Design for Implementation (Developing)

70% on-the-job learning

• Learn about your agency’s corporate functions, and who can help you (e.g. legal, finance).
• For a given policy issue, practise describing who has to do what, how, when, where, and with whom, for each proposed option to have its desired effect.
• Find out about the values, needs and preferences of the end users of your agency’s policy.
• Think about the potential impacts of policy change in your sector and how it would affect stakeholders.
• Build your understanding of design for implementation by getting involved in long-term projects that take incremental steps to design and implement workable solutions.
• Build your understanding of design for implementation issues by being involved in a policy project that has a sizeable implementation component.
• Read the Policy Project’s materials on design thinking in its Policy Methods Toolbox.
• Learn how to use prototypes to bring abstract ideas to life.
• Build into your work tests and experiments that can examine what is and isn’t effective in practice.
• Review how a recent policy decision was operationalised, and identify the roles played by different corporate functions and external service delivery channels.
• Learn how to access data on user needs to inform design options.
• Position the user at the centre of the policy problem and consider this at every stage of implementation.
• Talk with senior staff about the lived experience of users, their values, and how these need to be reflected in implementation design.
• Shadow one of your service delivery teams as they roll out a new service or feature.
• Explore and understand the processes associated with User-Centred Design.
• Have a look at the online resources available from the Auckland Co-Design Lab.

20% learning from others

• Engage with a ‘community of practice’ or a wider public sector group to discuss and learn tools and concepts relevant to designing for implementation.
• Talk with your operational colleagues and read your agency’s accountability documents (e.g. annual report, statement of intent) to learn about the operating environment for your agency.
• Learn as much as you can from more experienced colleagues about the end users of your agency’s policy area, and the use of co-design in implementation.
• Spend time in regional offices, if your agency has them.
• Seek secondments or other opportunities to work with partner organisations, such as iwi entities.

10% formal learning

• Attend introductory courses on policy design and implementation.
• Do a course on user-centred design.