Hi, I’m Jack Strachan. I’m a designer, researcher and strategist. I work with policymakers, digital teams and a whole host of civil servants – blending design, strategy, and policy tools to rethink public value, shape early policy ideas, design digital services, and wrestle with technology.
I’d like to introduce CIVICWORKS: a space for sharing thinking on civic bureaucracy, institutional reform, dynamic capabilities, policymaking and technology. My intention for this space is to be intentionally transdisciplinary – bridging the richness of civic design at the street level with the complexity of policymaking at the state level and beyond, drawing on as many perspectives as possible to create interesting angles, takes and provocations.
I don’t envision this as a space confined to my own thoughts either; I’m hoping to leverage a growing network of incredible practitioners and academics to share their insights and thinking – to form what I hope will become a platform for a diverse collection of thought pieces and insights into the future of public policy and the built environment.
I won’t linger on any introductions; rather, I would prefer the writing to speak for itself. Fundamentally, CIVICWORKS is about surfacing interesting people’s thinking on important civic questions – creating a space that invites thought, conflict and plurality.
Some of the first few pieces of writing will be on the OECD’s recommendations for human-centred public administration services, the economics of decision-making in the civil service and how the UK’s public design review can influence the future of civic capabilities.
Sounds fantastic!