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.
EXPLORATORY
Challenge statement: What is your challenge? (Please answer in specific terms: "Our challenge is that...”.)
Our challenge is to improve the capacities for social and public innovation in a “learning by doing” fashion, with a focus on strengthening the public sector innovation capacities in two areas:
1) public policy design and implementation and
2) design, re-design, and delivery of citizen-centered public services.
Part of this challenge is also to develop R&D+I capabilities in social organizations and academia, through social innovation community challenges that articulate local organizations, communities, academia and other relevant actors at the local level. In addition, through this challenge, we seek to support the development of a new community of people interested in innovation, contributing to the formation of a Paraguayan Network of Public Innovators, generating visibility and building potential alliances with governmental, academic, civil organizations and the private sector.
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.
To this day, the Paraguayan government still faces innumerable challenges in putting its key research and innovation strategies and tools into practice. For example, plans for a government-led innovation technology lab (the GobLab), have been in development for several years, but have yet to be officially launched. National R&D programs have a hard time executing their resources fast enough. R&D or innovation units have come and gone in different institutions, without yet achieving lasting sustainability and appropriation. The current situation is really that of a system that is still in a very nascent stage, with a lot of potential and opportunities, but also with the unintended effects of making it difficult for human R&D talent to find enough stability to stay within the system.
For this reason, since 2019, the AccLab has been working closely with the Paraguay’s National Innovation Strategy (ENI), a cross-cutting public-private initiative that is working to strengthen the Paraguayan innovative 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 for public-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.
As a result of these partnerships, in 2022, the Acceleration Lab offered technical support for the implementation of the Public Innovators Program, which was designed to address the following challenges:
(1) Challenge for the Improvement of Public Services for the Citizens: seeks to articulate and encourage the adoption of improvements in the public services, through the facilitation of the necessary activities for the creation and maintenance of a network of innovators services, in addition to offering high-quality technical assistance to the process of developing proposals that improve these services.
(2) Innovative Public Policies Challenge: seeks to articulate and encourage the development of innovative public policies instead of services, through the facilitation of the necessary activities for the creation and maintenance of a Network of Public Innovators in Paraguay, in addition to offering high-quality technical assistance to the proposal derived from the program.
In the year 2023, our cooperation is still ongoing, and the UNDP Acceleration Laboratory seeks to strengthen and expand the scope of the Public Innovators Program in its 2023 edition.
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 Paraguayan public sector, between 20 and 40% of government human capital knows and practices some key innovation skills in their day-to-day life, and around 20% believe they can explain and transfer these abilities to others. When a team dimension is added to the question ("have you and/or your team used an ability"), the percentages range from 6% to 11%. Along with many other data reported by this study, it can be concluded that there is some awareness and knowledge about
innovation methods in the Paraguayan innovation sector. However, there is also a gap between this knowledge and its practice in the development of public services. Furthermore, the same study highlights the lack of formal training as a key factor in the low or ineffective implementation of these methods in practice.
Report on Innovation Skills in the Public Sector in Paraguay. August 2020
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, as well as 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. 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.
In addition to this, an important source of qualitative information for this challenge is the first edition of the Public Innovators Program, where our experience both in monitoring the program and in the implementation of the
solutions generated by the innovators, gave us valuable inputs to iterate a new edition of the public innovators program. Some of our observations have been documented in a blog, while the analysis of the full experience will be released as a public policy note in April 2023.
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 2023, we hope to collaborate and add value to this initiative by providing:
1) Advice and mentoring of public sector teams in mission oriented R&D+I innovation processes, with a focus on applied participatory action research methods and tools developed by the Accelerator Labs Network and other partners, to help them define specific challenges and design public policy or service interventions and address them.
2) Advice, mentoring and direct accompaniment to implement the impact evaluations 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 of the national government.
This collaboration will be based on the Acclab team’s experience in mentoring and supporting the development and implementation of innovative solutions in the first edition of the Public Innovators Program, as well in the articulation of innovation processes (such as food security and industrial policy during the learning loops of 2021) with public sector institutions.
Short “tweet” summary: We would like to tweet what you are working on, can you summarize your challenge in a maximum of 280 characters?
Learning by doing how to develop people-centered public services and policies through intensive and focused trainings on public innovation for civil servants.
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?
In this challenge, we will use sensemaking and collective intelligence to identify the innovation needs of public institutions. Through human-centered design, we will support public innovators to design innovative citizen-centered solutions. Then, the solutions will be prototyped and piloted to see if they respond to the previously identified needs. All of this will produce inputs that will help answer our learning questions.
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 the 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.
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17Partnerships for the goals
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