Design Policy Days

When Public Service Is Designed

The Design Policy Days are kicking off at Heimathafen Wiesbaden, bringing together practitioners from the public sector, politics and business with international service design experts. The focus is on how citizen-centred services can be further developed in Hesse, the RheinMain region and beyond – and what a creative, citizen-focused bureaucracy needs to achieve this.

The day brings together experiences, prototypes and debates on public services, creative bureaucracy and service design: how do prototypes from the WDC Year become established administrative practice? What role do participation and co-design play when the state shapes its public services in collaboration with citizens? The findings will feed directly into the Frankfurt RheinMain Design Action Plan. In the evening, the programme takes on an international dimension: the evening event, organised in cooperation with the German Design Council, marks the opening of the Design Policy Days and sets the scene for the following three days of the conference.

In practical terms, the question is: what does a system feel like from the inside? CityLAB Berlin and the EU Policy Lab are each hosting a workshop and offering hands-on opportunities to try things out: the focus is on digital public services, data and AI for the public administration of tomorrow – and on the question of where Europe might stand in 2040. Taking a stand is taken quite literally here.

Speakers:

Speakers include Sabine Junginger, Professor at Northumbria University and a leading international researcher in human-centred design in public administration; Birgit Mager, President of the Service Design Network; and Martin Jordan from the Federal Government’s DigitalService. Representing local government practice are Wiesbaden’s Smart City Councillor, and Tobias Witt from CityLAB Berlin; urbanist Charles Landry, co-founder of the Creative Bureaucracy Festival, will contribute an international perspective on creative bureaucracy – and many more.

Key topics:

• Citizen-centred design of public services
• Digital government: digital services for local, state and federal authorities
• From policy labs to platforms: creative bureaucracy and public-sector innovation
• Best practices from Hesse and the region: from pilot projects to widespread impact
• Methods, obstacles and cultural change in public administration

Programme:

12:00 Registration
12:30–13:45 Lunch, Networking
13:45–14:15 Opening: welcome, opening remarks, agenda
14:15–15:45 Session 1 – five parallel tracks: Digital · Innovation · Pilot projects · Service design · Futures
15:45–16:15 Coffee break
16:15–17:45 Session 2 – five parallel tracks: Digital · Innovation · Pilot projects · Service design · Futures
17:45–18:15 Closing plenary session: Results and outlook
18:15–19:00 Welcome drinks
19:00–20:45 International evening programme: Keynote speech, international panel discussion
21:00–22:00 Drinks & Networking