We believe Scotland could and should become the first country in the world to have a shared, participatory, national, approach to designing its public services. A Scottish Approach to Service Design (SAtSD). But we need your help to do that.
The public sector faces unprecedented challenges: rising citizen expectation of the quality and accessibility of services; increasing demand; and decreasing public funds. Which is why we believe the time has come to help everyone who is involved in designing public services (public, third and private sectors, as well as service users themselves):
- Collaborate more effectively on co-designing services
- Share resources
- Minimise duplication of effort
- Build a national understanding of the lives and needs of Scotland’s people
- Make that understanding available to everyone
We need to make it easier and more efficient to deliver public service transformation and reform whilst making it easier for the people of Scotland themselves to participate in designing the services that affect them.
A shared approach to designing public services could provide: a core common language; a set of common values, methods and tools; and mechanisms for sharing our collective efforts to understand user needs and define service solutions.
Expect a creative session where you’ll have an opportunity to develop ideas on what a Scottish model for service design in the public sector might look like. We want to develop a ‘sketch’, a ‘prototype’ of what an Approach might look like and how it might work. We want to make a start. Once we have a start we can keep going. Once we have a start we can learn together what a Scottish Approach to Service Design should be.
We look forward to welcoming people working in local and national government, NHS, education, social enterprise, the creative industries and the wider community.