STBY is proud to be a part of the new report by the Design Commission, ‘Restarting Britain 2: Design and Public Services’, launched last week in the UK Parliament.
Declaring itself part-polemic, part-manual, ‘Restarting Britain 2’ is the result of an eight-month inquiry by the Design Commission, based on collecting evidence from the design, academia, government and public service bodies. It examines the potential for the redesign of public services to ensure public services are made both more responsive to users’ needs and more cost effective.
It highlights examples of well designed, user-oriented public services from across Europe and the UK, including a case study from STBY where we worked with the Chamber of Commerce in Amsterdam, looking at how entrepreneurs experience and use business support services as well as case studies from the Helsinki Design Lab, MindLab as well as the UK Cabinet Office’s Government Digital Service.
The report argues for greater use of design principles in key stages of the policymaking process, making several recommendations for policy change within the national and local government. The aim of the report is to help streamline public services, making them more relevant and useful for users while also costing the public purse less. It is aimed at ministers and policymakers in central government, parliamentarians, leading members in local government, senior managers and service commissioners, and communities of practice involved in service design in the UK.
The report is a good read, put together excellently by Jocelyn Bailey and her team at Policy Connect and has been well received, being cited as ‘timely’ by several leading industry experts. It has been sponsored by the Design Council, Art & Humanities Research Council and Capita. You can read more about how the report was covered by various press and other sources including the Guardian, Designweek, Government Digital Service, RSA, Design Council and others. You can also watch a film of the event here.