Rethinking the public sector

3MindLab Rethinking the public sector

About MindLabIt is challenging times for society and for the public sector. In the face of demo-graphic change, financial crisis, and the looming climate calamity, governments are looking for new solutions to ever-more serious problems. At the same time, citizens have probably never expected more from government than today.

MindLab is a development organization that seeks to involve citizens and enter-prises in finding innovative solutions for society. MindLab is part of the Ministry of Employment, the Ministry of Taxation and the Ministry of Economic and Business Affairs. In other words, we work with areas that together affect the daily lives of nearly all of Denmark’s citizens.

MindLab works together with the civil servants of the three ministries to design better services and policy initiatives. Recent examples of MindLab’s work include areas such as digital “self-help” solutions for the unemployed and strategies to combat climate change. MindLab’s work is cross-disciplinary building on compe-tencies in design, anthropology, sociology, media studies and political science.

Part of MindLab’s mission is to develop and share knowledge about innovation within the public sector. To this end we are hosting a number of Ph.D. projects.

With this small booklet we wish to share the content and objectives of our current Ph.D. research, and to invite you to engage in dialogue with us.

Read more at www.mind-lab.dk or strike up a conversation at www.mindblog.dk

Christian Bason, Innovation Manager, MindLab

4 MindLab Rethinking the public sector

Tænk, hvis nogle steder var lukket land for dem, der arbejder sort. Parken. Stranden. Biblioteket... Det går skatten jo også til.

Ja, det var bare en tanke.

www.skat.dk

“Moonlighters no access”

5MindLab Rethinking the public sector

How is compliance created?

SKAT collects taxes from over 600,000 Danish businesses every year, and knows whether the compliance level of these businesses is high or low, i.e. who is paying their taxes in time and who is not.

However, the question remains as to how compliance of individual businesses are being performed in the daily running of the businesses? The aim of this project is to analyse how the willingness and ability of Danish businesses to comply with SKAT develops. What are the factors (both human and non-human) that effect compli-ance behaviour and how can such behaviour be affected and modified? For its theoretical perspective, the thesis draws its main inspiration from Science-Tech-nology-Society studies (STS) and Actor-Network Theory (ANT). Methodologically, it draws on ethnographically-based research conducted in a number of businesses and Danish taxation units (‘Skattecentre’.)

Partners in the project are Copenhagen Business School, Mindlab, Department of Organization and The Ministry of Taxation (SKAT).

[Karen Boll, PhD student]

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From policy to practice

How can we improve the development of public services, particularly the employ-ment programmes?

The project is based on an ethnographic study of the implementation of selected initiatives in the Action plan on sickness absence which was politically adopted in the Danish Parliament last November. The research aims to shed light on what happens in the translation from policy to practice – that is in the meeting between politics and individual life worlds.

The tools are anthropological fieldwork and theories from social science, which adress the relational and individual factors that characterize the meeting between politics, bureaucrat, and citizen. The project focuses on the unofficial and crea-tive work that takes place in the translation from political action plan to concrete actions in the everyday life of case workers and the citizens they interact with. Further, it explores which elements in the programmes that are resisted and sup-ported – by whom and especially how?

What, for instance, characterize the every day work life in which both case worker, public sector managers, citizens, and doctors need to make the action plan work?

How is succes and a job well-done constituted among the different actors and how does this influence on strategies and concrete actions and decisions?

Partners in the project are the Department of Anthropology and Ethnography, Aarhus Universitet, MindLab, and the National Labour Market Authority.

[Nina Vohnsen, PhD student]

7MindLab Rethinking the public sector

9MindLab Rethinking the public sector

PRojECT UNDER DEVELoPMENT:

New ways to achieve welfareThere is a growing pressure for constant innovation in the public sector. Some of the biggest challenges are to find a way to deal with demographic change and the growing demand for new and effective ways to accomodate the welfare needs of citizens.

This project points to the values as well as the challenges that come along with public-private innovation in the welfare sector. It tries to illuminate the social and personal aspects which in different ways can determine sources of success as well as problematic barriers.

The project involves an analysis of how personal motivation is created and main-tained in a realm of continuous change. But it is also important to analyze public-private dynamics on an actor level.

New methods, work practice and ways of organization will be developed on basis of qualitative case studies of the different actors involved in innovation projects.

Partners in the project are MindLab and Department of Anthropology and Ethno-graphy, Aarhus University.

[jesper Christiansen, MA Social Anthropology]

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MindLabSlotsholmsgade 121216 Copenhagen KDenmark+45 3392 3144info@mind-lab.dkwww.mind-lab.dk

Design: All the Way to Paris

Copies: 300

Paper: Munken Polar 130g. /200 g.

Print: ScanPrint

Photos: Anne Mie DrevesAnette VæringTBWA/Copenhagen

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