In October, almost 250 people from over 30 countries representing more than 90 public sector organisations got together in Helsinki, Finland. It had been 5 years since the International Design in Government community met at an in-person conference. The 2-day event discussed the theme ‘Systems change and futures’. For the first time since our community ran the first event in 2018, we also opened the doors to colleagues from academia to add yet another valuable perspective on design in government.
The conference planning over spring and summer became an unprecedented collaborative community effort, organised and coordinated by Julkis-muotoilijat, the Finnish government design community, and supported by colleagues from the City of Malmö (Sweden), the City of Helsinki (Finland), designers from the City of Tallinn and the Estonian government, and Aalto University.
The conference leads, Anni Leppänen, Eze Montenegro, Julia Isoniemi, and Tuire Suihkonen and their team of volunteers, did an incredible job organising and running the conference. They created 7 conference tracks: case studies of change-making, systems, futures, ethics and behaviour, sustainability, Design for Government (with Aalto University), and dialogues—formal and informal networking.
Day 1 opened at Kalasatama, a City of Helsinki building, with a keynote from Aalto alum David Martens on ‘Design for policy – experiments in between futures, systems and behaviour’. In the evening we gathered at Aalto University for Dinner and Stories — a format run by Anni and Sabine Junginger. It allowed participants to speak in depth beyond the fast paced conference sessions. Guided by prompts, the dinner guests started sketching their organisational design setups on the paper table cloth after the main course.
For day 2, the conference moved to Aalto University. Núria Solsona, Marco Steinberg and Seungho Park-Lee, former and current educators of the Design for Government course, started the day with a panel on ‘Design for Government, looking back and forward’.
The organisers carefully designed the participant experience and created a conference participants Slack channel and ran social events pre and post conference. After the conference they created a booklet with links to all talk and workshop materials and recordings, and a Miro board with key takeaways from every session. This all helped create an inclusive, participatory feel and has kept participants engaged and sharing post-conference, too.
Discussing the role of community in long-term service transformation
In an opening session, we continued last year’s investigation and discussion on the long slog of government transformation. Reviewing examples from the UK and from community members from other countries, we collected patterns of community functions. By going through illustrative cases, we demonstrated how the national and international community work of user-centred design colleagues serves various purposes:
- supporting knowledge management in the organisation
- enabling capability building
- facilitating end-to-end definition of services
- advancing delivery coordination
- strengthening culture building
The talk was recorded and can be watched on YouTube. You can also find further recordings from the conference in a YouTube playlist.
In addition to the talk, we documented our findings in the latest Service Gazette editorial article, writing up our recipes for sustained slow change for reshaping public service delivery.
Co-creating the first English-language version of the newspaper since the Rotterdam 2019 conference, we invited 15 more international public designers to reflect on their practice. The contributors offer a broad perspective ranging from service archaeology to making business cases for service design and from designing digital-ready legislation to ensuring full inclusion for vulnerable groups in service delivery. The edition tells stories and shares reports from Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Japan, Finland, Germany, the United States, and the United Kingdom.
All texts are also published online and available openly on Medium.
Reconvening in Amsterdam in April 2025
Our biggest International Design in Government conference to date took place in Rotterdam in 2019. It was organised by Gebruiker Centraal, the Dutch User Needs First community of Dutch public sector professionals.
Celebrating 10 years of their national community exchange, Gebruiker Centraal is inviting international colleagues to another global event. Organised in collaboration with the Dutch Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations and our International Design in Government Community, they welcome design-minded public servants to Amsterdam from 9 to 11 April 2025. The event is open to anyone working on better government services, including policy officers, senior public servants, designers, developers, and user researchers.
The organising team has an open call for contributions, asking for ideas for workshops, presentations, training or panel discussions. Potential topics include accessibility and inclusion, proactive and cross-channel services, behavioural design and user research. We are expecting some 800 participants from around the world – matching the size of the 2019 Rotterdam event. So far, more than 500 people have registered interest in attending. There will be several keynotes, more than 30 breakout sessions, and excursions to Dutch government organisations across several sites.
Over the years, multiple organising teams have run smaller and bigger events in different parts of the world. We collect, document, and help share good event practices to support future organisers. Preparing for the Amsterdam event, the Dutch colleagues already have had an exchange with the Helsinki conference organisers.
Other ways to get involved
Beyond the Amsterdam event in April, more international colleagues have expressed interest in running events in 2025 and 2026. We are currently working with them to shape their ideas. If you’re interested in running an event, get in touch with us: intl-govdesign-team@digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk
We are also working on another collaboration with the Creative Bureaucracy Festival, taking place in Berlin in early June 2025.
For those less able to travel internationally, we have plenty of ideas for more community calls for 2025. If you have a topic of interest or a proposal for a talk, email us about it. Please also tell your colleagues and co-workers about the community by pointing them to the community page.
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