Public sector innovation: Users as innovators

Can the public sector learn from the private sector in terms of innovativeness and risk taking? Democratizing innovation as a concept was inspired by the drive to seek users input in innovation. Public sector innovation is simply about developing new ideas to create benefits to citizens and contribute to three core values; i.e., service to deliver efficiency, social outcome to ensure equity, and trust to consolidate a social contract that is underpinned by accountability and transparency. The challenge is that public sector innovations are about services that are intangible and customized but they do not conform to market logic of profit seeking. 

Governments are keen to provide citizens with basic public services like health, education, clean environment, and affordable public transport. However, the challenge is how to mainstream the processes of innovation across organizations to harmonize the interplay of actors across institutions with divergent mandates and laws. One approach is to harness ICT platforms as in the example of E-government and Open Source which help establish new forms of open data government, digital democracy and community governance. 

Can users be a source of innovation in the public domain? Well, users can be a source of innovation but this requires that decision makers master the art of listening. Globally, about 30% of innovations in the public sector are user-driven. Therefore, to capture the value of innovation, three necessary conditions are to be met which include organizational learning, knowledge flows across institutions, regional innovation systems. In essence, the accumulation of best practices and learning can help form a knowledge base and new metrics that will facilitate benchmarking, and measurement of public sector innovation as in the case on UAE Global Government Summit, and other experiences in UK, Korea and Nordic nations. 

Hence, for GCC and Bahrain to embrace public sector innovation in services like e-health, a set of pre-requisites are to be met; i.e., rooting a culture of innovation by providing a space for reflective practitioners and learning communities. At the national level, enablers are needed to facilitate the flow of knowledge among institutions to inform a National Innovation System (NIS) and regional innovation centers that will enable science to serve the public good and sustainability. 

Although there is a growing awareness for the need for public sector innovation, still the key questions is how to promote service innovation and make the public sector more responsive and efficient. To achieve this, policies need to be crafted to consider the trade-offs between equity, efficiency, and societal goals. Simply said, the public wants quality services that are affordable and sustainable. These objectives can be better achieved by making best use of user-driven innovations. In sum, public sector innovation can be attained not only through product and process innovation but also through organizational and marketing innovation. Specifically, policies that simplify procedures, provide incentives for public-private partnership and remove barriers are the cornerstone for innovation.

The author is head of Innovation and Technology Management, Arabian Gulf University, Bahrain.