Day 1 Leadership Round Table

Digital Ecosystem for Development- Public Service Innovations

 

#GSSD2017Antalya | Photos of the Leadership Roundtable 1: Digital Ecosystem for Development- Public Service Innovations | With @UNOSSC , @a2i_bd @cerginay, @Baimenov , @JlChediek , @rastovrbensky , @Ocean_Heart and @ArndtHusar
More about the session:https://t.co/oVV1Sn9eBv pic.twitter.com/kgMxEyUiJq

— GSSD Expo (@southsouthexpo) January 18, 2018

 

Objectives and Thematic Focus

Governments around the world – in both developing and developed countries – are going through tremendous changes to respond to rapidly rising expectations of the citizens, an accelerating technological transformation of society and economy as well as competing service offerings by private sector providers. Traditional public service delivery was known for being unresponsive to citizens’ demands, driven by rules and procedures many of which find their roots in the bygone era. Governments are embracing approaches and tools to become more citizen-centric, responsive and participatory. In particular, the following trends are seen:

1. Digital technologies, rapidly becoming ubiquitous even in resource-strapped nations, provide governments with the means to improve the delivery of public services, by bringing increased access, inclusion, accountability, transparency and effectiveness leading to greater public trust. However, the challenge often lies in keeping the focus on developing citizen-centric rather than implementing technology-centric or approaches that prioritise interests of the supply-side.
2. User-centric policy and programming tools: The difference in perspectives between service providers and service seekers, a lack of empathy on the part of the provider and unscrupulous practices by vested interests, have often led to a service delivery paradigm and practice that is considered unresponsive and ‘red-tapish’ by the average citizen. To fully understand the perspectives of the citizens, especially the underserved, and modify their own structures and processes to incorporate this new understanding, many governments are employing user-centric policy and programming tools such as ‘design thinking’, ‘business process re-engineering’ or ‘service process simplification’ and ‘behavioural insights’. However, these tools can be quite difficult to adopt to the needs of a particular country and context and take time to be embedded in the organizational culture of the public sector.
3. Prototyping approaches and experiments: Typically, civil service is designed to be risk-averse to maintain order and status quo. Yet, many governments recognise the need for unconventional thinking, disruption and innovation. Many have begun to encourage rapid prototyping approaches and experiments, sometimes using approaches and technologies mentioned above. Many governments have partnered with NGOs, for-profit companies and academia in new forms of service delivery. Many so-called ‘innovation labs’ have sprouted around the world, some of which are supported by UN organizations, international development partners and philanthropies. The experimentation has produced impactful innovations and generated evidence that informs policy formulation. However, the proportion of these innovations that have been scaled up geographically and demographically with measurable impact is much lower than expected.
4. Data revolution: Unparalleled opportunities exist in leveraging the data revolution to track delivery, impact and progress towards poverty eradication and SDG achievements. By openly sharing public data and by enabling its creative use, Members States can shape new development opportunities and facilitate economic growth. With better insights, Governments can also design policy and provide services that are better targeted at national and local levels for cities, villages, communities, and possibly even personalized for individuals. Thus, improved and well-maintained data sets can serve planners, policy makers and implementers not only to keep track of performance, but also to fast-track development and reduce inequality. Despite the advantages, many governments are yet to grasp the opportunities of the data revolution because of lack of knowledge, capacity and resources. In some cases, public debate about data security and privacy have has held decision makers back.

The four abovementioned trends – digitization of service delivery, user-centric policy and programming tools, prototyping approaches and experiments, and the data revolution – may have originated in developed countries but are taking developing countries by storm. With this realization, the government of Bangladesh, in partnership with United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC), convened a high-level meeting on South-South and triangular cooperation for scaling up innovations in public service delivery on the sidelines of the seventy-first session of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2016. In this event, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh proposed the need for a collaborative network – a South-South network for Public Service Innovations- to share good practices and encourage the diffusion of insights and experiences. The proposal was enthusiastically supported. Since then, Bangladesh has been proactive in sharing its achievements in public service innovation in a number of global events ^[1]. Bangladesh has strengthened ongoing South-South Cooperation initiatives and started several new ones on public service innovation with the governments of Singapore, Kazakhstan, Maldives, Bhutan, Fiji, Benin, among others.

On the margins of the seventy-second session of UNGA in September 2017, the government of Bangladesh and UNOSSC organized another side-event to launch the publication “South-South in Action: Citizen-friendly Public Service Innovation in Bangladesh” which documents many service innovations in Bangladesh by the government, private sector and civil society that are being replicated beyond the borders of the country. Bangladesh also launched the SDG Tracker which provides a comprehensive SDG monitoring framework that can facilitate the regular monitoring and evaluation of development interventions and feed inputs for further fine-tuning. It allows tracking of each goal and target, indicator by indicator, through multiple visualization schemes so that data can provide instant meaning to policy makers. This tool also creates an environment of healthy competition among various organizations in terms of achieving the SDGs. SDG Tracker is Bangladesh’s most recent contribution to SSC so that any interested country can easily customize the platform to track its own SDG progress and utilize the analytics to make effective and prioritized policy decisions.

The “Leadership Round Table: Public Service Innovations” event at the GSSD Expo 2017 will explore the following questions:

1. What kind of innovations are truly allowing the government to leapfrog achievement of SDGs and improve public service delivery?
2. What creates impact and what doesn’t in such innovations, and what are the WHYs behind the WHATs?
3. Why do certain public service innovations scale and others don’t?
4. What are the effective and practical ways of measuring progress against preset targets of achieving SDGs and correlating among inter-related SDG targets?
5. What are the traditional and modern data collection mechanism/strategies that government and non-government entities can use to effectively track SDG progress?
6. How can countries in the Global South develop a unified, long-term vision for South-South and Triangular cooperation in the area of innovations in public service delivery towards creation of a sustainable culture of innovation?

 

Concrete Outcome

Launch a South-South and Triangular Network on Public Service Innovations as an important enabler in the implementation of Agenda 2030 and invite active participation from all Southern and Northern partners.

 

Agenda

 

1. High-level Segment:

Moderator: Md. Abul Kalam Azad, Principal Coordinator (SDGs), Prime Minister’s Office, Governent of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh

Video message: H.E. Sheikh Hasina, Prime Minister, People’s Republic of Bangladesh (tbc)

Speakers:

• H.E. Mr. Cihad Erginay, Deputy Undersecretary for Administrative and Financial Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Turkey
• H.E. Mr. Kiatchai Sophastienphong, Vice Minister for Finance, Kingdom of Thailand
• H.E. Mr. Alikhan Baimenov, Chairman of the Steering Committee of the Regional Hub of Civil Service in Astana, Former Minister of Labor and Social Protection of Citizens, Republic of Kazakhstan
• Mr. Jorge Chediek, Envoy of the Secretary-General on South-South Cooperation, and Director of United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation
• Mr. Rastislav Vrbensky, Deputy Director, UNDP Europe and the CIS
• Mr. Mark Erlich, Interoperability Advisor at Estonian Information System Authority
• Fiji Government (tbc)
• Sweden / Norway Government (tbc)
• Rwanda / Kenya / Uganda Government (tbc)

 

2. Technical Segment:

Moderator: Ms. Xiaojun Grace Wang, Deputy Director, United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation

Keynote Presentation and Demo of the SDG Tracker: Mr. Anir Chowdhury, Prime Minister Office of Government of Bangladesh

Panelists:

• Mr. Arndt Husar, Deputy Director, UNDP Global Centre for Public Service Excellence (Singapore)
• Istanbul Innovation Lab (tbc)
• SIGOB (tbc)

 

3. Launching of the “South-South and Triangular Network on Public Service Innovations”

 

 

 

Biographies

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Focal Point Contact Details

Overall Coordinators: Anir Chowdhury, Prime Minister Office of Government of Bangladesh; Denis Nkala, UNOSSC Asia-Pacific

Communications Focal Point: Sirithon Wairatpanij, Advocacy Advisor, UNOSSC Asia-Pacific

Email: sirithon.wairatpanij@undp.org

Phone: 6623049100

 

 

 

[1] South-South Development Expo (Dubai, November 2016); Technical Workshop on South-South and Triangular Cooperation for Sustainable Development (Benin, February 2017); United Nations Science, Technology and Innovation Forum (May 2017), ITU World Summit on the Information Society Forum (Geneva, June 2017); Astana Economic Forum (June 2017), United Nations High-Level Political Forum (New York, 2017).