The challenging role of policy labs in public sector organizations: designing for more responsive systems (or organizations) is the title of the new SISCODE publication on Taylor & Francis online.

The article that is published open access and can be accessed via this link has been authored by Tamami Komatsu, Mariana Salgado, Alessandro Deserti and Francesca Rizzo.

The abstract can be found below.

Design has emerged as a discipline equipped to tackle the complex problems of the 21st century, primarily for its human-centered and experimentation approach and participative qualities.
Through the discussion of a case study of a government design lab, formerly inside the Finnish Immigration Service, the question of how design can help public sector organizations better respond to their pressing needs is addressed, in an attempt to explore the value of design as it is being used by the increasing population of policy labs in governments across Europe. While these labs have been charged to bring innovation to government, there are several factors that hinder their roles as “challengers” of the system. Given the temporal constraints and limited decision-making power of policy labs, cultivating a culture of design has been identified by the authors as a promising outcome, acting as a generative tool for organizational change through its capacity to mediate between the production and consumption of products/ services.