The Service Innovation Lab (The Lab) is now operating at full strength from its new premises at Level 4, 191 Thorndon Quay, after moving out of its previous space because it was deemed an earthquake risk.
As regular blog readers know, the lab was established early last year to provide a collaborative work space and culture for government agencies, non-government organisations (NGOs) and the private sector to work together to design integrated public services. The Lab is used to deliver integrated life event or proactive entitlements services, as prioritised by the cross agency Service Innovation Working Group (SIWG). Other suggested initiatives that could be progressed through the Lab and its team are chosen on how they align to the SIWG work programme or have been prioritised by the participating agencies. If you want to learn more about how you can use the resources, come for a visit and see what we are doing.
The Lab is proving popular for agencies across government and the private and voluntary sectors as a place to work together. While a number of entities have their own labs, they tend to be focused on agency-specific work, whereas the Lab is being used by people from a range of different organisations to get together in a neutral space. It creates a very different dynamic and lets people approach creativity and service design in a totally alternative way.
A great example of cross-agency collaboration, among the range of initiatives underway, is the rates rebate work to make it easier for ratepayers to determine their eligibility for rebates. The team is now considering the lessons learned during the current pilot with Tauranga ratepayers and working with DIA to further develop the service.
In another current project, a cross agency team has also just completed five weeks of discovery work on renting a property and the team is now preparing a report on the findings to present to Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) at the end of July which will include recommended initiatives. The stakeholder engagement has been broad and effective and involved research in Auckland, Porirua and Whanganui.
It’s great to see several government agencies also starting to use the Lab for their agency or sector specific collaborative work now we are up and running again. Remember, this shared space and resources are available to agencies who want a neutral place to undertake workshops or explore some early pre-discovery or exploratory work. Just make contact with the Lab Manager, Grant Carpenter.
The team, working with agencies, has almost completed their planning for the Service Innovation work programme for the coming year that will be progressed with support from the Lab. We will provide progress updates over the next couple of months. If you'd like to stay across our work, please join our mailing list.
