Combining Service and Systemic Design in Norway’s Public Sector How StimuLab supports user-oriented experimentation and innovation Service design is currently dominated by a focus on the user journey, and therefore is not sufficient in itself for highly complex public challenges which cross agencies and sectors. To tackle complex public sector issues, the integration of systemic design capacity and a cross-disciplinary approach is crucial.
Benedicte Wildhagen is Senior Design Advisor at Design and Architecture Norway (DOGA), and Ellen Strålberg is Senior Adviser at Norwegian Digitalization Agency. They are both in charge of the collaborative running of the national StimuLab programme, which stimulates public innovation from the perspective of citizens. bw@doga.no ellen.stralberg@digdir.no Designers and consultants involved: Comte Bureau, PwC (LiveWork), Designit Oslo, Rambøll Management Consulting, Halogen, EGGS, Knowit, Deloitte, Agenda Kaupang, Menon Economics, Making Waves, PA Consulting Group, SopraSteria.
The Norwegian public sector has paid increasing attention to the use of service design to improve and renew public services. This has been particularly evident in projects such as Designit Oslo’s revolutionary remediation of waiting times for breast cancer diagnoses at Oslo University Hospital in 20131 . By reducing the waiting time from three months to five days, service design’s effectiveness was proven. The extraordinary result made the Norwegian Minister for Modernization determined to promote and support the further application of service design. Wicked problems Even though there are now many success ful examples of service innovation in
1 https://www.designit.com/work/designing-outwaiting-times
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Norway, the government still faces many ‘wicked problems’ and cross-sector issues that remain tough to solve. These complex public challenges involve numerous stakeholders from different sectors, each responsible for providing specific parts of a comprehensive service. Addressing these challenges can lead to substantial socio-economic benefits, but frustratingly, they often get ignored due to several factors, such as responsibility, lack of financing, the absence of functional methods, co-ordination challenges, and so on. These complex challenges with multiple stakeholders in fact demand a systemic approach. Service design is highly valuable when it comes to the user-oriented development of public services. However, in StimuLab, we experience that conventional service design is insufficient in tackling those ‘wicked problems’ mentioned previously.