Design for Policy

Christian Bason

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317152408
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Politics & International Relations
• Categoría: Political Process

Design for Policy is the first publication to chart the emergence of collaborative design approaches to innovation in public policy. Drawing on contributions from a range of the world's leading academics, design practitioners and public managers, it provides a rich, detailed analysis of design as a tool for addressing public problems and capturing opportunities for achieving better and more efficient societal outcomes. In his introduction, Christian Bason suggests that design may offer a fundamental reinvention of the art and craft of policy making for the twenty-first century. From challenging current problem spaces to driving the creative quest for new solutions and shaping the physical and virtual artefacts of policy implementation, design holds a significant yet largely unexplored potential. The book is structured in three main sections, covering the global context of the rise of design for policy, in-depth case studies of the application of design to policy making, and a guide to concrete design tools for policy intent, insight, ideation and implementation. The summary chapter lays out a future agenda for design in government, suggesting how to position design more firmly on the public policy stage. Design for Policy is intended as a resource for leaders and scholars in government departments, public service organizations and institutions, schools of design and public management, think tanks and consultancies that wish to understand and use design as a tool for public sector reform and innovation.

Section 1

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Design in Context

TOM BENTLEY

Design in Policy: Challenges and Sources of Hope for Policymakers

The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) shortened the political life span of many governments and elected leaders around the world. This spike in turnover is not surprising. A shock triggering widespread recession, soaring unemployment and the collapse or takeover of many familiar institutions is likely to exhaust the reserves of political leadership and eclipse the credibility of those in office. For some new candidates running at the time, like Barack Obama and David Cameron, the ability to offer ‘new hope’ and a fresh approach to governing was an electoral asset. Being untainted by incumbency probably helps when shock and fear are coursing through electorates. But the size and complexity of the problems generated by the crisis mean that a lot more than hope and energy are required to govern successfully. Those fresh new faces are now grappling with intractable challenges.

Post-crisis Policymaking

Since 2008, a common goal for policymakers around the world, even in wildly varying circumstances, has become ‘sustainable growth’ (G20 n.d.). It is a common denominator across the G20, the group of economies and governments whose shared interests were confirmed during the initial responses to the crisis. But the blandness of the phrase still masks diverse circumstances and deep contradictions in the situations confronting policymakers in different nations and regions.

One thing they have in common, though, is that after the crisis, policymakers typically find themselves working with less time, trust and money to achieve their goals. They work in a more complex and demanding environment, where short term pressures and long term changes come together to create problems that can seem insoluble and situations that appear ungovernable. For many people, the collapse of Lehman brothers was an event that came out of nowhere, causing the seizing up of global financial markets, triggering a wrenching recession in many countries around the world and a shuddering, ongoing crisis of unemployment and public finances.

But the events may be explained as a manifestation of longer term forces which had been gathering for years, an expression of policy failures or distortions that had not been corrected in the trajectory of global markets and the design of key institutions, leading to large scale breakdown in a newly interconnected global economy. The crisis prompted action which went far beyond the standard responses and routines of policy. This was essential in order to unblock global credit, kick-start economic growth and seek to replace or repair institutions which had been massively damaged by their failures.

The immediate responses were focused on economic stimulus, on stabilizing and protecting key financial institutions and on intervening to prevent the further collapse of organizations like General Motors that were considered ‘too big to fail’.

Of course, the crisis is not over. Many countries are still working to overcome the emergency and restore anything like acceptable levels of employment and public debt. In Greece, the whole society is still fighting to stave off basic collapse. In the US, the unemployment rate only fell below 7 per cent in late 2013. In the same year, those officially labelled as unemployed account for almost a quarter of all people aged under 25 across the European Union while the investment and demand that might generate new jobs for them continued to decline (Dorling 2013). Other countries which enjoyed more success in avoiding recession, such as Australia, Korea and China, still face the challenge of achieving ‘sustainable growth’, navigating the new environment and addressing their own specific structural or institutional weaknesses, as policymakers and citizens alike worry about the fragility exposed by global recession and the risks posed by collapses elsewhere.

The Public Policy Challenge

Despite the great diversity among countries, policymakers face a common challenge – to achieve simultaneously three basic outcomes: growth in jobs and incomes; basic social and public goods like health, education and environmental protection and security and stability for citizens through justice, policing, defence and sound public administration. The ability of governments to meet this triple imperative – providing for economic sustenance, social need and public security – has clearly been challenged by the GFC and its consequences.

The most obvious manifestation of the challenge is economic recession, destroying jobs and capital and reducing income and revenue. This economic decline in turn creates ongoing fiscal pressure arising from lower revenues, higher need and the costs of intervening to prevent immediate economic meltdown. As government budgets are pushed further into deficit, their ability to fund services and investment is diminished and public debt accumulates. In extreme cases, these twin pressures and the public’s reaction to them also threaten the ability of governments to maintain stability and security. The shock exposes policymakers to greater pressure and scrutiny, and tests the established models and narratives on offer to solve public problems and meet public need. It is no accident that two rival explanations quickly emerged for the crisis; the first attacking too much deregulation of financial markets and explosion of greed, and the second seeking to blame unsustainable public spending and the over-reach of the state for creating an accumulation of public debt and deficit which placed too great a strain on the workings of the market economy.

Subsequently, two competing narratives are playing out in the politics of many nations. In the first, economic growth and stability are to be achieved through retrenchment and austerity, cutting back public spending and services until governments and nations can ‘live within their means’ and free markets can ‘recover’ from the damage caused by excessive public intervention. In the second, governments seek to build on economic stimulus, prioritize employment over debt and invest proactively in new sources of growth. These two choices do not exclusively capture the full range of approaches taken to governing for growth. But they recognizably influence the strategies and the politics of many nations today.

In reality, the policy prescriptions of both the centre-left and the centre-right have been found wanting by the crisis, not just in their failure to predict or prepare for it, but also in their ability to offer compelling, workable answers to the questions it has thrown onto the public stage. The quest for ‘sustainable growth’ partly reflects a hunger for longer term stability and vision, which is in greater demand from citizens precisely because the crisis has reminded them of how easily things can fall apart. The binary choice between austerity and stimulus does not, however, provide an adequate model for either economic growth or for successful governance. Political leaders find themselves seeking explanations and ‘narratives’ for the times we live in, to make sense of a complex reality and to chart a path through it.

In order to provide this coherence, however, policymakers need to generate new answers. The questions they face are about the sources of future growth and their sustainability, and the ways in which governments can create public goods, together with citizens and organizations in the private and social sectors, in situations where the rigid roles and demarcations between national and sectoral institutions have been broken down, and traditional social structures and hierarchies also eroded. The most familiar forms of governance and reform strategy, from privatization and deregulation through the target-driven new public management, social democratic tripartite consensus and authoritarian national development have all been found wanting. In response, a new focus on ‘strategic’, ‘collaborative and ‘networked’ governance has begun to emerge (Parker and Parker 2006).

The Shock of the New: Acceleration and Innovation

Another effect of the crisis was to accelerate the transition from older to newer sources of power and influence. In 2006, none of the world’s top 10 banks by market value were Chinese. In 2009, four were (Legrain 2010). China’s economic resilience saw its strategic influence and credibility grow. The widespread criticism and predictions that China’s institutions of capitalism and governance were built on sand have been muted, at least for now. China’s government is visibly seeking to moderate its own growth path and to accelerate institutional reform, for the sake of greater sustainability.

The GFC accelerated the destruction of old business models, as companies and industries reliant on incumbency were left behind and economic hardship tested the resilience and productivity of firms forced to compete harder for more limited resources. This more intense competition further drives the growth of firms and networks in ‘emerging’ economies. In 2003, only 31 of the world’s 500 largest companies by revenues were from emerging economies. By 2009 there were 91: China had 39, Korea 14, Russia 8, India 7, Brazil and Taiwan 6 each, Mexico 4, Singapore 2 and Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Turkey and Venezuela 1 each.

Companies and governments, particularly in Europe and North America, have become even more painfully conscious of the need for strategic investments and alliances in these parts of the world, and for economic strategies which prioritize innovation. But while the centre of economic and strategic gravity may continue to shift, the consequence for policymakers is not a reduction in a role or influence, but rather a proliferation of connections and pressures. This was the great lesson of the crisis, as problems created in specific US financial markets cascaded across the globe. The growth of interdependence through connection, transparency and exchange applies to almost every aspect of life.

Pressures on Policymakers

The result of greater interdependence is an environment of great challenge and complexity to public policymakers. They are short of time, money and trust, but face immediate and pressing demands. Many of the established models, rules and institutions through which economic growth and public and social goods have been ‘delivered’ over the previous generation are unable to achieve growth, meet need or offer stability in the ways that people still expect. In an atmosphere of crisis the resources available to policymakers with which to generate alternative strategies have been limited.

Indeed, the drivers of innovation themselves contribute to the sense of crisis and illegitimacy confronting public decision-makers. The new technologies, social movements and markets are disruptive, challenging established institutional power and enabling coordination and collaboration that cuts across existing hierarchies and organizational structures.

Policymakers and organizational leaders need new ways to explain what is happening and mobilize communities to adapt. But the ongoing impacts of these changes make it harder for those holding institutional roles to communicate clear purpose and benefits to far-flung citizens. Digital technologies, for example, allow far greater specification of wants and needs in the fields of health, aged care, education, environmental protection or personal security. At the same time, they blur the boundaries between the different players responsible for their production. Social media networks are undermining the established hierarchies of political and public communication and the business models of traditional media, even while they accelerate the fragmentation of traditional social identities and public allegiances.

Policymakers around the world therefore find themselves with an array of interconnected problems and challenges in front of them, and a growing cacophony of demand to offer clear solutions. They must find ways to achieve the goods for which they are responsible, but in situations where their ability to control directly the actions which create such goods is limited. Yet the demands and expectations placed on governments have, if anything, multiplied in recent years. Government is just as much involved in different markets and sectors of society as it has ever been, grappling with long-standing functions from public transport and education to crime and cyber-security. The result is a pattern widely repeated around the world: a perception of political dysfunction and dissatisfaction, focused on the inability of political decision-makers to achieve satisfactory progress or articulate a common long-term purpose which can achieve the legitimacy of widespread public recognition and support.

Governments are not less powerful than in the past: The actions taken by national governments to address the GFC, stimulate the economy, nationalize banks and corporations, re-regulate markets and restructure the finances of other nations, not to mention participate in military interventions and invasions in recent decades, demonstrate the central role, vast resources and huge powers of nation states. But they share the stage with many other actors and increasingly operate through interconnected networks of communication and action which do not recognize the boundaries of geographical territory or functional authority through which governments are traditionally organized. It is not the case that governments have fewer opportunities to act or fewer options through which to act. Rather, the problem is that they work in an environment that has become more complex, less forgiving and more constrained, with others jostling for power and authority. This situation has created three particular challenges to the models of public policymaking that have dominated the last century.

The first is the assumption of a linear policy cycle, in which a rational process of decision-making is undertaken by those with formal authority to do so, starting with clear objectives and then selecting methods of intervention and allocating resources on the basis of options shaped by the available evidence. In this model, implementation then follows on from policy decisions as an equally rational, step by step administrative process, culminating with evaluation, which in turn informs future policy deliberations. This model, which is deeply embedded in the cultures of legislatures and bureaucracies around the world, is one of the main reasons why policy processes are primarily focused on the production of documents, rather than the production of outcomes.

The second challenge is the assumption that policy and implementation are carried out through functional, vertically separated organizations, or ‘siloes’ typified by national government departments holding policy authority over implementing agencies. Of course governments embody a wide diversity of structures, in part designed through the writing of democratic constitutions, and this diversity should not be oversimplified. However, the standard assumptions and forms of agency have enormous influence over how policy is produced and the capability of governments to implement their objectives.

The third challenge, as a consequence of the first two, is the assumption that policy and implementation are separate activities, conducted by different people and organizations with different kinds of specialist knowledge and capability.

These three assumptions maintain an extraordinarily powerful hold over the organization of public effort and the imagination of policymakers. They provide the structure through which the activities of government can actually occur. And they help to hold a balance between integration and fragmentation, action and paralysis, which enables government to function at all, given the relentless pressures they are under. However, the contemporary challenges of governing demand alternative ways of thinking and organizing, because the trends I have outlined present a direct, growing challenge to all three assumptions.

The Role of Institutions

Policymakers are therefore under enormous pressure to produce better outcomes, searching for more effective combinations of activities and organization, while continuously demonstrating progress to the wider world and learning to adjust, in real time, to events and innovations occurring beyond their control.

One key to understanding this challenge is through the lens of institutions. Public policymakers are not taking decisions and allocating resources through abstract processes disembodied from the societies they govern, but working through many and varied institutions to try to achieve outcomes that people value. Institutions are important because they act as both means and ends for public policy – they are the means of carriage for translating resources and goals into outcomes, but they also act as embodied forms of values tha...