberative innovation processes. Anyhow the idea has been developed and tailored to countries outside Denmark, where the public sector is not the main provider of elderly care.

Digital Transformation Process

CWA offers a digital booking platform, but the interviews revealed that for some care centres it was easier to use a manual calendar. And in the cases using the platform, it is not transforming practices and procedures.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

It is difficult to highlight specific results and outcomes of the bike ride in itself (see success criteria), but the success of CWA as a foundation and the many countries that now also offer bike rides for elderly can be seen as evidence for impact regarding the service/idea.

Challenges & Bottlenecks

The public managers stress that fiery souls are key when it comes to implementing the initiative – either positioned in the administration or within elderly care, and these need managerial back-up. Another barrier relates to the operation of CWA. The public managers tell how they are left alone with the initiative after the implementation phase. This experience is both related to the awareness from the municipality and from the CWA secretariat. To exemplify, it is the responsibility of the care centre/home care to maintain the trishaws and they are not granted any funding for repairing or buying new bicycles if they are damaged.

Transferability & Replicability

The initiative has been easily transferred to municipalities in Denmark and to other settings internationally.

Success Factors

The impact of the initiative is not perceived by CWA and public managers in traditional quantitative metrics but rather in qualitative aspects, such as the general enhancement of the joy of life among the elderly. Another positive aspect of the visibility of the elderly in the local community is an increased awareness of elderly, dementia etc. among citizens in general. Still, CWA is working on more concrete evaluation criteria to professionalise and legitimise the bike ride as a method and an approach to increased life quality among the elderly.

Lessons learned

The case of CWA is interesting due to the high degree of positivity that surrounds the movement. The initiative and the foundation do not seem to meet a lot of resistance concerning the cause per se; to ensure that elderly stay mobile and part of society. Thus, it seems that if the cause is perceived highly legitimate the room for manoeuvre increases. Externally, since it becomes easier to engage in strategic collaborations and to recruit volunteers, and internally because the organization, based on trust in their own raison d’être and main objective, becomes flexible in regards to development and organizing, as long as the main objective stays the same. Another key aspect is how the innovation is positioned in the eco-system of public elderly care services. CWA is mainly an add-on to formal elderly care, since the foundation does not overtake tasks or roles of the public sector. In this manner they are not subject to competition regarding resources and legitimacy, making it less problematic for the municipalities to engage in collaboration.