Abstract:Organizing effectively to deliver great end user services in the digital age is often a challenge for well-established, complex organisations. It often requires a significant transformation in how people work and how teams collaborate. In New Zealand, the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) and Assurity Consulting have partnered to set up the Service Innovation Lab (SIL) as an experiment, with the aim of seeing what value can be gained by creating an innovation environment with support from coaches to help teams work in new ways. The ultimate mission is to help raise the level of collaboration across agencies in delivering better services to New Zealanders.
We feel that innovation alongside an organisation is where some real transformation of mindsets and cultures can be brought about. That’s why we’re excited about SIL as an experiment. The findings should help us find truly sustainable ways to transform how we deliver and refine services for New Zealanders. We’re also very proud to share the findings of our SIL work in Wellington. We hold regular Open Lab events for people to come and see for themselves and feel one of the great outcomes from the work is the pooling of lessons from visitors to the Lab.
Lessons Learned from Your Experience:The SIL experiment was modeled on what we believe is the DNA of successful digital organisational cultures. This means that when teams come to the Lab:
- everyone commits to a set of design principles that shape how we work together (more on this in the next few weeks)
- work is done in the open and everyone is located in a collaborative space, set up for multi-disciplinary teams
- there are a range of coaches available to support teams to get better at delivery
- governance groups meet here and get to connect directly with the delivery teams and their work
We hope that the Service Innovation Lab work we’re doing is one part of the solution. We believe it will certainly help move Integrated Service Delivery in government forward at pace here in New Zealand. We look forward to sharing more about this as we continue the experiment with the Ministry of Education of New Zealand.
