Policy Lab mission is to radically improve policy making through design, innovation and people-centred approaches.
For the last three years I have spent my time cycling in between Policy Lab in Westminster, the Government Digital Service in Holborn and London College of Communication in Elephant and Castle. I had decided that after 10 years in a fairly traditional civil service career path I wanted to do something more ‘creative’ and decided to do a part time Masters in Graphic Design.
I find it really hard to read a long report unless I’ve got a particular question to answer. So when Uscreates got people to go on an ‘evidence safari’ to explore evidence I thought “we should do more of that”!
One strand of the Open Policy Making agenda is about using a broader range of evidence to inform policy. For example the What Works centres were set up to enable policy officials to access research and make use of it …
The Work and Health Unit is looking at building the evidence base of what works in supporting disabled people and people with long term health conditions to get in and stay in work. Cat Drew travelled west to witness ‘experience prototyping’ in action with them.
Foresight teamed up with Policy Lab to organise four workshops with government departments to co-create policy ideas to address an ageing population.
By 2040, 30% of the population are going to be over 60. Policy Lab and go-science explored new ways of quickly generating ideas to answer these demographic changes.
Do you have an ‘I really don’t know’ policy challenge? Policy Lab can help.
Since its birth in the mid-90s, agile methodology has become the star of the software development and project management world. Findcourses.co.uk lists 43 different agile courses available, 3M post-it notes sales are around £1 billion per year and ‘scrums’, ‘burn-downs’ …
User-centred design is increasingly on the agenda of government and Civil Service Learning is gearing up to deliver learning on user-centred design next year. Read about how they're using the Policy Lab to help design the course.
Increasingly on the agenda of policymakers is a need to understand the needs, capacities and perspectives of citizens, service users, beneficiaries and front line staff so that policies are fit for purpose and deliverable and public services are better designed.