Reimagining public value: A report summary

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This report was authored by Ann Bruton, program manager, North America and Josh Sorin, director of government innovation, North America at the Centre for Public Impact. The Centre for Public Impact is a global non-profit organisation that acts as a learning partner for governments, public servants, and the diverse network of changemakers leading the charge to reimagine government so that it works for everyone.

Through a nine-month applied research effort, King County, Washington and the Centre for Public Impact partnered to better understand public value and how local governments can reimagine their approach to value delivery, disrupting the status quo and ultimately improving outcomes for all residents.

Best quote

“Seeing government as a machine that should be optimised can lead to neglect of the mission for the sake of efficiency. When we focus too much on the doing, we stop asking why we are doing anything at all.”

Key takeaways

• Governments are complex, adaptive systems. Simple, standardised tools are unlikely to be effective guides for creating change and achieving the desired public value. To deliver the outcomes they seek, governments must understand how underlying values, beliefs, and attitudes enable or inhibit their mission.
• To unlock public value, governments can adopt a principles-based approach involving four key steps:

1. Defining purpose, values, & guiding principles,
2.  Identifying barriers,
3.  Experimenting with new ideas, and
4. Embedding learnings & influencing the system

• After engaging in a hands-on program of research, experimentation, and learning, participants experienced important mindset and behavioural shifts including creating time and space for reflection, embracing uncertainty and failure, and focusing on their core mission alongside the day-to-day work. These shifts are imperative for governments to deliver principles-aligned public value for residents.

What’s in this report

This report is intended to provide leaders in local governments insight into the concepts of public value and how to create it. It includes insights from our research on public value, a principles-based approach to creating value that we developed through this research, and a reflection on the emerging influence of this work in King County, Washington.

The work focuses on the institutional, structural, personal, and cultural barriers that prevent public sector practitioners at all levels from living out the values espoused by governments (such as equity, sustainability, and trust) that are critical to creating public value. The report features practical examples from the King County working groups as they explored these topics.

Why you should read this report

This report explores approaches to doing things differently in government that are grounded in both theory and practical application in King County. While it does not purport to be the only way of thinking about public value, the report offers a promising look at how experimentation and learning can disrupt the status quo perspectives that hold governments back from delivering on their missions and bringing their values to life.

Further, this report dives into operationalising equity as a core value and shares the County’s journey in bringing equity into their work more intentionally.

Who this report is for

This report is primarily for public servants interested in new approaches to improving resident outcomes and more deeply integrating equity into their ways of working. It is also for public servants at all levels who are interested in how they as individuals, teams, or organisations can embrace a culture of experimentation, learning, and empowerment.

This report is also for community leaders, funders, and other public sector changemakers who are interested in adaptive, iterative, and experimental approaches to creating public value.

Read the full report here.

This article is reproduced from Apolitical.