Efficient and public-oriented governance needs constant innovation, new ideas and technology. When the 21st century is throwing up newer challenges, innovation is increasingly becoming important for governments worldwide. In this fast-changing world, we need more than the existing ways of developing solutions for increasingly complex problems concerning the public. Innovation in the government will require keeping up with the pace of change, promoting creativity and discipline, technological investments, and fostering learning.
Innovative thinking is a mindset that should permeate the whole government and its various departments to address long-term public and governance issues more efficiently. Currently, government administrators are so busy firefighting everyday issues that they seldom get the time to think about creating innovative solutions or addressing long-term issues in new ways. In order to tackle this, the ‘thinking and innovative solutions’ part is outsourced to consulting firms and young professionals.
However, there is a problem with this outsourcing approach as both consultants and young professionals may lack a nuanced understanding of public administration. Government administrators, on the other hand, have a better understanding of issues and challenges as a result of their rich experience of working in the system. This forces us to ask how we can build a space and an institutional mechanism in the government to experiment and innovate within, where government administrators, young professionals, industry and academia can work together.
At present, we have a ministry and sector-specific think tanks that are tasked with developing technical standards, manuals, and evaluating programs. While they are doing an excellent job with their expertise, we need both a vertical structure and a horizontal structure such as an innovation lab, which cuts across programmes and departments and can work across silos. Provided an enabling environment, innovation labs can scan and identify critical issues, priorities and tasks. They can develop ideas that impact these areas. They can experiment, prototype and finally, through an institutional mechanism, will work with government administrators to drive systemic change.
These innovation labs will be anchored to specific problems and missions and should have multidisciplinary teams comprising product managers, social scientists, sectoral experts, government administrators, young public policy professionals, operations experts, technologists, and even retired administrators who have great institutional memory. They can be tasked with designing behavioural nudges, undertaking process re-engineering, building technological solutions, analysing data systems and existing data for sense-making, designing service-delivery mechanisms, and building knowledge management systems and mechanisms to engage with citizens, among others.
These labs will also serve as partnership points for startups, civil society, industry, and academia to innovate for our future. In the future, such government innovation labs should be established at the state level, too, in order to help states build solutions for complex problems. Ultimately, we will have a network of these labs across the country which together would be a living library of various issues and solutions implemented across sectors and geographies.
Government innovation labs are spread across the world—Accelerate Estonia, Belgium’s Ghent Public Open Space Living Lab, Singapore’s Public Service Division’s Innovation Lab, Indonesia’s Pulse Lab Jakarta, Canada’s Ontario Behavioural Insights Unit, Portugal’s LabX, Chile’s LabGob, New York City’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer, the UAE’s Regulations Lab and City Makers.
In India, the education ministry has its own innovation cell. It has been established to systematically foster a culture of innovation in all higher education institutions in the country, from idea generation to pre-incubation, incubation, and graduating from the incubator as successful startups. The innovation cell is doing great work in encouraging the creative energy among students to work on new ideas and innovate, apart from pushing them to create startups and entrepreneurial ventures.
In recent times, India’s digital journey has been lauded across the world. One organisation that has played a significant part in this is the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), an initiative of the Reserve Bank of India and the Indian Banks’ Association to create a robust payment and settlement infrastructure in India. It has made a remarkable impact on the retail payment systems in the country. It has continuously come up with new and innovative products throughout its journey. NPCI’s products—RuPay, Immediate Payment Service, National Automated Clearing House, Aadhaar-enabled payment system, National Financial Switch,Unified Payments Interface, Bharat Bill Payment System, National Electronic Toll Collection program—have touched the lives of every Indian, contributing towards a ‘less-cash’ society and enhancing the ease of living.
Various challenges of the 21st century require 21st-century answers. The advancement of human civilisation is all about innovations. Only countries which prioritise innovation and new technologies are at the forefront. Government innovation labs have the strong potential to transform the working of government machinery, significantly enhance public service delivery, and enable us to reinvent ourselves as an ‘innovation nation’. Governnovations will lay a solid foundation to further improve the lives of our citizens.
Mitul Jhaveri
Technology and public policy consultant, Union Health Ministry
Shubham Singh
Consultant, Union Health Ministry