Thanks Antony! Love seeing the update on recent work. Great changes too. I didn't quite extend my analysis across these professions – I would absolutely love to though as I think it would be super interesting to see how my argument stands up beyond the lens of service design. Would love to see more notes from those monthly meetings!!
Great thoughts. As a design practitioner in Sweden, having worked in both the private and public sector, I’ve struggled with this dilemma many times. The public sector is in many ways a system built for delivery and execution, and not for development and transformation.
Real societal transformation for the better is a question of politics and ideology. And that begs another question: If design is about making things better, then where does politics and ideology end and design start on the scale of things? Can we practice ”real” strategic design in a government setting without interfering with the democratic process?
Fantastic question. I think the public sector should be built for development and transformation – it should shape, not fix. I also think that innovation and design are inherently political and that to achieve transformation we should rethink democratic processes in a way that embeds many disciplines (more than just strategic design). This means rethinking power, relationships and democracy – something design is not very good at in general (for all of the reasons I’ve written about in this post!)
Thanks for such a timely piece and putting things into perspective on a matter which I believe many countries (including India) need to think deeply about.
Thanks for this in depth analysis of the 'service designer' role description within Digital and Data. Really interesting as I facilitated recent work to update this, write-up here https://designnotes.blog.gov.uk/2024/12/03/updating-design-skills-in-the-government-digital-and-data-capability-framework/
Given the policy-lense you're interested in, have you analysed the policy profession's descriptions of design-related capabilities in a similar way? https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/policy-profession-standards/policy-profession-standards-annex#introduction-the-policy-profession-standards-detailed-descriptors
You might also be interested in the Operational delivery profession descriptions:
https://www.odp.civilservice.gov.uk/skills-framework-new/core-odp-skills/
Thanks Antony! Love seeing the update on recent work. Great changes too. I didn't quite extend my analysis across these professions – I would absolutely love to though as I think it would be super interesting to see how my argument stands up beyond the lens of service design. Would love to see more notes from those monthly meetings!!
Great thoughts. As a design practitioner in Sweden, having worked in both the private and public sector, I’ve struggled with this dilemma many times. The public sector is in many ways a system built for delivery and execution, and not for development and transformation.
Real societal transformation for the better is a question of politics and ideology. And that begs another question: If design is about making things better, then where does politics and ideology end and design start on the scale of things? Can we practice ”real” strategic design in a government setting without interfering with the democratic process?
Would love to hear your thoughts on this.
Fantastic question. I think the public sector should be built for development and transformation – it should shape, not fix. I also think that innovation and design are inherently political and that to achieve transformation we should rethink democratic processes in a way that embeds many disciplines (more than just strategic design). This means rethinking power, relationships and democracy – something design is not very good at in general (for all of the reasons I’ve written about in this post!)
Thanks for such a timely piece and putting things into perspective on a matter which I believe many countries (including India) need to think deeply about.