The State Chancellery of Latvia, with the support of the European Commission Structural Reform Support Service, has launched the Innovation Laboratory project. This initiative stems from the need to raise the overall efficiency and effectiveness of public administration by promoting good governance and improving the level of staff competence.
The key priorities of the project are the reduction of unnecessary bureaucracy and therefore the introduction of a zero-bureaucracy approach. It means increasing the value of public administration services, developing modern human resources, developing a national strategic communication system and other projects. The overall goal was to introduce innovative approaches and methods in public administration, to make it faster and more efficient to address topical or old problems, come up with the necessary solutions, and develop and test prototypes.
The novelties of the project support the aim to identify the most suitable innovative approach for sustaining and operating innovation labs in the Latvian context. This is achieved through learning-by-doing, the different ways in which problem-solving is carried out and the involvement of participants from public administration institutions and experts from other sectors. These change regularly depending on the issues to be faced, and all the new approaches and ideas allow flexibility and improve cross-sector, cross-institution and cross-department collaboration. Another idea is the introduction of experimentation in the process, which is currently lacking.
The vision of the Innovation Laboratory is based on the driving force to change thinking, attitudes and behaviour of the public administration’s way of working. It is based on encouraging experimentation to develop useable solutions to existing problems and to meet new needs and finally, aims to represent an example of innovation management for other institutions of public administration.