GOV.UK
What makes a good innovation fund?
This blog is available on the What Works and Policy Lab platforms. It is by Edward Orlik of the What Works team.
Policy Lab
Policy Lab is bringing new policy techniques to the departments across the civil service, helping design services around people’s experience, using data analytics and new digital tools.
Co-design in policy: learning by ‘doing’
As a child, my mum used to tell me that I always learnt the ‘hard way’. By that she meant I learnt by doing - sometimes in spite of what I might have been told. It follows that I ended up studying 3D design, using tangible objects and experiences to develop and communicate ideas. But back then I don’t think I ever imagined this could be relevant to government.
On Policy Lab and Lab to Policy
In my view one of the most exciting things about Policy Lab has been its ability to work both in and outside the Whitehall system at the same time. When people asked me about the reasons for its success, I’d …
A role for art in policy-making?
The Policy Lab was created to bring experimental thinking into the UK Government. This has included using design techniques to think about the future, such as in our recent project with the Department for Transport on maritime autonomy. We have …
Bias-busters 3: Nudge, Dewey and Executioner
This is the last in a series of three blogs looking at how Policy Lab methods can help address some of the common biases of policy-makers. It is based on the Behavioural Insight Team’s (BIT) latest report, Behavioural Government, which …
Bias-busters 2: Deliberate deliberation
Policy makers are as subject to behavioural biases as everyone else according to the Behavioural Insight Team’s (BIT) latest report, Behavioural Government (P7). In fact, when making decisions we may be more biased given that the subject of our work …
Bias-busters: who you gonna call?
The Behavioural Insight Team’s latest report, Behavioural Government, argues that decisions of policy-makers are affected by cognitive bias (p.7). BIT identify eight of the most common cognitive biases in government which they categorise into three areas: noticing, deliberating, and executing. …
Positive engagement – our user-centred approach
By Harsha Parmar, Disability Employment and Support Strategy, Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
The Open Policy Making Toolkit - user research
The Open Policy Making Toolkit was first posted in 2015 to help civil servants incorporate open policy practices into their work. Today, whilst it’s arguably not yet the ‘default,’ open policy making is certainly more widely practised and better understood. …
International Design in Government Conference 2018
International football makes way for the first International Design in Government Conference this Tuesday and Wednesday in London. #ItsComingHome