Good Practices and Innovations in Public Governance 2003-2011

Good Practices and InnovATIONS in Public Governance
commitment to innovation will motivate public sector employees, encourage
creativity and inspire enthusiasm in them.
• Interaction with citizens: Public sector organisations should constantly monitor
citizen’s needs and expectations in order to respond to citizen’s priorities for
improvement. They should adopt a citizen-centric focus in reviewing and improving
the quality of service delivery. This approach is most likely to lead to
innovations that ensure citizen satisfaction. Consulting with citizens and constantly
seeking their feedback will allow public service providers to review successes
and past performance, and set out effective improvements in the future.
• Organisational culture supportive of innovation: It is a culture conducive to
risk taking, initiative, creativity, learning and change. In order to build a culture
supportive of innovation, people’s involvement in the organisation’s business
should be optimized. Employees should not simply execute commands from
the top, but share in the organisation’s vision, mission and strategy. Employees
should be empowered to take charge, take the initiative and participate in decision-making.
In this culture, managers do not categorically reject new ideas as
interruption, thus giving a strong negative message. Instead, they welcome new
ideas and new approaches and are ready to consider their potential value. Also,
they encourage innovators by giving them rewards, recognition and latitude to
experiment. In an innovative culture, middle management and front line staff
are frequently initiators of innovations, not only implementers. An innovative
culture also assumes a fair performance appraisal system, because innovation
depends on excellent performance by many people of different disciplines – a
culture that tolerates inadequate performance not only begins to destroy innovation
but too often destroys careers.
• Promotion of teamwork: Teams bring together people with complementary
skills and experiences that exceed the capacity of any one of the members, or
of the members collectively, but working independently. Teams facilitate the
breaking down of barriers between genders, age groups, races, ethnic groups,
and geographic biases. The communication skills and network that successful
teams develop, creates the capacity to respond quickly and flexibly to new
problems and changing environment.
• Promotion of lifelong learning: A key success for development and diffusion
of innovation in public service delivery is well-educated and well-trained public
sector employees. Public officials should be trained to embrace a culture of
learning and to see themselves as active agents of change. It is impossible to
introduce innovations in public organisations without continuous upgrading of
employees’ knowledge and skills, as well as without them having access to
recent developments in their respective areas of expertise. Currently, distance
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