Partnership with service users is part of the day job for many frontline staff. Teachers can’t teach if students don’t learn. Doctors can’t heal if patients don’t comply with treatments. And yet public services are rarely designed with these principles in mind. The implicit assumption – in design terms at least – is that service users don’t want to play more of a role, and that it’s only the domain of professionals to take decisions and direct resources.
Following last week’s Spending Review, it’s likely you will feel under pressure to cut new approaches or those that at first glance appear marginal and low impact. But it is these approaches that will save money and alleviate pressure on public services in the future.
Last week’s Comprehensive Spending Review has made the challenge critically clear: how can we save money in public services without significant harm to society?
Going forward into cash-strapped times, there will be increasing pressure to deliver better public services for less.
It is not enough to assume that scaling back the state will allow local innovation to flourish. Achieving genuine localism relies on a different kind of support from the centre.
In times like these it is easy to focus on what we don't have and can't afford. Yet both individually and collectively we have more assets than we give ourselves credit for.
This is a great, innovative four day programme where some of Silicon Valley's A-list entrepreneurs come to the UK.
The New York Times published an article recently about an entrepreneur, Seth Priebatsch, and described what it called his 'hypomanic' attributes: an elevated mood, obsession with one idea, little need for sleep, massive self-confidence.
There’s a lot of social innovation going on. All over the world, citizens, governments, communities, NGOs are experimenting with new ways of responding to social issues.
"Clarity of both programme design and the challenge you set are critical to success"
We explore the debate around what makes a successful prize challenge to promote public and social innovation.
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