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Collaboration
Climate change, inequality, and ecological collapse are some of the biggest challenges we face today. They demand collaboration not only across governments but with communities, citizens, and businesses.
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Assessment
Governments use assessment methods to design and evaluate policies and public services.
Information
How governments collect and share information, as well as co-create knowledge, shapes both policy design and societal trust.
Why redesign information systems?
Changing the goal: move beyond narrow economic goals
The topics around which governments build information capacity influence policy priorities and public discourse. When internal capacity focuses on narrow indicators like productivity or GDP, inequality and ecological issues are easily overlooked.
Seeing the big picture: enable societal collaboration
Weak information sharing between governments and the public obscures decision-making and damages public trust by missing opportunities to mobilise collective action.
When governments only create and hold their own data, they miss the wealth of information generated by communities, businesses, and civil society organisations. This siloed approach wastes resources, creates policy blind spots, and misses opportunities for collective problem-solving.
Being distributive and regenerative by design: move towards holistic and inclusive policymaking
Limited collaboration in collecting and sharing information increases the risk of corruption, which in turn exacerbates inequality and diverts public finance away from regenerative and distributive activities.
Without processes to harness local and Indigenous knowledge, policies can develop major ecological and social blind spots that further marginalise vulnerable communities.
Emerging alternatives: redesigning information systems
Useful resources to help explore how to redesign information systems include:
- The Open Government Partnership provides guidance and case studies that help governments work more effectively with the public to collect and share information.
- Nesta's report Catalysing innovation for missions outside government explores how open data may help governments innovate and foster collaborative actions.
- The open-source software application Ushahidi uses integrated crowdsourcing tools to help communities turn information into actions. These have been used by governments to enhance accountability and identify actions.
- Bogotá’s Care Blocks integrates carers’ perspectives and experiences in the design and improvement of digital information systems that support everyone involved in their management.
Share your ideas and tools
Do you have any other ideas on how governments can redesign information systems? We would welcome your feedback and suggestions.
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