Hello,
Some of you might have seen the recent newsletter from the UK’s design council. There is one article which title is : « Policy v5.127: Could government make services like Dyson makes vacuum cleaners? » (link below).
I find the title misleading (if not simply stupid), because the comparison is only irrelevant. More seriously, it also leads to comparing governments to private businesses, albeit a poorly managed, ineffective and ultimately useless money wasting organisation. But isn’t that, after all, a too common saying… (with, as a collateral effect, the cynical acceptance that there can only be reduction of public spending and social benefits)?
On the top of that, the paper doesn’t even mention the role of politicians and policy makers in the definition of what a public service delivers (which are, in my view, THE key players : aren’t they the elected people who have to take or make decisions with the democratic legitimacy. The purpose of a public service is not e.g. some allowance, it is some kind of social cohesion)! To me, this is like reasoning on the management of a global business (as this is the metaphor used here) by looking only at the ground floor employees and a few customers.
This said, I support the initiatives per se and I do see some value in using some design tools and some co-design approaches in resolving the challenges. But I am reluctant to see too high claims/expectations being put on design approaches within policy development.
As to my knowledge, even the MindLab (Denmark) has not transformed the institutions organisation, even those at a low level (but I might be wrong, my assumption is based on the cases I know). I feel that they have helped in better responding to specific, well framed, issues (which is already an achievement). The same holds true for the cases put forward in the paper, in Australia, or in France. From the discussions I have every now and then with people involved, getting to the next level (slightly closer to the policy making level) is similar to quantum theory : it cannot be done gradually, and nobody seems to have jumped to the next level in a stable mode. My intuition is that this shows the limitation of (current ?) design methods.
I would also like to know the real cost of such projects. Although in the paper, it gives one figure, I have been enough in the « measuring the value of design » business to know that it is relatively reliable. And if one was to imagine that each municipality was to run some co-design project to improve the end delivery of public services, hum… designers are rather cheap, but not that cheap! This said, it could precisely be a policy measure per se, if, for instance, social cohesion was a priority, and therefore duly funded by our taxes, as this goes into public good.
What is also confusing is that the politicians seem implicitly to be made redundant, and be replaced by the aggregation of the end users with the desk civil servants in some workshops where things would coalesce. Well, most of you probably know that such civil servants have very limited (if any) decision power. Second, the difference between a nation and a business is that a business might dream of having all people as customers, it has only some, and it hires only a few. So there is an in/out boundary that is quite clear and has governed the whole theory of management. A nation doesn’t make such distinction ! Anybody can be elected, can make use of social benefits, should pay taxes etc.
Finally, I would like to see more positive discourses on the democratic and « welfare » state, and design being an instrument for a social project, rather than a patch on a sick body.
I’ll stop here my meandering !
Best regards,
Jean
http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/news-opinion/policy-v5127-could-government-make-services-dyson-makes-vacuum-cleaners?utm_source=Design%20Council%20Newsletter&utm_campaign=e9478511ea-Newsletter_150818&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a2748d9827-e9478511ea-67132197
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