Enabling conditions for public sector innovation

In June 2008, the Cabinet Office published Excellence and Fairness: Achieving world class public services.

In the foreword, Gordon Brown writes "And above all, government must embrace a new culture that celebrates local innovation and ends once and for all the view that the man or woman in Whitehall always knows best".

In 2007, the National School of Government, the Young Foundation and the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) ran a conference on creating the conditions for public innovation, aimed at senior civil servants and innovation leaders across public services . The aims were to generate awareness of why innovation in government and the public sector is necessary, share learning on what supports innovative practice and what does not, highlight the role of government in supporting social and public innovation, provide examples of where innovation was successfully diffused through particular public services, and air future governance frameworks that would create the conditions for innovative behaviour, process and outcomes in the public domain.

The report from the conference - Creating the Conditions for Public Innovation - makes recommendations on how innovation might flow better around the public system. It recognises that Departments will be asked to show how they are managing innovation, what resources they are providing, how are they judging what to invest, demonstrate a pipeline of new ideas, showing how they are bringing in skills and networks to put ideas to work, how are they engaging the front-line and users, and how are they finding out about what works - and then spreading it. While recognising that governments sometimes try to innovate from the top-down, others import innovations from other sectors (including business and non-Governmental organisations) it also recognised the importance of direct involvement of users and consumers in reshaping services, and called on leaders to provide space for innovation, to take risks and open doors for innovators.