How to start a job with a policy design team
Throughout my civil service career to date, I’ve often wondered why we don’t do more to listen to everyday experience. So I was intrigued to see a government team doing just this.
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.
Signals of change: using speculative design to anticipate regulatory needs
In the context of this tech innovation, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency’s new MARLab commissioned our team to help them understand how to safely encourage industry to develop autonomous ships in the UK.
Policy Innovation Exchange – Argentina and the UK
We are lucky to have such a vibrant global community in government innovation. Every day we learn of new Public Sector Innovation Labs (#psilabs) and different ways to tackle complex policy challenges.
Evidence islands, continents and ravines: exploring challenges for the Geospatial Commission
Last year the Geospatial Commission launched a Call for Evidence to inform the development of the National Geospatial Strategy. Policy Lab worked with the Commission to support an open discussion of the evidence with the policy team and their Partner Bodies.
How do we do open foreign policy making?
This year Policy Lab has been working on a project with the United Nations (UN) to bring the voices of people in a geographically distributed organisation into early stage policy design and development. We wanted to share some of what …
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.
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 …