Welcome to Policy Lab

Spring 2017 edition

Who are Policy Lab?

Who are we?We are a creative space where policy teams can develop the skills and knowledge to develop policy in a more open, data-driven, digital and user-centred way.

We were set up in 2014 as part of the Civil Service Reform plan to make policy-making more open.

Since then, we have worked with over 5,000 civil servants, building awareness of innovative tools and techniques, achieving impact on real policy problems and experimenting with new ways of working.

Follow us @PolicyLabUK

Who are we?

We are a small team based at the Cabinet Office, supported by departmental secondees and external experts. Including:Dr Andrea Siodmok, Beatrice Andrews, Kyna Gourley, Andy Kempster, Rupert Cryer, Vasant Chari and Naeema Malik. We work closely with the Future Policy Network across Government (Pictured). This network includes GDS, Behavioural Insights Team, GO Science and ONS.

Who are we?Data, design & data industry experts

Departments

Past staff & secondees

We have also worked with loads of policymakers, designers & innovators

Demonstration projects:Home Office & Surrey and Sussex Police; Ministry of Justice; HMRC & DWP; Department of Health & DWP; Policy Profession Support Unit; Department for Education; DFID; DCLG, DfT.

Lab sprint projects: GO Science, DWP, NHS England, MOJ, DECC, Civil Service Learning, UKTI, BIS and Departmental Policy Schools

Uscreates, Innovation Unit, LiveWork, Studio INTO, Nonon, CurrentWorks, Made Open, FutureGov, Involve, Superflux, Strange Telemetry, Data Design and So Mo.

Cat Drew, Teresa Leitao, Helen Smith, Valentina Lopez, Iban Benzal, Holly McConnell, Dr Lucy Kimbell, Laurence Grinyer.

Purposeful InnovationWe help policy-makers to innovate. Our goal is to deliver purposeful innovation. Through a practical approach we help teams identify new solutions that deliver four key qualities (RISE):

• Responsive to the needs of citizen’s and government.

• Inclusive and open in our approach and outcomes.

• Systemic in our ambition, embracing complexity and opportunities for collaboration.

• Effective in delivering significant measurable impact and learning for the future.

Success!To date we have worked with over 5,000 people from across the country on award winning practical projects and workshops.

As a result of collaboration and new insights our policy projects deliver better outcomes at lower cost.

Our projects are being scaled and achieving savings. The Police Digitisation project is being rolled out across England & Wales, saving £3.7m.

We have also reached many more through the open policy-making toolkit, Policy Lab blog and slideshare which altogether have had over 50,000 views.

What is our approach?

We sit on the edge

We experiment here. If they work we bring them into government and then try to increase their use in departments…

3Ds in policymaking

Design

Data Digital

We combine ‘big’ data from large

datasets & ‘thick’ data from human

observations

We design the Government levers

(e.g. regulation, nudge) that sit around digital

services

We use alternative digital data sets to understand what’s

going on

Our perfect project is the intersection of all three

Why design?Design can:• Save money. Understanding

user needs focuses our efforts on what people need (not what they don’t); prototyping spots errors early.

• Generate transformative ideas. Reframing questions allow new ideas, and creative techniques generate fresh thinking.

• Create people-centred services. User-centred design spends time with real people understanding their needs and designing services with them.

• Tackle complex problems. Design works best on problems which require action from multiple different people.

Why data?Data science uses powerful computer techniques to analyse traditional data sets (like administration data or surveys) as well as new ones (such as social media data or digital data).

Algorithms work far quicker than humans, meaning we can analyse huge amounts of data quickly and find unexpected patterns and insights

Why digital?Digital technologies can help us reach out to far more people to understand their views and crowdsource ideas.

It can also provide much more efficient, accessible and tailored services online.

Finally, providing digital services can create digital data, which allows us to understand how people are using them so we can continue to improve them.

How do we work?

How do we work? Diagnose

Establish scope & reframe questions

Test and refine shared ideas

and proposals

Deliver Discover

Generate insight through big data and user insight

Be open and collaborative

Generate fresh ideas

Develop

Three levels of impact

New skills, knowledge& Tools

NewSolutions

InspiringProjects

Improved Performanc

e

InnovativePolicy

New Thinking

1. Delivering new policy solutions through inspiring practical projects

2. Building the skills and knowledge of the policy profession and civil service

3. Inspiring new thinking and innovations in policy through our experiments and writing.

4 areas of workLab Light

Lab Experiments

Lab Sprints

Lab Demonstrators

Support for up to a year to enable policy teams to work in new ways.

Wrap-around support over a short intensive period of time to accelerate a project.

Short introductions to using Lab tools and techniques.

One-off trials of new and emergent techniques.

• Policy schools• Awaydays

• Mental Health Social Impact Bond (scoping workshop with stakeholders)

• Export Jam (idea generation with 200 businesses)

• Health & social care data (prototyping)• NHS litigation (negotiating viewpoints)

• Supporting victims of crime digitally• Supporting people to manage their

health conditions at work• Preventing homelessness• Increasing uptake of free childcare for

2 year olds• Supporting parents to stay in co-

parenting relationships

• Speculative design to explore the Future of Rail and Ageing society

• Data visualisation of complex evidence

How do we work? Diagnose Deliver Discover

Lab Light

Develop

Full demonstration projects

Lab sprints Lab sprints

Lab experiments Lab experiments Lab experiments Lab experiments

Lab sprints

Some of our projects

How can we support people to

manage their health conditions &

stay in work?

How can we support victims of crime in a digital

world?

How can we meet the challenges of

an ageing society?

How can we prevent and help

people exit homelessness?

How can we create a vision for the

future of rail with passengers at its

heart?

How can we create a vision for the

future of rail with passengers at its

heart?

How can we encourage

businesses to provide better

childcare solutions?

How can we achieve £1trillion exports by 2020?

How can we increase the take-

up of free childcare for 2 year olds?

How can we encourage young people to value their National

Insurance Nos?

How can we persuade people to

use mediation services when they

separate?

How can we prevent

absenteeism in schools?

Our methods

Our tools & techniques

Diagnose Deliver Discover DevelopPolicy canvas

Hopes & fears cards

Challenge setting

5 whys

Data discovery cards

Personas

User segmentation

User journeys

Desk research

Interviews

Data science

Evidence safari

Film ethnography

Service safaris

Crowdsourcing

Ideation sheets

Future speculations

Change cards

Role cards

Service blueprints

‘Backstage’ policy levers

Desktop prototyping

Experience prototyping

Design ethnography

User journeys

Evidence safari

Civil servant role cards

Ideas days or ‘jams’

Speculative design

Idea sketch sheets

Our tools & techniques

Specialist Basic (or Lab in a day!)

Intermediate

User-insight

Data

Digital

Diagnosis

Idea generation

PersonasUser journeys

Service safarisPhoto-based interviews

Design ethnographyFilm ethnography

Data discovery cardsGoogle trendsvisual.ons.gov.uk

Online data visualisation tools, e.g. RAW, Dataseed

Machine learning, predictive modeling, clustering/segmentation

Reading twitter/online foraPosing questions on online fora

Online questionnaires e.g. Survey monkeyOnline crowdsourcing platforms

Online engagement toolsA/B testing

Ask ‘why?’ five times to get to the root causeChallenge setting

Hopes & fears cardsPolicy canvasMetric sheet

Evidence safari

Change cardsBrainstormingIdea sketch sheets

Speculative designPolicy Jams or ideas daysWhat if…Policy blueprintsPolicy intervention cards

Hopes & fears cards

We use images at the beginning of a project to get people using a different side of their brain, and to pick ones that visually represent a hope they have for the project or a fear. It’s a good way to understand the motivations of different people in the room right from the start.

Challenge setting

Challenge setting is our way of finding the right question to answer. It takes many iterations!! By asking why five times, we can get to the route causes of the issue. And by asking ‘how can we?’ (as opposed to ‘how can I?’ we open up possibilities to a wider set of ideas which require more than one department.

Personas

Personas are real or hypothetical descriptions of people who might be experiencing the policy or service. They help us to empathise with people, think about their needs and design policy that fits them. We use evidence to develop them and do a segmentation to avoid them becoming stereotypes.

Personas

Personas are real or hypothetical descriptions of people who might be experiencing the policy or service. They help us to empathise with people, think about their needs and design policy that fits them. We use evidence to develop them and do a segmentation to avoid them becoming stereotypes.

Journey mapping

‘User Journeys’ are a step by step map showing how people interact with services. They can identify the highs and lows and therefore what aspects new ideas can build on or improve.

Ethnography

‘Design ethnography’ is the study of people and behaviours from their point of view. Building insight and ideas by shadowing users or spending time with them and discussing their lived experience in real life contexts. Films and photos can be extremely powerful in creating empathy and generating ideas.

Data science

Through data science we can identify new knowledge, patterns and insights gained from large volumes of data. We can use new forms of real-time, digital data. Data visualisations like this Sankey diagram allows non-analysts to spot patterns and trends. And powerful clustering techniques can segment groups far faster than any human can.

Evidence safari

An evidence safari is a technique we use to get groups of people to explore large amounts of data quickly, spot gaps and build insight from which to generate ideas. Here, we are using evidence in the form of charts and graphs, but also humanised into persona stories that people can relate to.

Idea sketch sheets

We use creative methods to help people come up with new ideas. Sketching can help share germs of ideas during co-design sessions with stakeholders.

Open ideas days

Policy Jams and open ideas days help engage wider stakeholders with policy areas and co-develop ideas. They often start by exploring evidence or asking stakeholders to share their experiences, and then generate ideas as a result.

Speculative design

Speculative design imagines possible (rather than probably or predictable) futures and then creates an object or image from them. This tangible ‘thing’ allows to engage the public in a debate about whether we not we want that type of future, and what we would need to do to get there (or avoid it). Research before situations exist.

Service blueprints

‘Service blueprints’ and ‘Value maps’ can help show the relationship between different parts of the system now and in the future. We have adapted these for Government so they map out how a user experiences a policy, as well as the specifically Government functions (legislation, regulation, funding) make this happen.

Service blueprints

‘Service blueprints’ and ‘Value maps’ can help show the relationship between different parts of the system now and in the future. We have adapted these for Government so they map out how a user experiences a policy, as well as the specifically Government functions (legislation, regulation, funding) make this happen.

Prototyping

An early model or mock-up built to test a concept, so it can be replicated or learned from. Prototypes help quickly build a service or policy idea to test assumptions. These can be made out of paper (like this online crime reporting tool) or tried out in real situations.

Finding out more

Commissioning LabWe are always open to enquiries for new projects. We offer a quick overview of Policy Lab and an opportunity to work up a project idea in an introductory workshop for policy teams who may be interested in running a lab project.

For more information contact: policylab@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

Or read our guide to commissioning Policy Lab.

Further information

We blog all the time here

And we put all of our tools on the Open Policy Making toolkit here

Check out our latest videos from Lab:

Cat Drew shares her insights on design and data in her TEDx talk .

Head of Lab, Andrea Siodmok speaks at the RSA about the role of design thinking in Government.

Further information

Further information

We know this is a long powerpoint but if you are still interested in finding out more here is some more in depth reading:

Our former research fellow Lucy Kimbell produced this booklet called Discovering Policy Lab.

The RSA Journal article on Policy Lab called ‘Designer Policies’