DPER’s Philip McGrath outlines innovation delivery in the

Delivering innovation in the public service

Head of Public Service Reform at the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform Philip McGrath speaks to eolas about delivering innovation in the public service and the formulation of Making Innovation Real, the Public Service Innovation Strategy.

Contextualising the culture in which the Strategy was developed, McGrath clarifies the misconception of a public service that was not innovative in the past. “It is not to say that we never did innovation before in the public services. If you think back to the global financial crisis in 2008 and the first and second public service reform plans in 2011 and 2014, there were huge amounts of innovation involving massive structural changes. To say that we did not have innovation before would be wrong, maybe we just did not phrase it that way or call it innovation,” he observes.

Reflecting on what was learned from the innovation strategies of the past, the Head of Public Service Reform outlines that many of the previous initiatives were “top-down when we really need them to be bottom-up or part of everyday life”. Following work with the European Commission and Deloitte to assess the public service’s innovation maturity and ambition under the European Structural Reform and Support Service, 12 key recommendations were put in place. Each of these have been implemented either fully or in part.

“One of the key initiatives from that was that we put in place supports for public sector bodies, including guidance on how to innovate within an organisation, how to incorporate innovation into corporate strategies and plans,” McGrath says, adding: “We now have the Public Service Innovation Strategy in place and that has been incorporated into the next phase of Civil Service Renewal, and it will be incorporated into the next phase of public service reform.

“Our vision is to harness the power of innovation to deliver world class public services in Ireland. We settled on an innovation definition — there is much debate in the literature about whether to attempt this because it can inadvertently stifle innovation — but we thought that if we were asking people to do something, it would be helpful to describe it. Our definition of innovation in public services is the creation of a new and viable offering that adds value. Adding value is particularly important for us.”

Philip McGrath speaking at the eolas Magazine Public Services Conference 2021 McGrath identifies four priorities that have informed the writing of the new policy, the first of which is citizen-centric innovation, or “the notion of involving the user in designing your services, listening and engaging with users and citizens and then designing and delivering integrated and easy to use services”.

The rationale underpinning this, as he explains, “is that it is simple as a public sector body to create something that is easy to deliver for yourself, but it may actually not be what the user wants or needs”.

“If you put in more time at the start to deliver something that is user-centric, you will get that back in the end because you will attract less appeals, less complaints and you will have happier users that are more willing to engage with your services,” he says.

The second priority is creating a culture of innovation within the public service itself. “This means empowering our staff to challenge the norms within our organisations and to create leaders with vision around innovation and continuous change within our organisations,” McGrath explains, adding: “We put in place interventions that will equip our staff and give people the mindset and the tools to innovate, like putting in place a toolkit around design thinking or putting in place an innovation fund.”

Third amongst the priorities is scaling up innovation, determining where the public service will connect and collaborate across its ecosystem to scale successful innovations and applying case studies.

“There is a saying in innovation: you should steal with pride,” McGrath says. “If you see something that is really good in another organisation, take it, acknowledge it, and adapt and adopt it.” Here, the Head of Public Service Reform sees further opportunity in the case studies rarely mentioned in these types of plans: case of failure.

“Determining lessons learned is something that we need to get a little better at. Talking about challenges and publishing case studies focusing on initiatives where things went wrong. Sometimes they are the ones that can provide the best lessons for people.”

The fourth and final priority is transformative innovation, incorporating the utilisation of strategic insights, future trends and megatrends and the requirements that these will demand of the public service.

“We also have to support and promote policy for innovation, digital transformation and new ways of working through testing, experimenting with new and emerging technologies and establishing how they can help us to deliver better outcomes for the citizen,” he says.

Concluding, McGrath explains that while the guidance document that has been developed contains fixed priorities, its goals are flexible and the actions are free, allowing organisations to develop plans according to their needs. He also mentions the potential of AI in the future of user-centric public services, and “putting in place interventions for citizens who are not digital natives using common data sets such as EirCodes and PPS numbers, which will make it much easier to connect services in the back end”.

“I sit on a group that is looking at the future skills needs of AI in the economy, and while it is well and good to talk about hiring Python programmers, we have an urgent need around basic digital literacy and how we store data in a structured manner and produce datainformed services,” he asserts.

“While we may think that AI is all about programming and technology, the precursor to that is more important and that is that people understand that getting services capable of being use by AI and other automation solutions require a very strong foundation. Looking at some of those learnings around behavioural insights, anticipating what citizens need and putting in place responses that cater for that will be very important.”

Northern and Western Regional Assembly delivers on key objectives for 2021 despite global challenges

David Minton, Director of the Northern and Western Regional Assembly reflects on regional development in Ireland, the impact of Covid-19 pandemic, and the implementation of the new Regional Spatial and Economic Strategy.

The regional assemblies have become an increasingly prominent player on the public policy landscape. The Northern and Western Regional Assembly (NWRA) has evolved as a key advocate and leader for its region. Covid was a perfect example of this.

The team did an amazing job during Covid. Like many others, we took the opportunity to stand up and support our communities. Within the Assembly there is a really high level of performance, and high trust. The elected members were also quick to hold us to account. That was quite a proud moment, when they understood the value of the Assembly in a crisis and challenged us to respond.

Most significantly was the work done to support the HSE invest over €100 million in PPE for health care and health service providers across the region, through European Regional Development Funds. The PPE helped to protect frontline staff from the Covid-19 virus in hospitals, acute and primary care settings, testing centres, assessment hubs and residential care settings.

For me, this is just another example of effective regional development. Since the launch of the NPF I reckon we’ve gone from being anonymous as a body from a central and local government perspective, to now one where we are recognised by the right people for doing the right things, and we’re getting a fair cut of the coin for doing so.

That’s not necessarily always or readily quantifiable, but from my point of view, the key is that they are credible and push hard. We try to influence the best outcome for our region, and our communities. Why? As a team, we live in the region and we are passionate about its future.

Ireland has one of the highest levels of regional inequality amongst EU member states. Despite the country’s economic growth, a very uneven pattern of success can be identified where some areas of the country are benefiting significantly less than our capital region. This presents a less positive micro picture of economic success.

I’m an optimist when it comes to our future, but the current evidence relating to economic performance is stark. The European Commission’s decision to downgrade the region’s status from a ‘More Developed Region’ to a ‘Transition Region’, while the north and west was the only region in Ireland to be classified as a ‘Moderate Innovator’. In addition, the European Parliament has also categorised the north and west as a ‘Lagging Region’, which is a region with low economic growth which is divergent from the performance of its own national economy. This points to underlying structural issues.

I believe Ireland needs all its regions performing and that’s why we launched an inventive campaign titled Let's Be More and we are backing that up with a €210 million programme of investment through the co-financed European Regional Development Funds between 2021-2027.

This programme of investment is needsled through the new Regional Spatial and Economic Strategy. Denis Kelly, our Senior Planner and Assistant Director and our Planning and Economic Development team have designed a strategy that prioritises investment and adopts a framework towards sustainable and integrated development. The team’s approach has enabled us to become more involved at national level (Housing for All, Climate Action Plan, Five Cities Demand Study, etc) but also cooperate with our constituent stakeholders in the region, namely our local authorities.

The region needs additional investment. Our EU Funds team, led by Assistant Director Gerry Doyle over the next six years is going to focus on key strategic challenges. We know the world is changing, but we know Ireland is changing more than any other. That is why, more than ever we need smarter, greener, more specialised and connected communities, be that within our rural areas, villages, towns, or cities. To achieve that we need to invest in our people, through schemes stimulating our human capital.

Our region needs a radical new approach. We need a new model for regional innovation and entrepreneurial training. We need to accelerate the translation of cutting-edge research into commercial applications at a regional level. Our new Technological University is at an embryonic stage and needs a wider research footprint with more scope to engage directly with local and regional business, industry and enterprise stakeholders. Most exciting is the opportunity for innovative regional partnership’s to improve our entrepreneurial ecosystems, highlighted to Minister Simon Harris in our submission to the new Research and Innovation Strategy.

The investment of over €210 million in the ERDF co-financed programme will help address our structural weaknesses, but also help us create healthier and more vibrant town’s. However, the biggest challenges lie ahead.

Let’s Be More is advocating for a sustained policy focus on the border and west to ensure long-term sustainable progress and economic inclusion. We need to do something immediate and different. The northern and western region’s economy was valued at €22.1 billion in 2019, equating to €24,926 per head of population. This is in stark contrast with the state average of €66,716. The region is acutely exposed and we need to make sure that this is not exacerbated by forthcoming climate and biodiversity challenges.

That’s why in 2020, we recruited an economist in John Daly. John, as part of the Planning and Development and Economic Development team has managed to bring a new perspective to both our policy work and project implementation. His capacity to both access and visualise data in a highly innovative manner has allowed us to advocate in a much stronger way with emerging public policy. Results of this are quantifiable, but we are also seeing new partnerships emerge with the likes of the OECD and our new Atlantic Technological University, advocated for strongly in the Regional Spatial and Economic Strategy.

Recently I spoke at a conference in Sligo where I quoted George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984. The first line of that book refers to the 13th hour indicating a new understanding or a new way of thinking. I believe we are in that time now, and only new systems and thinking will prepare us.

“Our region needs a radical new approach. We need a new model for regional innovation and entrepreneurial training. We need to accelerate the translation of cutting-edge research into commercial applications at a regional level.”

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