Innovation in government: opening up policymaking to people-powered insight

Governments need to better join-up policy development with operational delivery to ensure they can meet the growing challenges they face – but such collaboration can be difficult to implement in practice.

In this podcast, experts from the UK, Estonia and Brazil share best practice on harnessing people-powered insight in policymaking, examining how governments are working to understand citizens’ lived experiences and to turn their ideas into public services that really work.

Co-creation isn’t always easy. It often requires the building of trust between a range of stakeholders with competing interests – even bitter contentions – but as we hear, with the right approach, government teams can identify areas of consensus amongst a diversity of perspectives.

Showcasing a paradigm shift from designing for citizens to with citizens, the experts give a range of examples of successful innovations: ones that helped iron out Brexit trade issues in a high-charged environment, led to inclusive budget design at local government level, and empowered children to help their families understand what state benefits they might be eligible for.

This human-centred approach to policy design and implementation takes much experimentation, testing and learning as well as upfront investment in time and money – but as we find out, the benefits can be huge.

This podcast is based on a webinar held on 11 February. Find out more about the speakers on the webinar page: Crowding in innovation: how to open up policy development to people-powered insight, and view GGF’s upcoming webinars to register to join future conversations.

Global Government Forum’s Innovation 2025 conference will bring together government innovators from around the world in London on 25-26 March 2025. Find out more and register to attend.