Public Sector

Last week I was asked to scope what it would take to build a React component library for a national healthcare data platform. As I've been writing the scoping document, I keep returning to a tension...

The previous post in this series discussed the claims that the designer's most distinctive contributions to programme cultures are relational, embodied, and normative: the capacity to work with...

The Design in Programme Management series examines how designers navigate the institutional dynamics of programme-led organisations: the epistemological tension, the cross-cutting value proposition,...

This post synthesises the literature on what happens when Design enters organisations governed through the programme management tradition - the stage-gate reviews, programme boards, benefits...

The preceding posts in this series have established a set of arguments: that many public sector programme management cultures are optimised for accountability and risk reduction, not hostile to...

The previous post argued that governance structures in public sector programmes are better understood as design material than as obstacles to be navigated. But there is a prior question that argument...

The previous post established the epistemological tension between design and programme management: both orientations are legitimate responses to real constraints, but the culture that results from...

Programme management in the public sector - and in the NHS in particular - is structured around accountability, milestone delivery, and risk reduction. These are not arbitrary cultural preferences;...

This post draws on a paper Ana Kustrak and I presented at the NORDES 2023 conference, exploring the metaphors through which the role of "service designer" is understood in Swedish public sector...

I first read The Corruption of Co-Design (Von Busch and Palmås, 2023) when it came out late last year, around the same time I was writing about organisational metaphors and performance and substance....

This post was originally written in August 2022. It has since been revised to include a cross-reference to the later technomagic analysis, where the theatrical function of design artefacts was...