reboot britain - digital disruption

8/8/2019 Reboot Britain - Digital Disruption

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DigitalDisruptionCan digital innovation reboot our public services?


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Part 1: Time to get real 3

Part 2: How can we Reboot Britain? 6

Part 3: From the margins to the mainstream 21

Part 4: Ten ways to Reboot Britain 26

Endnotes 30

Acknowledgements 31

Contents

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Social media. Web 2.0. iPhone apps. Twitter, Facebook, eBay,YouTube, Wikipedia. You cant move these days withoutencountering articles, events, conversations even pamphlets

about all these trendy new tools and how theyre changing the worldwe live in. We tweet and text our way through daily life, and eventhe most reluctant among us are forced to sit up and take notice.These technologies are here now, they arent going anywhere in theforeseeable future, and they have already transformed how we talkto each other, how we hear and share news, how we work and howwe organise ourselves.

This is about more than tools though: the reach and power ofthese technologies is turning them into infrastructure, the platformsthat we all take for granted and use in every part of our lives. Weare witnessing the construction of a new social infrastructure, as

fundamental a change as the introduction of the railways or thehighways and potentially even more transformative. Compare theUK today with a country with no cars, buses, trucks or trains, andyou have some sense of how radically different things are about tobecome.1

The social web is already disrupting our society

Changes in infrastructure change everything. The impact of the

digital revolution has been felt most in the commercial world, fromthe growth of huge new consumer markets for smartphones andonline gaming, to the radical reshaping of the media as the internetdrives down prices and creates radical new competition. Old businessmodels are made unsustainable, forcing organisations to innovate todevelop new ways of bringing value to customers.

The impact is being felt in every part of our society, from theexpectations of the voting public to our changing attitudes to workand careers. Many of these tools began in the social world, notnecessarily with philanthropic intent, but certainly from the self-organised communities of newsgroups, peer learning, activism and

academia. Social media tools may be commercial in their popularexpression, but fundamentally they began as, and remain, tools fororganising society.

For several years now, people have been talking about how the web,and particularly the connective and organising potential of the web,can be used to improve society, solve social problems, and redesignour world for the better. Digital tools are starting to transform how

Part 1:

Time to get real

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we learn, how we care for ourselves and each other, and how weaccess public services.

However, such widespread changes in society represent not justan opportunity for public and third sector organisations, but also ahuge challenge. Public bodies now need to understand and respondto increased expectations, changing practical constraints, greatercultural diversity and increasingly active and demanding digitalcitizens. This challenge is already here, and it isnt going away.

The forthcoming austerity for public services will changeperspectives on disruption

So, whats new? The internet has had a disruptive effect on muchof our society, but the public sector has so far survived relativelyunchanged by new technologies. Councils create websites, butthey dont correspondingly close call centres or benets ofces.Government agencies use Facebook and MySpace in their

campaigns, but they still use all the other channels too.2

Up to now, the focus for digital innovation has been on theadded value that social media tools and digital platforms can

deliver: building communities around service provision,inuencing and educating the public, speeding up accessto information and services, helping ofcials and citizensshare knowledge and campaign for change. All of these

things are happening at the margins, creating excellentadded value for people in need, but rarely replacingexisting service provision. Few people haveargued that the success of NHS Direct should

be measured by how many GP surgeries it couldenable us to close.

Until now. We are all inescapably aware of thenancial challenges that confront the public sector. A

considerable proportion of the vast public sector decit expected to peak at 70 per cent of GDP in 2013-14 is

thought to be structural and will not be reduced by a return to

economic growth. The UK Government has pledged to acceleratedecit reduction over the next parliamentary period, with the mainreduction coming from cutting public spending rather than raisingtaxes.

In the Emergency Budget in June 2010, the Government announcedthat up to 61 billion in savings would need to be made by 2014-15,based on further reductions in departmental spending of 17 billionon top of the previous Governments decit reduction plan. TheBudget requires some public service departments to save as much as25 per cent of discretionary current spending, which will result in thescaling back of to public services.3

Meeting these savings targets will be profoundly challenging. Cutsto public services will be acutely felt by those who depend onthem, and result in service closures and staff cuts up and down thecountry. Making these savings will mean the rst ve consecutiveyears of real cuts since 1948-49.

In times of scal and economic crisis, complex, long-term social

issues are increasingly highlighted too. The UK is already dealingwith poor mental health, rising rates of obesity, an ageingpopulation, low attainment and engagement in schools, andentrenched joblessness and long-term unemployment. Just asthe nancial impact of the recession hits public services hard, sothe social impacts of job losses, the stress of social change andtransition, greater risk of poverty, more pressure on families andsocial care and so on, will push demands up even further for serviceswhich are already struggling to meet existing needs.4

In particular, there are high-cost, high-anxiety areas such assafeguarding children, anti-social behaviour, family support, youth

crime and community safety which are vital to protect, as well asincreased pressure on our welfare system to prevent vulnerablepeople from dropping out of society entirely.5

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The crisis facing public services demands a radical shift

The crisis facing public services is such that it calls for a radicalshift in the way services are provided and organised. It changes thenature of the conversation, from one where innovation is aboutimprovement and excellence, to one where innovation is abouttransorming the way services operate. Technology has to be a toolin the box, and its underpinning infrastructure part of the long-termvision of how services work in the future.

Innovation with technology does not mean more technology, and itdoesnt mean more services. In this spending context, it means usingexisting technologies to deliver current services in different, cheaperways. It is about looking at the assets we have, inside and outsidegovernment, and guring out how they can be used to enable newmodels of delivery and alternative channels for access. In a timeof drastic cuts, innovation must offer more than improvement andefciency alone; it becomes the driving force for a radically differentand more effective approach to service delivery.6

This is the moment when new approaches on the margins move tothe mainstream. The urgent pressure for reform means innovatorsneed to respond quickly. The stark choice facing commissioners willsoon be to do things in new ways, or stop doing them at all.

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Digital technologies are disruptive in that they enable newforms of provision that meet user needs better and at lower cost.Successful internet tools are scalable, personal, collaborative and

can be extraordinarily cheap to develop. In the commercial world,the web disrupts traditional services by cutting out the middle-man,providing greater exibility and offering people goods and serviceswhich are highly tailored to their needs. In shor t, they put theservice user in control.

The internet cannot alone heal the sick or collect bins, but it can beused to assist the design and delivery of our public services. Weband mobile platforms that offer people the ability to interact withone another and with information and institutions are particularlyuseful for enabling the kind of action that could prove central todelivering radical efciency.

NESTA has launched Reboot Britain as a programme to test howdigital technology can support the design and delivery of the nextgeneration of public services. It shuns the traditional model of rollingout large-scale and expensive IT infrastructure projects. Instead,Reboot Britain explores how the collaborative and open nature ofdisruptive, collaborative technologies can be used to build betterand cheaper public services.7

At the heart of this initiative is the belief that collaborativetechnologies can give our citizens and front-line workers a muchmore powerful voice to change things. Effective public services

in the 21st century will be designed and delivered when, how andwhere our citizens need them and technology has a key role to playin enabling this approach.

Reboot Britain has chosen to support projects in three areas whichare of high social anxiety, and where current provision of publicservices is often very expensive:

Families supporting and enabling families to move out of crisis.

Young people helping young people at risk or not in educationor employment.

Harnessing local communities engaging communities in socialaction and decision-making.

Part 2:

How can we Reboot Britain?

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There are four key elements underpinning these projects:

1. Developing a better understanding of service users needs,reducing costs by eliminating those aspects of services that arenot helping.

2. Accessing and unlocking non-state resources, by usingavailable infrastructure, working with volunteers, advocates, andcommunity groups.

3. Intervening early by using technology to surface patterns ofdemand.

4. Scaling services using social media and other digital tools todeliver more personalised services to large numbers of users.

The following examples are case studies of NESTA-supportedprojects. They are being designed and prototyped in liveenvironments. Once they have been deployed and tested, we willreport on their impact. In the meantime, the projects are uncovering

valuable insights and prompting questions about how disruptiveservices can be integrated into mainstream delivery.

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Many problems and solutions start and end within families.Some families are so close to crisis that they are in frequentcontact with local services. These families can be hardto reach, but take up a considerable amount oflocal government time and are of high concern tofrontline workers and service staff.

There are an estimated 110,000 to 150,000families deemed to be in crisis in the UK.Supporting them through a raft of problem areascan be resource-intensive, with large amounts oftime (a ratio of up to 80:20 per cent) going onadministration. This can be difcult for familiesbounced back and forth around different services,especially when they are feeling vulnerable.Professionals are frustrated with this too, and this wayof working often means that little sustainable impact ismade on families abilities to come out of crisis and leadbetter lives.8

The Reboot Britain programme has supportedapproaches that might help to reverse this ratio and put therelationship between carers and service users at the heart of delivery. They offer new waysof tapping into other sources of support such as family friends and the resources of families themselves.Collaborative tools such as social media are being trialed to improve the responsiveness of these services.They are being developed to bring people together to share experiences and reduce bureaucratic processes.

Project:

Families

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Mental health conditions affect so many of us. At any one time,just over 20 per cent of working-age women and 17 per cent of

working-age men are affected by low-level mentalhealth conditions such as depression or anxiety.These can become serious, and have a seriousimpact on propensity to work, family life and socialenvironments.9

Sidekick Studios is developing Buddy to reduce thecost of mental health care by creating better-timedinterventions from professional services, and byencouraging the use of personal social networks.

Designed around an internet-enabled digital radio,Buddy is a social care service for peopleliving in the community who have long-term mental health conditions. The deviceallows patients suffering from depressionto broadcast their mood to a selected and

secure social network. Users turn a dial onthe Buddy radio to share how they are feeling,and the service updates their status in real time via email,SMS, Facebook and Twitter to their support network offriends, family and mental health carer. This creates a new

level of responsiveness andcollaboration across professionaland non-professional carers.

The service is currently beingpiloted with the South Londonand Maudesley NHS Trust, and

is being co-designed with mental health users, their care teams andtheir peers.

By harnessing networks of professional carers, friends and familiesto work alongside each other, Buddy aims to provide better real-time support to individuals, using data collected to co-ordinate thecommunity response, increase staff productivity and encourage the

ultimate goal: self-management.Buddys goal is to change theway care is delivered, reducingdemand for professionalinterventions and enabling

genuine care in the community.

Case study:

Buddyby Sidekick StudiosTrialled with SLaM

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The safeguarding of children at risk of physical or mental abuse isarguably a public service in crisis. Following a number of high-proledeaths, unlled vacancies for care professionals in this sector arehigh, morale is low and the requirement to log and communicatehighly astute and sensitive data has led to social workers feelingover-burdened by systems, reducing their available time withfamilies.

Safeguarding 2.0 aims to nd a better way ofworking. The project is a design partnership led byFutureGov that seeks to understand how childrenssafeguarding services might be made more responsiveto both front-line workers and families needs byusing features of web social networks. Tools thatallow the quick distribution of information acrossnetworks and highlight the amount of activitysurrounding the child may act as an early warningsystem to carers in order to enable earlier and betterintervention.

Phase One of the project, which ended in May 2010,has researched and scoped potential solutions inpartnership with Westminster Council, Headshift,ThinkPublic and the Local Government Information

Unit (LGIU). Research was carried out to understandthe needs of frontline workers, children and safeguarded families.A review was also carried out of the systems and tools in use, with

some recommendations for using simple web tools to link data toshow a better picture of each family case.

These tools aim to create much greater practical value out of datathat frontline workers already gather and use.

1. Better visualisation of case information to surface problems,

allowing rapid absorption of information, identifying hotspotsmore quickly, and freeing up time for social workers to spendwith families.

2. Development of tools that allow comparisons of data, to rapidlycheck progress or deterioration.

3. Tools that better connect the network, and connect earlier, toallow the sharing of key information.

4. Technology that can be extended to other platforms such asmobile to make

best use of frontline workers time.

FutureGov is nowlooking to partnerwith a local authorityto pilot these solutionsin a live environment.

Case study:

Safeguarding 2.0 by FutureGov

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The need to provide guidance and support to the UKs young peoplewho need it the most is a key priority for our public services. Settingyoung people back on the right track, by raising their aspirations

and keeping them out of trouble, not only helps toensure a more cohesive society, but it also can bringdramatic cost savings to the public purse. It is vitalto offer young people ways for them to get back into

work, education or training and, if they get into troublewith the law, to keep them out of prison. 10

Traditional public services have focused on developinghard skills and there is a place for this. But RebootBritains projects for young people have softer skills,

relationships and mediation at their heart. They dothis through mentoring, rehabilitation and restorative justice

approaches.

Our supported pilots all use proven models, but the use oftechnology enables a more scalable approach, on platforms that

are relevant to young people and which, by their nature, offer thepossibility of rich data to further develop service design.

Solutions need to see our young as capable assets, who can bemobilised to build a better society. Our future economic and socialprosperity depends on them and so we cannot afford to leave thembehind.

Young People and Crime some facts

Seventy-one per cent of children in custody are involved with orin the care of local authority social services before entering prison.Eighty-six per cent of boys and 79 per cent of girls entering prisonhave already been excluded from school.

The UKs total prison population is at burstingpoint 85,000 in 2010. The cost per prisoneris 45,000 per year. The cost per place in asecure childrens home is 215,000 per year.Just imposing a prison sentence alone costsapproximately 30,500.

The majority of prisoners will go on tore-offend within two years of leaving,costing the economy 9.5 billionto 13 billion. Up to 10 billion ofthis is attributed to short-sentenced

prisoners. It is much the same picturefor children 74 per cent of childrenreleased from custody in 2008re-offended within one year.11

Project:

Young People

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Tagging young offenders is a potentially challenging public serviceissue. Despite the evidence to show that it does help to preventre-offending, the thought of being tagged often raises civil libertyconcerns, especially with young people.12 However, there are signsthat demand is there. Ninety-eight per cent of the young people onthe trial for Buddi (46 out of 47 participants) volunteered to test it.

Current technology that puts offenders on curfew and connes themto a single place for long periods of time can isolate users from goodinuences as well as bad.

Buddi works with prolic young offenders and pilots the useof miniaturised GPS tagging alongside a proven communityrehabilitation programme Causes and Consequences, run byHertfordshire Police.

The Causes and Consequences programme, also known as C2, wasdeveloped in 2007 and aims to help prolic offenders (average of152 crimes a year each) to halt the drug, crime, prison cycle and

return to productive lives, and shifts the emphasis from enforcementto relationships.

C2 addresses users needs by providing drug rehabilitation andmentoring to young offenders, helping to deal with the root causesof repeat offending.

The tagging supportsthe core activity onthe programme. CPSOfcers work with theircharges to identifysuitable candidates andonce accepted on to the programme their sentence is deferred up to

six months. They then take part in drug treatment, life skills trainingand employment experience.

The miniaturised tags are socially important too; research showedthat large bulky tags were unpopular and socially stigmatising,reducing compliance. The miniaturised GPS tags offer greater levelsof discretion.

The use of data, including real time data, from the GPS meansthat information can be used in various ways, to increase theeffectiveness of rehabilitation and support earlier intervention. Forexample, it can be used by the mentors and drugs counsellors on

the programme to provide behavioural data to support rehabilitationaround habits pinch points, success factors and trouble spots.

These data can also be shared and used to feed back into therenement of C2 and other rehabilitation programmes to increasetheir effectiveness.

Case study:

Buddi by Sara MurraIn association with Hertfordsire Police

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Restorative justice has been shown as an effective way of reducingreoffending. Government research has demonstrated that it provides85 per cent victim satisfaction, substantially reduces the frequencyof re-offending, and provides value for money by saving thetaxpayer 8 for every 1 spent on restorative justice.13

Currently, access to restorative justice programmes is patchy. Recent

workshops with case workers at Southwark indicate that 70 per centof offenders entering the youth justice system dont take part inrestorative justice work. Of those that do, only 5 per cent are able tomeet face-to-face and 25 per cent undertake some type of indirectcommunication such as letters.

Safe Ground is piloting a new way of enabling many more peopleto feel the benets of restorative justice through new channels. Atthe centre of the project lies a moderated multi-media website tosupport Youth Offending Teams in their restorative justice work.Videos can be used to exchange communications between victimsand offenders, giving the ability to interpret more genuine emotions,

as well as being an easier medium for some offenders to take part in.

It is thought that this can also contribute to people going on to takepart in more face-to-face mediation, which is the most benecialform of mediation.

After the reparation process offenders will make good such asrepairing broken windows or contributing usefully in the community.Victims often dont get to see the benet of this; the Safe Ground

website will enable offenders to demonstrate their reparation byposting photos and videos online.

The feedback from both victims and offenders in the process willalso be used as a means of encouragement to introduce morepeople to the process. For youth offending teams these tools free upcritical time, as the process will be much easier to manage, reducingadministration time, and reducing practitioners case loads.

Safe Ground will be tested with South Devon, North Devon andExeter Youth Offending Teams, and Restorative Technology is alsolooking for partners.

Case study:

Safe Groundby RestorativeTechnology LtdIn association with South Devon, North Devon and Exeter YOTS

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There are approximately 900,000 young people from 16-24 notin employment, education or training (NEETS). But efforts to getyoung people away from benets and towards a better future have

not generally been successful on a large scale.14

NESTA is working in partnership with one of the UKsfastest-growing charities BeatBullying to develop

ReSync, a public service designed around the web. This isthe place where we know young people go to rst for theirhelp and advice.

At the heart of the service is a safe, online socialnetworking site that supports excluded and vulnerableyoung people with trained mentors, counsellors andadvisors, who guide and support disengaged youngpeople and signpost them to specialist help and serviceswhere needed.

Key to this is helping young people to develop soft skills,

such as communication skills, and the ability to managerelationships, to provide the right foundation for learning hard skills such as a trade.

Importantly, ReSync enrolls young people to run the service.Mentors are trained young people from across the UK, which givesthem the opportunity to develop and use soft skills to support theirpeers. This is an approach that has already been used successfullyon BeatBullyings anti-bullying website, www.cybermentors.org.uk,

and it allows a model for scaling up the service as it becomes morepopular.

By doing this, ReSync could become integrated into existing localservices provided by the state.

ReSync is being piloted in Kent, Greenwich, Cornwall and Lambeth

and is currently seeking additional local partners to trial the service.

Children not in education, employment or training(NEETS) - some facts

In May 2010 the Ofce of National Statistics showed a rise inNEETs, to just under a million 16-24 year olds out of education,employment or training. This represents a rise of 18,000 on theprevious three months.

The economicand social costs,particularly for long-term NEETs, are high.LSE gures put costs at97,000 per NEET overthe course of a lifetime an annual cost of3.65 billion.15

Case study:

ReSync by BeatBullyingsIn partnership with Kent, Greenwich, Cornwall and Lambeth Councils

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The co-production of public services between traditional providers andthe communities that use them is a practice that is gaining credibility.16

By harnessing the resources, capabilities and insights of our citizens,services are not only made more relevant to their users, but can alsooffer potential cost savings.

Collaboration is at the heart of our projects. The use of technology

enables people to engage better with service providers, be theylocal authorities, volunteers, the police or Members of Parliament.

The internet has the power to bring communities of interest togetherfrom around the globe to deliver solutions, while portable devices are

increasingly being used to provide responsive services that have a particulargeographical focus.

Harnessing Communities

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Over the past few years there has been a growing sense ofdisillusionment in the transparency of Parliament and its

elected ofcials. Revelations and the resulting scandal overunnecessary expenses claims means that our trust in MPshas never been lower.

The recently elected Parliament, with an unprecedented

number of new MPs many of them younger and adeptwith technology offers an opportunity for a step-change

in democratic engagement.

MyMP is a smartphone application thatallows better communication between

MPs and constituents. The free applicationconnects to a specially built website for each

of the MPs, where they can canvas opinionon local and national issues, share local news,

publish events, plans and surgery times. MakingMPs easily accessible, and allowing constituents to

provide opinion on local issues, is a way of encouraging abetter democratic interaction with local communities.

MyMp presents an opportunity for people to engagewith politics and local issues on platforms that areincreasingly second nature to them.

www.my-mp.org.uk

Case study:

MyMPsBy Public Zone

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Many inner-city areas across the UK sufferfrom interlinked problems, including crime andlow levels of real and perceived safety. Yetthese problems often go unreported becauseof barriers, including anonymity, perceivedresponsiveness and access to the right point ofcontact.

Where Do I Feel Unsafe? is a pilot programmein Gorton, Greater Manchester one of thehighest wards for multiple deprivation in theUK designed to increase the reporting ofthese problems. The ultimate aim is to helpresidents feel safer in their communities andfeel that they can take action where they dontfeel safe.

The project uses text, a technology that is widelyused even in more deprived areas. Residents are

encouraged to report areas where they feel unsafein their community to one single reporting point, regardless of theissue.

This could range from reports of broken street lighting, vandalism,and suspected drug dealing. Rather than a directory of differentnumbers for different services, this pilot focuses around a singleneed of residents to increase a feeling of safety, and provide asimple route to addressing concerns.

Police community ofcers receive

the text messages via acomputer interface, creating adigital trail of incoming textsand responses. Ofcers thenliaise across a range of publicservices to get problems xed,with reporters given updatesvia text message.

Were particularly interested inwhether this tool can engageyounger community membersin ways that feel second natureto them.

Case study:

Where Do I Feel Unsafe?By Blink Media in partnership with Greater Manchester Police

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Co-creation of public services with users can help to deliver morerelevant cost-effective services. This pilot looks at how digital toolscan be used to support co-creation approaches between localauthorities and service users.

Kent County Councils innovations team is developing an innovationprocess Transformed by You to engage public service users and

digital innovators in the design and prototyping of public services.Transformed by You brings together developers and service-users onan issue such as NEETs to develop solutions. Kent is interested

in tools that can help maintain those relationshipsafter the event to support on-going co-productionefforts.

NESTA has funded Adaptive Labs to work withKent to develop a web-based platform that canact as a communications bridge between serviceusers and developers. The tool will allow users totrack the progress of ideas and services beingdeveloped. Service users can comment on theideas and prototypes, vote, categorise and tagtheir comments and then share them acrosssocial networks.

Ideas can be submitted andorganised by high priority areas.This process will also be usedto identify the best routesto mainstreaming successfulprototypes.

Engaging digital innovators

Transformed by You enables digital innovators, who meet particularchallenges, to engage with Kent County Council on a rotationalbasis. It acts as a means to showcase talent and provides smallerorganisations that would otherwise struggle to t within a traditionalengagement process, to get better access. The process also allows

Kent to sound out the market.

Case study:

Transformed by You by Adaptive LabsIn partnership with Kent County Council

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This project run by Slivers of Time enablesvolunteers to be managed much moredynamically in a safe on-line setting.The web-based platform provides aninfrastructure that enables local authoritiesand the voluntary sector to better supportservice provision, giving them a tool to

increase the number of active volunteers.

Slivers of Time has tested this model in theprivate sector, as a way to manage exibleworkforces, where some sectors such assupermarkets want people who can behired for a few weeks, days, or just hoursand often at short notice. The systemallows anyone with spare hours to selltheir time to local employers and enablesemployers to make precise bookings ofworkers, using an online platform.

The volunteering sector has similar needs.Slivers of Time is applying this model tomatching social care users and volunteersby piloting a person-to-person marketplacein Hertfordshire and Hounslow.

These pilots support the pairing ofvolunteers with social care service users.

Social care users can nd volunteers tosupport with low-level, but vital, activitiessuch as shopping and leisure.

The platform will allow users of care tobook their exact needs for support in asafe environment. It allows volunteers,

once vetted, to run a personal online diaryof their availability, allowing them tovolunteer around other commitments.

It provides an opportunity for localisedmatching of service users withvolunteers. Volunteers also build upa veriable, printable track recordof work. The platform gives serviceusers a higher degree of exibilitywith care, with the ability to book carearound their changing needs.

This is a particularly scalable model thathas potential to be applied to otherareas of social service provision.

Case study:

Person-to-Personby Slivers of TimeIn partnership with Hertfordshire Council and Hounslow Council

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The projects proled in Part 2 are just some examples of digitallyled innovations in public services tackling social issues in ways thatare cheap and effective. There are many others. However, there are

few examples that have really made it into the mainstream. Digitaltools are certainly adding value, but a genuine reinvention andreplacement of core transactional services still feels a world away.Could we really see a leaner, digitally organised state emerging fromthe current situation?

We need to be realistic there are legitimate barriers tomainstreaming digital innovation in public services

There are many, many obstacles to mainstreaming digital innovationin our public services. For a start, many of the services we are talkingabout reforming are laid out in legislation and will require a changein the law, or at least a change in central government policy, beforeinnovators have the exibility to change anything.

Existing procurement contracts lock in suppliers for several years,with detailed specications of the services and rigorous performanceindicators, and there is little or no incentive or freedom for mostsuppliers or commissioners to do things differently. Value for

money initiatives have squeezed suppliers to the limit of their protmargins, whilst denying the public sector the exibility of manoeuvreto adapt to changing possibilities.

Current processes for public procurement although designed tobe fair in practice favour large commercial organisations with theresources and skills to handle the complex written specicationsand lengthy bidding phases. The need for a full specication up-front also makes it virtually impossible to procure innovation, partlybecause it favours known, predictable models, and partly because itrequires all ideas to come from inside government.

Much can be made of the need for culture change in the civilservice, but the reality for many public servants is that they have nolegal authority or mandate to implement the kind of changes thatmay be necessary to create truly radical cost-savings.

Commissioners in particular may not actually be able to progressany agenda, but only have the evidence and position either tocontinue to spend along historic lines for the same services (perhapswith a few cost-savings and shifts in priorities), or to cut spendingwithin their remits. Their task is often to secure value-for-money andquality of service within existing parameters rather than assess needsand opportunities from rst principles, making anything that may be

Part 3:

From the marginsto the mainstream

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new or high risk particularly hard to progress. They may not evenbe free to buy innovative services from small companies who are noton the approved supplier lists.17

As consultant Anne Bowers argues: perhaps the right people topush this agenda are the people who use and want the services

that are being delivered and what we should be asking is how

to capture the energy, the views, the thinking, the desires, the

approaches that people already take themselves to ll public sectorgaps, and nd out how to use those to infuence and shape the way

that commissioners and the ront line behave.

There is often a limit to knowledge, particularly at senior level,about what technology can be used for. Many decision-makers stillsee technology as an add-on: websites are typically regarded as newdoors onto the real services, not places of transaction and valuein themselves. The web is great for non-essential services, but howis it relevant to the vital work of protecting vulnerable people anddelivering statutory provision?

The risk-averse culture demonstrated in public services does haveits foundations in the very just cause of protecting and providingfor the most vulnerable in society; for example ensuring that theelderly are able to access the care, nance and support they needin a way that is meaningful and practical for them. Fear of exposingvulnerable people to risk, or putting frontline services in jeopardy,pushes many commissioners towards the safer, more expensiveroutes of building customised systems that can be specied to meetstatutory and organisational priorities such as child protection.

However, it might be said that this risk-averse culture has gonebeyond its original purpose and is now preventing those of us whoare more able and do not require special consideration to be servedmore effectively and efciently as a result.

Yet the focus on technology can be a distraction: the value of thisnew digital infrastructure is principally that it gives organisationsinstant access to huge new audiences, so building another version ofFacebook or Twitter rather misses the point. It might be safe, but itwill also be empty.

The potential applications of technology have moved on

Efciency through technology used to mean ever-more sophisticatedintegrated systems for capturing evaluation metrics, crunchingdata and indexing information. There have been numerous, well-publicised examples of mainstream IT projects that have been costlyfailures (the NHS IT project Connecting for Health, for example), sothere is considerable technology fatigue in government for large-

scale, centrally implemented tools.18 The FutureGov team, workingto scope the Safeguarding 2.0 project with a local authority, notedthat past experiences of bad technology lend legitimate caution topractitioners in experimenting and adopting new ones.

IT procurement brings its own challenges too: there are legacysystems, problems with integration, challenges of security andprotecting vulnerable people in public systems, and restrictionsaround how procurement works. Little wonder then that fewcommissioners trust the potential of technology to improve servicesthat are already working well. What people generally want is simpleefciency. New and different does not necessarily mean better, and

technology like innovation is merely a means, not an end initself.

Now though, social technology means using the connecting powerof the internet to organise people, hold vast public conversationsand spread new ideas. IT used to mean replacing normal procedureswith smart software; now it means using smart software to connectthe crowd. Technological innovation used to be about buildingtechnology; now it should be about using what is here already.The advantage of this for public servants is an interesting one:technology now does not require expensive outlays on resources,but it does require extensive engagement from real people to makethe most of the tools.

How will these changes affect us?

There is incredible knowledge and expertise within government,particularly on the front line of service delivery, but often theknowledge isnt joined up. For example, there is still an extensive

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separation of function, understanding and hierarchy between thosewho understand technology and those who drive strategy and policy.Many frontline workers are using Facebook, Twitter, blogs and othersocial tools in their personal lives, but the aptitude and enthusiasmthey have for these tools rarely penetrates the day-to-day work ofheavy case loads, frequent meetings, and programme boards. Thereis undoubtedly a training issue around the use of new digital tools,which must be addressed, but much can be achieved right now

simply by making better use of the skills and creativity that staffhave already.

So there is huge potential for change, and for that change to beled by frontline staff. Yet there remain so many barriers to takinginnovation mainstream, from skills and mindset, to hierarchies andresources. Consultant Tim Davies and colleagues have compileda list of 50 barriers to participation in web 2.0 by public servants,from limitations of corporate IT infrastructure, to an ingrained needto moderate and control every discussion in which the organisationparticipates. The current crisis is likely to make many commissionersand managers even more risk-averse, for fear of disrupting the

working practices of already overburdened staff, or wastingeven more money on technology when they are supposed to betightening their belts. Cuts make innovation necessary, but theydont always make it easier.

In the commercial world, however, there are many real examples ofdisruptive innovation going mainstream, even in times of recessionand market failure, so what can the public sector usefully learn fromthese models?

The pattern is fairly consistent: identify the demand for a product orservice, look again at what is now possible with the new digital toolsavailable, and design a new, cheaper way to meet consumer needs.Amazon understood that people wanted books, but not necessarilybookshops. Rather than designing more efcient bookshops,they used the web to sell directly to customers in their homes,bypassing the bookshops entirely (much like the book club modelbefore them). Now with Kindle they have realised people wantthe information in the books, but not necessarily the books. Sincebooks are heavy and cost a lot to ship, their solution was to create

electronic books that ship digitally, bypassing printers and postalservices.

In both cases, advances in technological infrastructure enabledinnovators to design completely new approaches to meet consumerdemand, and create radically cheaper services that werent possiblebefore. Existing services are bypassed, and the innovation goesmainstream when the reduced demand for the old model makes it

no longer viable.19

There are examples of this model working for the public goodtoo. Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is an ecological modelfor controlling agricultural and other pests with minimal use ofpesticides. Rather than relying on expensive, ecologically damagingchemicals to attack the living bugs, the IPM approach builds anecological map of the lifecycle of a pest how they feed, breed, eat,sleep etc. and then puts pressure on every stage of the lifecycle.They set acceptable levels for reduction and target each part of thesystem to prevent population explosion and reduce the need forchemical agents, saving money, and the environment. The technique

successfully moved from the margins to the mainstream over anumber of years, winning the World Food Prize in 1997.

Examples like Amazon and IPM highlight the value of whole-system thinking: looking beyond the immediate problem into thewider system around it. Economic theory traditionally teaches thatthe more resources you save, the more you must pay or the next

increment o savings,according to US sustainability think-tankthe Rocky Mountain Institute. But when the design looks at the

system as a whole this theory no longer applies whole-system

engineering can oten tunnel through the cost barrier, making very

large even order-o-magnitude savings. Optimising one part ofa system in isolation means savings will always be limited comparedto redesigning the whole system to deliver more value. The mostradical innovations typically achieve higher impact for lower costby analysing the whole system and focusing their resources whereprogress is cheapest to buy, often bypassing the more expensivedelivery models entirely.20

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What does this mean for public services?

Systems thinking can be usefully applied to public services. Accidentand Emergency (A&E), for example, is extremely expensive andoften overloaded, but in the systemic model the way to reduce thecosts of A&E is by reducing the number of people coming throughthe door in the rst place.

[One] story comes rom Chicago, called the Chicago Housingand Health Partnership,writes Nan Roman in theHufngton Post in 2009. Over our years, thePartnership ollowed 405 chronically homeless people.

Hal o the 405 received immediate housing and intensive

case management the other hal o the 405 were oered

typical homeless services. Those receiving housing decreased

the incidence o hospital admission and days spent in the hospital

by a third, and decreased their emergency room visits by 25

percent. These studies suggest that addressing the health care

needs o homeless people would not only benet them, but

us as well. With worries about the cost o health care reorm, the

spiraling national debt, and the uture o our country, itsreassuring to know that sometimes doing the right thing

is actually the right thing to do.21

The projects initial study revealed that an annualaverage of $12,000 was spent per housed client to

provide a permanent supportive housing unit in a highly coordinatedsystem of care. Preliminary cost estimates however showed thatannual medical expenses for housed clients were at least $900,000less than their usual care counterparts, even after subtracting thecosts of the programme.

This example highlights the risk of ignoring cheaper early-stageinterventions as optional and putting more pressure on the morecostly essential parts of the system that cannot turn people away.It may look like smart scal management to cut non-essentialservices, but is it really all that efcient to put the burden on costlycrisis management provision that doesnt actually remove peoplefrom crisis? As Secretary Shaun Donovan of the US Department ofHousing and Urban Development remarked in 2009: Simply put, i

we want to tackle health care reorm i we want to lower costs we

must tackle homelessness. Its that simple.22

Disruptive innovation in public services?

For public service innovators, the cheapest solution may not always

be found in the place where the problem shows up. There is value inlooking beyond the reach of the current system and to create radicalnew ways to take pressure off existing transactional services. Inmany cases these services will work alongside the traditional models,alleviating pressure and reducing costs. In some cases though likeAmazons impact on bookshops, or IPMs on pesticides the newmodel will disrupt the old, even replace it, and become mainstreamitself.

Real disruption the replacement of the old by the new ishistorically very rare, and this is particularly challenging whenmaking the case for technology. NHS Direct, for example, is one

technological innovation that has become truly mainstream, but itis yet to transform the way in which other healthcare services aredelivered. It has augmented the service, but not reinvented it. Yetin the new world of service cutbacks, a service which is no longer indemand will quickly nd itself decommissioned and the innovation,like Amazon, could nd it has become the established solution.

The current nancial context for public services makes it imperativeto nd ways to offer better quality provision for less money.This is not about investing in large-scale, high-risk innovations.Mainstreaming is not about mass production here. Instead, publicservices should look at how to use existing tools and assets innew, creative ways. Digital technology offers a wide range of newcongurations which have yet to be fully exploited.

It is about creating the conditions for new models to ourish, andbuying the cheapest solution to the problem from the broadest setof what is possible. Some of these answers may come from insidegovernment, but the great advantage of this disruptive model is thatthe public sector does not have to do everything itself: it can reapthe rewards of a diverse marketplace of innovations.

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Reboot Britain

Reboot Britain aims to understand how to create the conditions forthese new approaches to develop and spread.The project will alsoidentify what the barriers and enablers are in engaging in this typeof innovation. As the projects progress, NESTA will work with themto reveal some of the cultural and institutional issues that preventor drive their work and what measures could be introduced to

overcome or encourage them.

Phase Two of Reboot Britain which will begin in the autumn will work with ve public service commissioners, includinglocal authorities, to understand the challenges in mainstreaminginnovative new services. NESTA will share what we and the projectteams learn from the programme, encouraging others to get involvedand experiment themselves.

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There will never be a more critical time to reboot our public services,and it is important that we lay the foundations today for these kindsof innovations to emerge, grow and spread in the coming years.

So, what can we actually do on a practical level, right now, to makedigital innovation a reality?

Already from our work with the Reboot Britain projects (and NESTAswider experience supporting innovation in public services) we canidentify some ways in which services need to adapt now to open upto the potential of this digital future.

Below we set out ten ways for doing so, or areas for services tofocus on in the immediate term. These are intentionally bold andprovocative, but they do hold practical and actionable suggestionsfor how services can start to become more exible and agile.These are recommendations for people working in public services commissioners, practitioners, frontline staff as well as policymakerswho support and enable the system to operate effectively.

1. Keep a relentless focus on transparency, particularly onwhere money goes

The rst task is to be clear, open and honest about how money isbeing spent right now. There is insufcient clarity about the costof the old ways of doing things, which makes innovation seemdisproportionately risky and expensive. Figuring out where progresscan be bought cheaply is vital. Conversely, it is very difcult forunfunded entrepreneurs and voluntary organisations to proveimpact, and particularly real cost-savings, for new models. The publicsector also needs to support projects that are tackling matters in thepublic interest to prove the impact of what they do, which is partlya matter of giving them opportunities to undertake exploratoryprojects with public sector support, and partly about explainingclearly the standards against which such innovations will be judgedby commissioners.

2. Open-up procurement

Next, public sector procurement needs to change, and fast. Manypeople are advocating the adoption of agile methodologies thesoftware development methodology which favours working in short

Part 4:

Ten ways to Reboot Britain

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iterations, testing outputs in a live environment, learning fromusers, and reprioritising development. Agile methods and user-centred design techniques deliver consistently better results, andyet they are very difcult to contract within current governmentIT procurement processes. We dont need to wait until the systemchanges to change our approach though. What is needed is a newframework for procurement, and to address key training and skillsgaps to support the procurement of innovation, prototypes and

short projects from SMEs and volunteers, particularly using agilemethodologies.

The IDeA Knowledge Hub (a community and innovation

platorm or local government services) will be developed using

agile development techniques, procurement was open to the

SMEs, and its an open source/open platorm that will enable

social innovators to develop value-added apps, says IDeA

consultant Steve Dale. So, it can be done within a public sector

ramework you just have to persist and overcome the blockers.

3. Use failure to learn and improve your services

Alongside this, there is an important need to accept that innovationrequires adaption, experimentation and learning from mistakes.Internet companies start small, perhaps an engineer, a designer anda salesman, and maybe as much as 90 per cent of projects never seeturnover. The internet grows its capabilities through numerous smallexperiments with a lot of individual vision. We cant change thisovernight, but if each of us individually alters how we think and talkabout failure, and the risk of failure, we can create more space in ourorganisations for creative thinking and risky innovation. In order tomanage risk more effectively, devolve small budgets to individuals orinnovation teams (including representatives from comms, IT, front-line services, monitoring and evaluation, and at least one director) towork without further approval to prototype new ideas.

4. Prototype and develop, dont pilot

We need also to ensure that successful small-scale innovations areproperly rolled out nationally to give us real savings. There are hugebarriers to scaling up a small idea effectively, from the concernsof corporate communications departments and brand controls,pressures on risk management, major IT infrastructure barriers,and difculties of sign-off and accountability. Even if things get

commissioned on a large scale, there is a tendency to pull theplug at the rst sign of failure. Innovation, like entrepreneurship,demands a more mature attitude to risk and failure, one whichembraces them as part of the process of creating value, rather than asign of incompetence or irresponsibility.

Good leadership in this area by elected ofcials and heads oforganisations will be critical to creating the space for innovationin those below them. One of the key insights from the LIFE teamat Participle was that leaders needed to allow and give space foruncertainty and unpredictability of innovation, in order to allow thetime for the new approach to take root and change behaviours.

5. Extend digital infrastructure and inclusion

We must continue to improve and augment our digital infrastructure both hardware and software and continue to pursue digitalinclusion and opportunity. Many o our sta and citizens donthave (direct) access to a connected computer,says governmentIT worker James Cattell. How do we cater or and train them?However we do it, they must come rst.A strong digitalinfrastructure for our country must be matched by a similarly up-to-date and adaptive IT infrastructure for its government, and digitalopportunities for even its poorest and most vulnerable citizens.

There is no need to force people to adopt new technologies if theydont want to, but putting these tools in the hands of the peoplewho matter creates not just opportunities for switching to cheaperdigital delivery channels, but also increases the likelihood that someof these engaged digital citizens will be able to help solve problemsand design better services for themselves.

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6. Look across sectors and boundaries

Innovation can come from anywhere. In Washington in 2010,for example, a Kenyan software program was used to organisesnow relief in the citys Snowmageddon project. New models areemerging in other elds, other countries, and closer to home, in ourlocal communities and the third sector. Even the commercial worldis developing tools and concepts that could help deliver radical

public service efciency. Start gathering examples of innovationprojects which might potentially solve problems and help

deliver services, so that you are ready with thelist of options when the call comes. Establish

clear processes for evaluating the potentialapplications and efciency of third partyprojects, and how to bring them intogovernment.

Scan the horizon for tools and modelsthat could help, and start making thebusiness case for implementing them in

a public service context. Train and taskpeople in your organisation with thejob of working with innovators outsidegovernment to assess the potentialimpact of their work on your publicservice objectives. Seek advice frominnovation specialists like NESTA, theYoung Foundation and independentspecialists in the eld to help assess thevalue of new models, and start buildinga shortlist of the potential projects thatmight be worth prototyping, supportingor even just exploring in more detail. Andthis applies to front-line ofcials, not just

communications and IT teams.

7. Listen to service users (and frontline staff)

Understand your service users and build services with them,centering the process around the end user and your own needs as acommissioner. If innovations are to become mainstream they musthave customer demand, so ensure that it is there rst, because ifyou build it, they might not come. This is partly about understandingservice design techniques, and particularly the collaborative tools of

co-design, and applying them to creating more effective models. Itis also about nding those who share your intent and purpose aboutimproving outcomes in the outside world, developing collaborativefora with them, and working to establish a shared vision and intent.Go and meet your local digital community where they meet upto build relationships and bounce off ideas about how you couldwork together. Make sense of stories in your local community: ndout what people are talking about online and interact with themso people know youre part of their conversation. This is critical tomobilising energy to work in the same direction.

Frontline workers are part of the services, and their needs mustbe

considerd. We urgently need to give frontline workers greaterexibility and freedom to solve problems, rather than restrictingpeoples movements and scope to solve problems. Involving frontlinestaff in service design processes, and helping them to respondmore directly to service users provides more space and incentive forinnovation. In particular, staff may be used to using digital tools intheir social lives, and enabling their use at work could provide meansto engage with citizens in powerful new ways.

8. Dont go it alone ask the community for help

Give the people who want you to succeed the opportunity to helpyou. Establish the environment for your local innovators to help youdevelop solutions. Create an ideas e-mail address for members ofthe public, and your own staff, to send in ideas for how to makepublic services cheaper and better. Publish the things you needhelp with clearly on your website so others can work on solvingthe problems too, and explain the areas and indicators that aremost important or at risk, and identify which services most need

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innovation. Open up any licensed development environments youuse to digital people locally so they can prototype and test outinnovations in your system. Include positive questions in researchand analysis as well as negatives: assess the needs, but also askpeople what they can do, how theyd like to be involved, what theycould offer. Map the assets, not just the deprivations. Be open aboutthe challenges and people will help you.

9. Dont reinvent the wheel

As government IT worker James Cattell says: Twitter is a greatsource o related random inormation. Delicious browser-integrated

bookmarks ollow you wherever you have internet access. Flickr

and YouTube reduce internal storage requirements and improve

disaster recovery time, cost and eort.As the FutureGov teamadvocates, the lightweight, exible nature of social media and thesekinds of technologies means that they can change and adapt overtime. Services need to take a exible approach to using existing

assets and infrastructures to open up new opportunities for cheapexperimentation and radical cost savings.

Analyse your services in terms of tools/infrastructure and services:what are your assets, how are they being used, what else could theybe used for? For example, could the SMS update system developedby the local PCT be used for another service? Publish your assets soother bodies can tap into what you have. If you are building tools,build them for everyone to use. Trying to build centralised servicesthat t the needs of dozens of departments only slows things downeven further, but real cost-sharings can be achieved by lookingcarefully at what has already been commissioned, and deploying anadapted version in a fresh context rather than building somethingnew is far cheaper, quicker and more effective.

10. Build effective partnerships with other organisationsand volunteers

Look after the social innovators, organisation and volunteersworking to improve our society. The public sector must cultivatestrong, mutually benecial relationships with third sector andparticularly small start-up and voluntary organisations, and workmore effectively with unfunded organisations, without expecting toomuch or acting insensitively to their concerns. One particular issuethat Sidekick Studios came up against was that often bureaucracyand internal processes were barriers to the speedy turn-around

of service contracts and payments. For small to medium-sizedenterprises and other civil society groups hold-ups can have abig impact.

And nally...

Its time to start believing in the possibilities of these newapproaches. I know o an example where the government has notcommissioned unbelievably innovative stu,confesses one publicsector consultant, because they simply couldnt believe (in the light

o the millions they had spent and wasted in recent years on similarwork) that the outcome could be achieved or less than 100,000!Much of this is about serious change of culture and mindset,which begins with the leaders but needs to diffuse throughoutorganisations at all levels. Pay attention to the bigger picture, anddevelop a culture of continual honesty and learning.

It is now genuinely possible to use digital tools and radical modelslike co-design and co-delivery to structure services in much cheaperways, without compromising on quality of care. So, an innovation ispresented to you, by all means critique it carefully and show properdiligence but dont dismiss it just because it looks too good to betrue.

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1. For more details on available tools and their uses, see Gibson, A., Sample-Ward,

A., Wilcox, D., Courtney, N. and Holtham, C. (2009) Social by Social: a practicalguide to using social technologies to deliver social impact. London: NESTA.

2. For local government in particular, see Gibson, A. (2010) Local by Social: howlocal authorities can use social media to achieve more for less. London: NESTA.

3. HM Treasury (2010) Budget 2010: Securing the Recovery. London: HM Treasury.

4. See further details in 2020 Public Services Trust (2009) Drivers for Change:Citizen Demand in 2020. London: 2020 Public Services Trust at the RSA.

5. The Young Foundation (2009) Sinking and Swimming: Understanding BritainsUnmet Needs. London: The Young Foundation.

6. For examples of this sort of radically efcient innovation in public services, seeGillinson, S., Horne, M. and Baeck, P. (2010) Radical Efciency: Different, Better,Lower Cost Public Services. London: NESTA and the Innovation Unit.

7. NESTAs Reboot Britain programme builds on our work on digital technologyand innovation, explored in relation to public services in Coyle, D. (Ed.) (2009)Reboot Britain: how the promise of a new digital age can tackle the challengeswe face as a country. London: NESTA.

8. Participle LIFE Programme Research.

9. Department of Health (2009) New Horizons: a shared vision for mental health.London: Department of Health.

10. A recent report from new economic foundation (nef) argues the case that bettersupport for young people would have a signicant impact on other service areas;see Aked, J., Steuer, N., Lawlor, E. and Spratt, S. (2009) Backing the Future: whyinvesting in children is good for us all. London: nef.

11. Prison Reform Trust, Prison Brieng, May 2010.

12. Shapps, G. (2007) The Tagging Game. Hatel d: Grant Shapps MP.

13. Ministry of Justice (2008) Does Restorative Justice affect Reconviction?Ministry of Justice Research Series. London: Ministry of Justice.

14. The Princes Trust (2007) The Cost of Exclusion. London: The Princes Trust.

15. Ibid.

16. Boyle, D. and Harris, M. (2009) The challenge of co-production: how equalpartnerships between professionals and the public are crucial to improving publicservices. London: NESTA and nef.

17. There has been considerable analysis of the barriers to innovation in the

public sector. See for example Accenture (2009) Barriers to Public SectorTransformation. London: Accenture; also National Audit Ofce (2006) AchievingInnovation in Central Government Organisations. London: National Audit Ofce.

18. The NHS IT programme has also been identied as a barrier to technologicalinnovation more generally in the NHS, due to its dominant focus and investmentin infrastructure rather than more outward-facing, patient-centred projects suchas telemedicine and telecare. See Liddel, A., Adshead, S. and Burgess, E. ( 2008)Technology in the NHS. London: The Kings Fund.

19. For further development of this argument, see Christensen, C.M. (1997) TheInnovators Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail.Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

20. John Seddon makes the case for systems thinking in the public sector, in Seddon,J. (2008) Systems Thinking in the Public Sector: The Failure of the Reform

Regime... and a Manifesto for a Better Way. London: Triarchy Press.21. Roman, N. (2009) The Homelessness Problem in Healthcare. In: Hufngton Post.

Available at: http://www.hufngtonpost.com/nan-roman/the-homelessness-connecti_b_324047.html

22. See video of Donovans remarks at the National Alliance to End Homelessnesswebsite. Available at: http://abouthomelessness.blogspot.com/2009/09/secretary-donovan-video-annual.html

Endnotes

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This paper was written by Sociabilitys Andy Gibson, NESTAs Carla Ross, Laura Buntand Jon Kingsbury. Itwould not have been possible without the contributions, co-operation and support of many people insideand outside public services across the UK. Among others, and in no particular order, we would like tothank: Dave Briggs, Vinay Gupta, Ruth Kennedy, Tim Davies, James Cattell, Simon Booth, Steve Dale, HugoMannassei, Anna Maybank, Dominic Campbell, Adil Abrar, David Wilcox, Jonathan Hobbs-Smith, DougaldHine, Cassie Robinson, Birmingham BEST, the Be Birmingham partnership and especially NESTAs JonKingsbury and Dr Mike Harris for their research and editorial support.

Thank you.

Acknowledgements

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Our public services face unprecedented challenges, made more urgent by the impact of the currenteconomic crisis. Traditional approaches to public services reform are unlikely to provide the answers we need.NESTA is applying its expertise to nd innovative ways of delivering our public services. More effectivesolutions at lower cost will only come through ingenuity. Our Public Services Lab is identifying, testing anddemonstrating new ways of responding to social challenges and delivering better public services at lowercost.

Reboot Britain is part of NESTAs Public Services Lab. It aims to identify ways in which technology can aidmoving towards a model of people-powered public services. Further information about its experimentalprogramme, including how to get involved, will be available at www.nesta.org.uk as the projects develop.

www.nesta.org.uk

If youd like to nd out more about Reboot Britain please get in touch with Carla Ross, Reboot

Britain Programme Manager at NESTA, [email protected]

About NESTA

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NESTA1 Plough Place

London EC4A 1DE

[email protected]

www.nesta.org.uk

Published: July 2010

reboot britain - digital disruption

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