This week at OPSI, we've been looking at how design thinking and evaluative methods can improve project management and catalyse system change.

How can we normalise innovation across large organisations? How can design thinking methods be channeled to measure a strategy's impact and generate suggestions for improvement?

Join Us Tomorrow:
Webinar on Stewarding Innovation Portfolios for Collective System Change

27 May 2021 at 12:30 PM CET

Join our EU H2020 webinar exploring the role of governments in stewarding innovation portfolios among an ecosystem of actors, including emerging strategies for catalysing and sustaining collective system change. Speakers include Future by Lund Initiative from the City of Lund, Sweden and Viable Cities, Sweden. Participants will be invited to share their own examples of innovation portfolio management and pose questions to the case presenters.

Reflections on five years at OPSI

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

Read Alex's blog

From the Community: Webinar on Adapting Public Finance for the Challenges of the 21st Century

27 May 2021 at 4:30 PM Dubai time (2:30 PM CET)

The UAE Mohammed Bin Rashid Centre for Government Innovation (MBRCGI), OPSI's partners for our work on cross-border innovation, is holding a webinar in coordination with the Brazilian National School of Public Administration (ENAP) with a focus on Phenomenon-Based Budgeting.

In Case You Missed It

Policy Brief: Towards a strategic foresight system in Ireland

Stewarding innovation portfolios for the ecosystem: catalysing collective system change

In a new policy brief from OPSI, we explore the value of strategic foresight and learn how 'Our Public Service 2030' and 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.

This guest blog explores Lund municipality’s innovation platform, Future by Lund, which works to catalyse development activities for sustainable cities. Leveraging insights from OPSI’s innovation facets model (among others), the Future by Lund team is experimenting with new ways to steward and advance a portfolio of collaborative innovation activities.

Catch up on our latest blogs

Featured Toolkit: Project Cycle Hackers Kit

The Hackers’ Kit aims to normalise innovation in large organisations by introducing new practices for project management. Designed and tested with over 25 project teams in the United Nations Development Programme, the toolkit is intended for an international development context but could be applied to any large organisation wishing to innovate. It includes a wall map of the process, question cards to get people "unstuck," and a collection of 19 tools that supports innovation activities throughout the project cycle. These tools are aimed at capturing insights, supporting decision making, challenging thinking and assumptions, prompting discussion and simulating reflection.

View toolkit

Featured Case Study:
Public Sector Centralised Budgeting Management Software

The Government of Tanzania has developed a budgeting solution with Isidore for the collection, analysis, and reporting of public revenue and expenses. Budgeting can be complicated due to diverse streams of revenue and expenses including donor funding, project outcomes, staff, and capital works, which must be inputted by all Ministries and their personnel who are geographically dispersed. This software innovatively completes the full budget cycle through a refined method to reduce time and effort.

Read case study

Upcoming Events & Initiatives

• 27 May 2021: Stewarding Innovation Portfolios for Collective System Change Webinar - Contributors from the City of Lund's Future by Lund Initiative and Viable Cities Sweden will detail how innovation portfolio management is becoming a core practice for intentional and proactive public sector innovation units and will explore emerging strategies for catalysing and sustaining collective system change.
• 1 June 2021, 13:00-15:00 CET: Act Before You're Ready session at the Global Foresight Summit - Our knowledge about the future will always be incomplete. The only way to act in time is to act before you're ready. Josh Polchar, OPSI's lead on strategic foresight, will run an interactive session at this online event. Participants will discover more about OPSI's work on anticipatory innovation governance, and try out for themselves some techniques in perceiving, understanding and acting on futures in real time. Register Now!
• 3, 7, & 10 June: Cross-Border Collaboration Workshops - COVID-19 has shown us that major challenges do not remain within jurisdictional borders and neither should the approaches to address them. We want to hear your perspectives on ways governments can better link up with others using a more outwardly focused approach. Join Us!
• 8 June: Adaptive Innovation Workshop: Making Responsive and Agile Practices Sustainable - Learn how the Portuguese Ministry of Administrative Modernisation explores adaptive innovation and its drivers in theory and practice in the public sector, defining what it includes and how it is related to efforts to make governments more responsive, resilient, and agile.
• 9-11 June 2021: Accelerate Estonia minisummit & office hours - Register today for exclusive, limited seat Accelerate Estonia office hour sessions to learn more about how you could become Estonia’s next moonshot entrepreneur. Expect to meet the digital nation’s leadership and learn who’s who in its innovation, technology, and entrepreneurship communities.
• 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.

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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).

Join Us Tomorrow: Webinar on Stewarding Innovation Portfolios for Collective System Change