Public Sector by Design

Design Council

• For every £1 spent on this programme, £26 has been saved
• At HMRC, efficiency gains of over £1 million on a spend of about £10,000
• Over 20 public sector organisations have successfully completed the programme

The UK Design Council believes that ‘design thinking’ can benefit private and public sector alike. In 2009 they decided to create a pilot programme to place experienced designers with public sector project teams. I helped develop that programme: Public Sector by Design.

I was asked to lead 3 of the initial 8 pilot projects; working with Sheffield, Coventry and Worcester councils. My role was to be the team’s design mentor: to lead them through a complete service design project – stakeholder research, setting a brief, procuring a design agency and managing the design work through to completion.

Independent evaluation of that first tranche of projects showed an impressive social return on investment (SROI) of 26:1; in one project we were able to show savings of £1.13 million on a project spend of less than £10,000.

The Design Council continue to support the adoption of 'design thinking' within the public sector, see this great video. Their latest work shows estimated savings of £368,000 per year through efficiencies resulting from design interventions.