#GovLabLatvia – Public Sector Innovation Labs

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agiledesign thinkinglabsmodernisationPublic sector innovation

Organisation name The State Chancellery of Latvia

Contact person: Laura Dimitrijeva

laura.dimitrijeva@mk.gov.lv

Dynamic development of the modern world Ð growing complexity, increasing quality and service demands of society, budgetary restraints, external political and economic environment Ð puts public administration in front of new challenges. Public administration must respond in agile manner, providing efficient quality services, flexible solutions, and innovative approaches. Unfortunately within the LatviaÕs single multi-fund Operational Programme of the European Structural and Investment Funds ÒGrowth and EmploymentÓ no financial allocations are foreseen for necessary improvements of public administration and public sector human resource policies. Different international indicators can be used to assess public administration, including WGI, GRICS, Bertelsmann etc. Those are showing mixed results for Latvia between Baltic countries and towards average of the European Union and the OECD. 

With the project the State Chancellery addresses such key drivers of public administration policy efficiency as improvement of regulatory quality and lessening administrative burden, overcoming challenges of attracting and retaining talent to make public sector an attractive employer, incentivise value based culture in public administration, based on mutual cooperation, integrity, result orientation, innovation and agility. 

The problems that laboratories are addressing are based in real needs (having systematic approach to HR management of public sector, which currently is very much fragmented, creating common value-based brand of public sector, since the image of public sector per se is rather negative and critical as well as lessening bureaucracy for everyone both internally in public sector and most importantly for citizens and entrepreneurs), which requires concrete, practical solutions that demands new ways of solving them.

The project is built in a way that it suppose to ensure sustainability of labs - project activities are tailored to build public sector capacity and particularly capacity of the State Chancellery to become strong in-house consultants in public sector of innovation and design thinking

The activity to establish innovation labs as a mean to foster innovation culture in public sector is included also in the Action plan of the Government thus there is political support. Attention to the public sector innovation has a incremental tendency. Additionally, theme of the year in the Top Level Managers Development Programme, which involves around 180 top level managers (heads) from different public institutions in 2019 is "Innovation and experimentation". This demonstrates that innovation as a priority is set also on executive leadership level in public sector of Latvia. 

It is believed that development of #GovLabLatvia will continue, ensuring that it becomes one of the key drivers of public sector innovation in public sector in Latvia. After the project ExCel! finishes (by October 2019), it is already planned to carry out its' contuniation project ExCel! 2.0, making the labs even more sustainable (also this project has gained finacial support of The Structural Reform Support Programme).

Concept of public sector innovation laboratories is not new per se, since there are already many laboratories existing in other Member States. However other Member States has high potential to adapt the approach, which has been taken by #GovLabLatvia - building innovation labs step by step, setting 3 main themes to work on (public sector value based brand, strategic HR management of public and administrative burden)  and experimenting in the set-up process in order to find the most fitting approach. 

The problems that labs are tackling are very complex and cannot be solved over night or by creating a document, which would give all the answers. #GovLabLatvia is a process of public sector culture change - for many of the lab participants is is the first time when they are working in such setting, side by side with other stakeholders, doing homeworks in small teams, being demanded of think creatively, openly and citizen-centric. It is too soon to tell that this project is something that other Member States should immediately adapt, since the project impact might be evaluated only in longer term, when the prototypes are fully or partly implemented. However, it is more than clear that in order for public sector to change the way of working (because it is a clear demand of citizens), the approach that these labs has taken - design thinking, agile, cross-sectoral - should become a new-normal way of working.

Since one of the practical outcomes of the project will be methodology on administrative burden reduction (which is based on experience of work in laboratories, using various tools and approaches), then other Member States will be able to adapt the methodology if interested. It is expected that the methodology will be finalized by May 2019. The methodology can be used not only in governmental, but also local (municipalities) level.

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