By Vivienne Russell | 13 March 2013
Design principles should be incorporated into public services to help make them more streamlined, relevant and useful, according to a report published today.
Restarting Britain 2: design and public services is the result of an eight-month inquiry by the Design Commission. It makes more than a dozen recommendations for central and local government and argues for greater use of design principles in the policymaking process. In particular, a ‘design studio method’ for originating policy in Whitehall should be adopted. This is a multi-disciplinary approach that, according to the report, is a proven way of working through strategic questions.
The inquiry was chaired by Lewisham Council chief executive Barry Quirk and Labour peer Baroness Denise Kingsmill.
Quirk said: ‘We currently have far too many nineteenth century facilities housing twentieth century services that struggle to meet twenty-first century preferences and needs. Design and design thinking offer a fresh approach to rethinking policy, professional practice and service delivery. Design and redesign must be central to how we can transform our way of thinking about the future of public services.’
Kingsmill added that, as a world leader in design, the UK should be applying that expertise to public services.
She said: ‘There are examples of excellent service design in the public sector… But we need to see these good design principles integrated more widely and more fundamentally into the DNA of national and local government if we are to build services around the needs of people, and not around the maintenance of the status quo.’
Other recommendations include incorporating design in civil service training programmes and establishing career paths for designers working in government.
The report was sponsored by the Design Council, Capita and the Arts & Humanities Research Council.
