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Please be aware that the content herein has not been peer reviewed. It consists of personal reflections, insights, and learnings of the contributor(s). It may not be exhaustive, nor does it aim to be authoritative knowledge.
Title
Please provide a name for your action learning plan.
Capacities for Innovation in the Public Sector
Challenge statement
Challenge type: If you are working on multiple challenges, please indicate if this is your "big bet" or "exploratory" challenge.
Please note: we ask you to only submit a maximum of 3 challenges - 1x Big Bet, 2x Exploratory. Each challenge must be submitted individually.
BIG BET
Challenge statement: What is your challenge? (Please answer in specific terms: "Our challenge is that...”.)
Our challenge is to improve the capacities for innovation in the public sector in two areas: 1) public policy design and implementation and 2) design and delivery of public services to citizens.
Background: What is the history of your challenge? What is causing or driving it? Who is involved? How does the current situation look like? What undesired effects does it produce?
Public sector innovation is about creating new and better ways to achieve positive public outcomes. The increased complexity of the challenges faced by governments has made it imperative for them to improve their capacities to learn, adapt, and innovate, having a lasting and positive impact in both public policies and services. This overarching goal, however, cannot be achieved without seamlessly integrating the new approaches or solutions into the existing systems. . The capacity of the public sector to innovate depends on how much research, development and innovation tools and methods are integrated into government functions, mechanisms, and human capital. As of Today, the Paraguayan government is still facing myriad challenges to put its key research and innovation strategies and tools in practice. Plans for a technological Government led Innovation Lab (the GobLab), for example, has been in development for a number of years, but is yet to launch officially. National R&D programs are struggling to execute their resources fast enough. R&D or innovation units have come and gone in different institutions, without yet achieving long lasting sustainability and appropriation. Our own initiative to create a focalized Public Innovation Lab within the Labor Ministry is still long way from getting to an autonomous and sustainable stage. The current situation is really one of a system that is still in its infancy, with lots of potential and opportunities, but also the undesired effects of making it hard for R&D human talent to find enough stability as to stay within the system. For this reason, since 2019, the AccLab has been working closely with Paraguay’s National Innovation Strategy (ENI), a cross-cutting public-private initiative that is working to strengthen the system. Through this collaboration, we have contributed significantly to the participatory definition of the Nation-wide challenges and roadmaps toward more and better innovation capacity across the Paraguayan innovation system. This collaboration aims to (1) strengthen public-sector leadership, and (2) build new alliances with different sectors, such as business, academia, and civil society, with the objective of articulating collaboration forpublic-policy and public-service innovation challenges. Another key ally in this challenge is the National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT), who has committed significant financial resources to carry out the needed and relevant capacity building programs that will strengthen scientific capacity, as well as directly supporting different forms of innovation. UNDP Paraguay has already started to collaborate with Conacyt through a Memorandum of Understanding, supporting its Social Innovation program, among other initiatives. This will be further extended through a direct cooperation in articulation with the Presidential Delivery Unit, the public institution that is leading the strategic effort of ENI.
Quantitative evidence: What (official) data sources do you have on this challenge that better exemplifies the importance and urgency of this frontier challenge? You can add text, a link, or a picture.
As reported in a recent study on innovation skills within the public sector of Paraguay, somewhere between 20 and 40% of Government’s human capital knows and practices some key innovation skills in their day to day, and around 20% thinks they can explain these skills to other people. When a team dimension is added to the question (“you and/or your team have used a skill”), the percentages are between 6% and 11%. Along with many other data reported by this study, what we see is that there is some awareness and knowledge about innovation methods in Paraguay’s innovation sector, but a gap persists between this knowledge and its practice. Moreover, the same study points to a key factor in the low or ineffective implementation of these methods in practice: the lack of formal training.
Qualitative evidence: What weak signals have you recently spotted that characterizes its urgency? Please provide qualitative information that better exemplifies the importance and urgency of this frontier challenge. You can add text, a link, or a picture.
The qualitative evidence on this challenge comes both from the Innovation Skills in the Public Sector Study, and also from our own solutions mapping, exploration and experimentation work to design and test potential public policies and services, in collaboration with the National Innovation Strategy. Two reports developed by us on Positive Deviance in public sector performance has shown us how community organizations and participation are key to enabling good public servants performance. Both reports are centered, around one public policy and service: the Family Health Units (USF) on rural and urban areas, during 2020 and 2021. Our learning loops with the National Innovation Strategy (ENI)include two pilots that experimented with innovative solutions: (1) Food for all: a pilot project that experimented with access to nutritious food for families in the city of San Juan Nepomuceno, provided by a local agricultural fair led by women. , (2) Flexible Production: a pilot project that tested how technical training and coordinated work between garment workshops could affect the flexibility of the productive processes and t the quality of the final products.
Value proposition: What added value or unique value proposition is your Accelerator Lab bringing to solving this challenge? Why is it your Lab that needs to work on this challenge and not other actors within UNDP, other stakeholders in the country respectively? Why is it worth investing resources to this challenge?
The National Innovation Strategy (ENI) was born almost at the same time as the UNDP Acceleration Laboratory in Paraguay. From the beginning of the relationship, we have cooperated with strengthening innovation capabilities of the system through this partnership, proposing and integrating learning methodologies to generate evidence within the practices, initiatives, and processes promoted or organized by ENI. Specifically, during 2022, we hope to collaborate and add value to this initiative by providing: 1) Advice and mentoring of public sector teams in innovation processes, with a focus on applied participatory action research methods and tools from across the Accelerator Labs Network, to help them define specific challenges and design public policy or service interventions to address them. 2) Advice, mentoring and direct services to implement impact evaluation of public-policy and public-service pilot projects. 3) Knowledge transfer from our own local experience, and the accumulated experience of the network, directly to public servants working at institutions that form ENI. This collaboration will be based on the Acclab team’s experience on the articulation of innovation processes with public sector institutions, as well as in public policy areas such as food security and industrial policy during the learning loops of 2021 (Food for All and Flexible Production)
Short “tweet” summary: We would like to tweet what you are working on, can you summarize your challenge in a maximum of 280 characters?
Through learning-by-doing and by implementing innovation bootcamps and public service and policy pilot projects, we will strengthen capacity of the public sector to take knowledge to action and to evaluate their innovations.
Partners
Who are your top 5 partners for this challenge? Please submit from MOST to LEAST important and state Name, Sector and a brief description of the (intended) collaboration.
Please state the name of the Parter:
1) National Innovation Strategy (ENI) and the public institutions that form its steering committee and the National Economic Team. 2) National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT)
What sector does our partner belong to?
United Nations
Please provide a brief description of the collaboration.
During 2022, our key collaboration with these allies will be articulated through ENI and CONACYT in the context of the newly created Public Innovators Program, funded mainly by CONACYT. We will augment the scope of this program by providing mentorship and advise throughout its duration and by funding 2 experimental pilots, one with focus on public-policy innovation and another with a focus on public-service innovation.
Is this a new and unusual partner for UNDP?
No
Who are your top 5 partners for this challenge? Please submit from MOST to LEAST important and state Name, Sector and a brief description of the (intended) collaboration.
Please state the name of the Parter:
3) Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) 4) CAF – Development Bank of Latin America
What sector does our partner belong to?
Private Sector
Please provide a brief description of the collaboration.
International cooperation, through the IDB and CAF, collaborate closely with the initiative through knowledge products about the sector, technical support and the possible financing of additional pilots based on this first experience.
Is this a new and unusual partner for UNDP?
Learning questions
Learning question: What is your learning question for this challenge? What do you need to know or understand to work on your challenge statement?
How to design, evaluate, and document the effects of a training program and series of practical workshops for public sector officials, with the aim of generating innovation proposals for public policies and services? How to implement and evaluate the impact of an innovation pilot project to improve a specific public service? How to implement and evaluate the impact of an innovation pilot project to improve a specific public policy?
To what stage(s) in the learning cycle does your learning question relate?
Explore, Test
Usage of methods: Relating to your choice above, how will you use your methods & tools for this learning question? What value do these add in answering your learning question?
All the innovation methods mentioned above will be used both for training and to sense, explore, design, test, and evaluate public innovation pilots. New sources of data: What types of new data sources are you using for this learning question? · Administrative data from public ministiries. The experiences and perspectives of the public officials participating in the process. Documentation and evaluation of the training program. Impact evaluation carried out with the data generated from the implementation of the pilot projects
Existing data gaps: Relating to your choice above, what existing gaps in data or information do these new sources of data addressing? What value do these add in answering your learning question?
The data generated by this experience will permit us to produce new toolkits and methodological resources to improve he way public institutions integrate innovation skills in their day-to-day work. The experience will strengthen the use of evidence and data for generating and evaluating public policies and services. The experience will contribute to identifying the gap that currently exists between public policy, the use of public and administrative date, and achievement of the SDGs.
Closing
Early leads to grow: Think about the possible grow phase for this challenge - who might benefit from your work on this challenge or who might be the champions in your country that you should inform or collaborate with early on to help you grow this challenge?
A second training cohort is already planned and financed by the CAF. This next phase can benefit from the learning and impact evaluation results of the first round. At the same time, a training program focused on university faculty members who wish to become innovation advisors will be launched. This learning loop will strengthen our relationship with the National Innovation Strategy and the Science and Technology Council. This can generate more opportunities for collaboration and synergy between the AccLab and these institutions, based on this experience and on past alliances to develop joint innovation processes. Moreover, ENI has a roadmap to create an innovation agency in the medium term, where all these capacities and the talent that will be trained through these programs will find a place for further articulation and promotion. teachers? [CM1]
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16Peace, justice and strong institutions
17Partnerships for the goals
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