It's not the service, it's the model: Rethinking public sector innovation

When public administration thinks about innovation, it almost always thinks about the service itself: improving childcare, improving elderly care. Kuno Schedler, Professor of Public Management at the University of St. Gallen, suggests looking one level down: not the service, but the model behind it.

"We're not talking about policing, childcare, or elderly care. We're talking about the model behind that — the generative structure of how you design a service," he explains. A city council can deliver a service in self-service mode, with the government doing everything itself, or it can use a platform model, like Uber or Airbnb, where the government's role changes entirely. It's the same social need, solved through a completely different architecture.

"Once you look behind the service and look at the model, you can be much more creative. It forces you out of your habits," Schedler says. Tamyko Ysa, Professor of Strategy and Public Management at Esade, puts that into practice with a very concrete exercise: handing out different models like playing cards and asking public managers to reinvent the same service using each one in a playful way. Not necessarily to implement it, but to force people to think of alternatives they hadn't even considered.

Why administration prefers not to take risks

Schedler doesn't romanticize the starting point. Public administration, he says, is bureaucracy, and bureaucracies tend to be stable because their decisions have to survive a potential court challenge: if a citizen isn't happy and takes it to court, the service has to be, in his words, "waterproof." That need for protection pushes administrations to avoid risk, and avoiding risk pushes them away from innovation.

Ysa adds nuance: administration does innovate, but reactively — incremental change to keep up with new social demands. What's missing, she says, is anticipatory, radical, mission-oriented innovation. "Who dares to try a completely transformative model when what's rewarded is stability?" Schedler asks. It should therefore come as no surprise that change and innovation are today a very serious issue for public administration, and that they are not approached lightly.

Digitizing without rethinking first

Here's the sharpest point in the conversation: digitization, done the way it's usually done, doesn't help. Schedler's read is that most public administration just "electrifies" whatever process already existed on paper, without stopping to rethink it first. Once that process is written into software, changing it gets expensive. So it stays. As a result, the algorithm now handles a cumbersome and sometimes non-functional process instead of a human being. For the public sector’s customers, however, this may mean that they still have to contend with the same bureaucratic hurdles, even though the public sector itself is working more efficiently.

Ysa compares it to banking. Traditional banks went digital by copying what they already did. Revolut took the customers by reinventing the service from zero. Her point: the moment to rethink the model is before you digitize, not after. Once the old process is locked into code, there's no going back.

The problem isn't the ideas, it's the (few) people who carry them

None of the models they discuss are lab inventions. Schedler is adamant that every one of them is already running somewhere in the world, some for decades. So if the ideas exist and they work, why doesn't more of this stick? Because public innovation depends too heavily on a minority of specific people — what Ysa calls "serial innovators," who carry that culture with them as they move between departments or institutions. When they leave, the innovation usually doesn't stay behind in the organization. It leaves with them.

Then there's the hierarchy between politicians and civil servants, key to the democratic legitimacy of public administration – but often not helpful for its innovativeness. If an innovation attempt fails, it costs money and sometimes blows up into a scandal. Politicians hate personal risks, so the political cost lands on whoever took the risk: the innovative civil servant. Schedler doesn't dress this up: it's a constant brake. Nobody wants to take a personal risk on an idea that might not pan out. Consequently, many innovations are only implemented by the administration once it is certain that politicians are genuinely behind them.

Democratic maturity innovates too

Asked whether the starting point is the same everywhere, Ysa doesn't hesitate: no. Spain, she says, is a young democracy, and still re-elects public officials flagged for using public money for private gain — a sign, in her view, of a society that doesn't yet demand enough accountability from those who govern. The more mature and demanding a society is, the more responsive its public sector becomes, including its capacity to innovate. She points to the Nordic countries as a reference and places Spain and Southern Europe still on their way toward that model.

Schedler adds a note of caution: concepts don't travel the same way across contexts. When new public management was transplanted to Latin America years ago, it failed in many countries because the administrative and political culture there used the concepts for other purposes, sometimes abusing the freedom those concepts granted. In the German-speaking world, heavily controlled as it is, that same freedom was a relief. Same idea, opposite outcome, depending on where it lands.

So what – no innovation to be expected?

If there are so many obstacles preventing the public sector from being innovative, should we not expect any innovation at all? Both Ysa and Schedler are clear on this point: when problems are pressing, politicians and civil servants consistently come up with original, effective solutions together. Schedler says that, for example, the Spanish response to femicide is frequently cited in Swiss politics as an example of valuable innovation. We must not forget that public administration employs many highly motivated and well-educated people who wish to make a positive contribution to society in their respective fields. It is therefore important to create the right context and implement the right tools so that these civil servants can put their innovative potential into practice within the public sector.