This special edition of the OPSI newsletter features work supported by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Programme, with a particular focus on innovation portfolio management. The items below showcase how innovation portfolio management works, featuring real-world examples of tools and methods for effective systems change.

Through the Horizon 2020 Programme, we also continue to explore how a range of innovation approaches can be leveraged, including the use of adaptive innovation, enhancement-oriented innovation, anticipatory innovation and mission-oriented innovation.

Stewarding Innovation Portfolios for Collective System Change: Examples from practice

Read our new blog to learn about the challenges associated with innovation portfolio management and explore how it has become a core, intentional, and proactive practice for governments to address a diversity of current and future challenges. We provide real-world examples of how innovation portfolio approaches link to evaluation measures and impact models.

Read blog

Enhancement-Oriented Innovation Workshop Recap: Using innovation methods to improve core government policy-making and services

OPSI recently hosted a workshop in partnership with the Austrian Federal Ministry for Civil Service and Sport on Enhancement-Oriented Innovation, which involves upgrading practices, achieving efficiencies and better results, and building on existing structures. Over 100 people representing 36 countries joined us to hear about the relationships between innovation and public sector efficiency and productivity, as well as methods and tools for this type of innovation.

Read blog and see workshop video

OPSI Meetup: Using innovation methods for last-mile service delivery

29 June 2021 at 1:00 PM in Paris

Are you yearning to connect and meet like-minded practitioners and policy-makers from around the world in a community-driven virtual meet-up format? Join us as we discuss how we can use innovation methods to deliver last-mile public services.

Now Hiring:
OPSI is seeking a Communications and Strategic Engagement Officer (applications due 27 June)

We are building out our team at OPSI and are looking for a Communications and Strategic Engagement Officer to lead our efforts in designing and executing our overall communications strategy, as well as our efforts in building and strengthening OPSI’s innovation community and connecting with other relevant networks and communities.

Check out our blog post for full details. All applications are due by midnight on 27 June 2021.

Read job announcement

In Case You Missed It

Reflections on five years at OPSI

Policy Brief: Towards a strategic foresight system in Ireland

After spending the last five years at OPSI, Innovation Specialist and OPSI Deputy Head Alex Roberts is departing the OECD to move on to new adventures back in Australia. In his parting blog, he reflects on the innovative lessons he's learned in his time at OPSI and shares what he thinks are the most pivotal aspects to succeed as a public sector innovator.

In a new policy brief from OPSI, we explore the value of strategic foresight and learn how 'Our Public Service 2030' in Ireland might use the tools of strategic foresight and anticipatory innovation governance to ensure that their public service is future-fit to 2030 and beyond.

Catch up on our latest blogs

Featured Case Study: Be Badges

Be Badges is a digital platform where employers, schools and training centres can formally recognise skills and experiences earned by individuals. Badge-earners can share these skills digitally with others and the labour market, and prospective employers and recruitment agencies can access the platform to find new skilled employees. Since its creation, the concept has been expanded to ESCO Badges, which syncs up with the European Unions’ ESCO classification of skills and competences.

Read Case Study

Featured Toolkit: Toolkit for Supporting Social Innovation with the European Social Investment Funds

The toolkit's goal is to help actors conceptualise and operationalise their ambitions in terms of supporting social innovation. It contains not only “procedures” but also knowledge concerning social innovation. The guide was designed to support European Social Fund and other funding organisations that want to focus mainly on service innovation (as opposed to systems innovation or internally oriented process innovation). It also recognises the idea of broader societal transitions and the need for changes in internal processes as a condition to make externally oriented innovative services tangible.

View Toolkit

Upcoming Events & Initiatives

• 30 June 2021: Apply to the Next Generation Foresight Practitioners Awards - Featuring a wide range of geographic and sectoral special awards including six funded awards (USD 2,500 each) for Peacebuilding, Technology and Security, Forced Labour and Human Trafficking, the MENA region, East Asia, and Small Island Developing States. These awards aim to recognise the next wave of future-alert activists and foresight by building new approaches to the future that will help create change by doing different things today. Apply by 30 June for your chance to win up to USD 10,000 to support your futures ideas and innovations.
• 7 July 2021: Webinar on Anticipatory Capacity for Governing Institutions and Technology Policy - Addressing the largest societal challenges and coping with technological transformations will require not only rethinking anticipation concerning science and technology policy but also the functioning of governing institutions. In this OECD webinar, world-leading experts will examine the intersection of anticipation, participation, directionality, disruptions, and transitions as connecting concepts across the fields of Science, Technology, and Innovation policy, and public governance.
• 17 August 2021: Reimagining Government Webinar Series: Meaningful Measurement - This webinar will explore the opportunities, challenges and practicalities of an alternative approach to measurement - measurement for learning.

This special edition of the OPSI newsletter is supported by funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No. 870913.

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The Observatory of Public Sector Innovation is an initiative of the Directorate for Public Governance of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. The Observatory is co-funded by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the European Union (grant number 671526).