Design as a new policy competency

Abstract

Public management field needs to keep pace with contemporary and evolving problems, and therefore invest in and harvest capabilities to meet future scenarios. It is crucial to have a clear vision on the back end of social advising and a staff who is aware of the wideness of its impact. Public managers need to advocate for critical discussions between them, with the organisations they are cooperating with and with people who are going to benefit their decisions. By exploiting typical Participatory Design paradigms, such as a thorough exploration of the problem space, collaborative approach, and iterative development, the dASAP Learning Environment aims at adapting the design practice to the public management domain. The main goal is, therefore, to strengthen the foundation of the public management approach by reframing Design as a new policy competency. The Learning Environment is the result of a participatory and iterative process, carried out in a team setting. This endeavour to create a safe space in which sharing and nurturing capabilities provides a view on the potential of setting up and running a Design-Enabled Innovation process, while also creating an environment that supports innovation within the public domain. The dASAP Learning Environment does not only provide an array of tools and methods, but it goes beyond them by focusing on underlying factors such as values, knowledge, skills and attitudes, creating appropriate conditions for methods and tools to work.