Why it's important?
Citizens' demands are continually changing. This requires public organizations to be responsive and agile in building solutions to renew their structures and provide services to society. These solutions need, at the same time, to be innovative and sustainable, providing social, environmental and economic development. Projects that address current demands without compromising the needs of future generations are needed.
Team Training
Application Manual
Toolkit for Design
Metrics for Innovation
The creators of RED4SUS
PARTNERSHIP
The UU and UFRGS have been working together since 2017 in the scope of the Erasmus + LISTO Training Project. From this collaboration, RED4SUS (Redesign for Sustainability) emerged, a program to empower local governments in Brazil to implement innovation and sustainability in their government projects, thus strengthening the work towards the Sustainable Development Goals.
UU
Uppsala University is Sweden's oldest university. Today, it is a reputable academic institution that has a clear mission to conduct high quality research and education and to interact constructively with society, contributing in different ways to a better world.
UFRGS
The Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul is a nationally and internationally recognized institution, regularly ranked among the best universities in Latin America. As a public institution at the service of society and committed to the future, it reaffirms its commitment to education and the production of knowledge, inspired by the ideals of freedom and solidarity.
Innovation in the Public Sector
Innovation
For something to be called innovation, it must necessarily be something NEW and, at the same time, create VALUE. It is more than just new, what we might call invention, or more than something that just creates value, what we might think of as optimization or rationalization. Thus, to be considered an INNOVATION, it must be successfully adopted by people who can extract its value. Thus: "Innovation involves new or better solutions that create value for society, companies and individuals" (Regeringen.se, 2020).
Inspiring
Change
Innovation in the public sector involves significant improvements in the services that the government is responsible for providing. It includes rethinking the content of these services and the instruments used to deliver them. Many innovation approaches create services that are more user-focused, better defined, and better meet user demand. Innovation can change both the supply of services, improving their characteristics, and the demand for services, by introducing new ways of articulating this demand.
Sustainable innovation
There is a great opportunity to promote innovations that incorporate the premises of sustainability in their essence. This can be done by developing dialogue and collaboration between different stakeholders as part of the service delivery strategy. To move towards a sustainable future, we now need to increase the adoption of new competencies, skill sets and mindsets in the workplace. Therefore, new executive training programs are essential for generating leaders with a mindset aimed at sustainable innovation.
Why innovate in the public sector?
Innovation is of growing importance to governments and public service organizations around the world. The dynamic combination of social, political, environmental and technological factors means that staying “as is” is no longer an option. Existing ways of developing solutions for the delivery of public services will not be sufficient to face new and future challenges. It is necessary to go beyond incremental improvements to keep pace with change and, especially, to foresee and anticipate society's needs.
