One of the key messages from the session was that public sector organisations need to move beyond siloed transformation initiatives and towards ecosystem transformation. 

The Data and Analytics Ecosystem 

Recently, I wrote about why I think it is becoming increasingly important for user-centred design (UCD) practitioners to understand how data moves through organisations.  

The discussion explored the data and analytics ecosystem: the people, infrastructure, services, processes, and governance that enable organisations to collect, manage, analyse, and use data effectively. 

One of the insights that sparked further discussion was the snowball effect of poor data quality, and how we can design for good data quality at source by: 

• Applying or advocating for shared data standards and schemas, and centralised data storage, to enable a single source of truth.

• Considering the downstream analytical impact of data collection, not just its operational use, and working closely with data experts.

Data Transformation 

As government bodies migrate their services to digital and their data to the cloud, we must operate within a complex transformation landscape. Some key challenges for service and data transformation are: 

• The difficulty of transforming analogue channels and free text into data usable for analytics.

• Technical blockers to integrating legacy, interim, and strategic solutions.

• The complexity of working in a landscape where every policy, system, and process is undergoing transformation while change is still managed in silos.

There is an increasing need to integrate service and data transformation. Service design has an important role to play in bringing a system view to help public sector leaders understand interdependencies and ownership across organisational boundaries, facilitate vertical and horizontal alignment, and make strategic decisions about what to deliver and when. 

Systems and Strategic Design 

For designers to be able to add strategic value, two things need to happen.

• First, we need leaders who appreciate the value of understanding dependencies and enable cross-boundary collaboration.

• Second, we need to strengthen service design capability to understand and map complex ecosystems in a way that supports leaders in making informed decisions.

By experimenting with different ecosystem mapping methods (landscape, full-stack, and cyclical) I have learnt how different views can support different strategic goals. I encourage service designers to take their current maps one level up. 

Effective strategic design depends not only on methods and tools, but also on leadership that creates space for collaboration across organisational boundaries. In my experience, senior leaders who actively support shared understanding, systems thinking, and cross-disciplinary working can dramatically increase the value design brings to transformation. 

I have experienced first-hand how leadership can create the conditions for strategic design. My former colleague, Julie Stephens, consistently championed collaboration, systems thinking, and shared understanding across boundaries. Her approach helped create space for design to contribute beyond immediate delivery challenges and into broader strategic decisions.