A user-centred design framework for policymaking

Bearing in mind the learnings from the two cycles of research and design, I have developed an ideal future-state journey of a policymaking team that has embedded user-centred design methods into their work, building on the current-state journey adapted from Whicher (2018c) in Figure 7. This ideal future-state journey, which is shown in Figure 15, also incorporates the key elements of the government’s ROAMEF cycle described in HM Treasury (2018, 9) and Whicher (2018a). It brings together Moore’s (1995) theory that public value is rooted in the democratic choices of the society, with Van Buren et al.’s (2019) description of how success- ful design-driven policymaking is carried out today, with policymakers unlocking and combin- ing different sources of knowledge, involving more diverse stakeholders in the development of public policy, and testing and refining potential solutions.

On the left side of the framework, the key actors are listed, starting with the party and the minister and then continuing with the policymaking team and operational teams within Figure 15: The ideal future-state journey of a policy team practicing open policymaking

government, and concluding with external stakeholder groups and finally the public. The framework starts by recognising the importance of ongoing research and engagement to the open policymaking process. In this stage (which corresponds to the Rationale and Objectives stages of the government’s ROAMEF framework), the minister encounters an idea or problem and asks the policymaking team to look into it. The issue may be brought to the minister’s attention by any of the other actors but, critically, regular interactions between the

policymaker operational team, external stakeholder groups and the public make it much more likely that the policymaking team will be made aware of important problems or solution ideas when they arise. This ensures that government actions are more likely to be responsive to the real and current needs of the public. Once the issue has been identified and the minister asks the policymaking team to look into it, the policymaking team will build on its existing

relationships, working with the other actors to identify objectives to be achieved and key principles to guide the solution development and implementation processes.

Next, the process enters the co-design and testing and adaptation phases, which correspond to the Appraisal, Monitoring, Evaluation, and Feedback stages of the government’s ROAMEF framework. In the co-design phase, the policy team works together with relevant operational teams, stakeholders from across and beyond government, and the public to imagine a range of possible solutions to improve the situation. During the testing and adaptation stage, the same actors all work together to prototype and test aspects of the solution ideas, and the most promising solutions are developed further, with new features added to reach more people and address more aspects of the problem. The less promising solutions are stopped, and where possible, various promising solutions are combined together.

Between each stage there is communication between the policy team and the minister, to ensure political actors are regularly inputting to and making decisions about the development of the solutions. They are the ones who are directly responsible to the public through

democratic processes, and must therefore play a key decision-making role in the processes intended to generate public value, as Moore (1995) explained.

The key differences between the policymaker’s current and ideal future-state journeys are that, in the ideal future-state journey, the policy team is continuously engaging with operational teams, external stakeholder groups, and the public to conduct research into the key issues faced by the public and issues are then addressed through a collaborative process of co-design, prototyping, testing, and adaptation.

The current policymaking process is shown in Figure 16. In that process, ministers set policy objectives, sometimes after being influenced by the public directly, but often having been in- fluenced by their party, which is of course influenced directly by the public through the mechanisms of democracy. Policy teams then collect qualitative and quantitative information

to advise the minister, who then makes a decision about how to proceed. In the current pro- cess, policy teams tend to rely more on quantitative information than qualitative information, and their primary route to access qualitative information is through intermediaries like civil society organisations and the consultation process, rather than through direct engagement with people impacted by their policies. As Stickdorn et al. (2018, 468) explain, numbers can help identify when a problem exists, and sometimes clarify where the problem is, but qualita- tive information is needed to truly understand why people like or dislike something, or what they want to achieve.

Once a policy decision is made, that information is communicated to operational teams who are tasked with creating or adapting the services that are needed to carry out the policy di- rectives. The current process also typically includes a long period of time — often as much as five or seven years — during which services are launched and run by operational teams but lit- tle or no feedback is collected or shared with policymakers. Policy reviews are often man- dated by law, or occur when mounting public opinion demands it, but this can be many years after a policy first begins to be implemented. By this time, a great deal of opportunity to learn and adapt both policies and services has been missed.

Figure 16: The current policymaking process

I have also developed a modified process diagram — called the “Open Policymaking Frame- work” — showing how policymakers should operate in the ideal future state described above. This framework demonstrates how services and policies should be subject to continuous eval- uation and adaptation based on direct research and testing with the public and regular infor- mation sharing between operational teams, policy teams, and ministers.

The “Open Policymaking Framework” is shown in Figure 17 below. Just as in the current pro- cess, policymakers must balance policy objectives set by ministers and informed by the public with qualitative and quantitative information collected with and about the public, in order to advise ministers about policy issues. But in the proposed new framework, that process is in- formed by relatively equal measures of qualitative and quantitative information, and the qualitative information is collected more directly from members of the public impacted by the issue. Ministers must make the final decisions about each policy issue, as ministers are ul- timately the ones held responsible by the public for the generation of public value through democratic events (Moore 1995).

Once those decisions are made, however, the policymakers would work closely with opera- tional teams, who develop and implement services, to research and test how well those ser- vices are enabling the public to achieve their aims and meeting the department’s objectives. This research and testing would provide the qualitative and quantitative information needed for the operational teams to adapt their services to better meet the public’s and the depart- ment’s objectives, and for the policymaker to advise the minister about how policies should be adapted to better meet those objectives.

Figure 17: The Open Policymaking Framework

Critically, this would be a continuous process, not a process that is triggered by legal require- ments or external events. In this way, operational staff and policymakers would be regularly receiving feedback about which aspects of policy decisions are generating the expected re- sults to help achieve the policy objectives, and which ones are not. Services and policies could all be adapted, as and when necessary, to continuously adjust course to ensure society

is heading towards the preferred policy objectives. The regulating effect of democratic events would also ensure that the policy objectives chosen represent the overall collective preference of the society, which Moore (1995) says is the best determinant we have of how to generate the most public value.