This opinion article was written by Beth Noveck, Professor in Technology, Culture and Society and Director of the Governance Lab at New York University. For more like this, see our government innovation newsfeed. This article was also published on Apolitical. Find out more here.
Public institutions are often inefficient, inflexible and dysfunctional.
There is a widespread sense, reflected in declining rates of trust in government, that the public sector is failing to deliver solutions to public problems that measurably improve people’s lives. With deepening inequality and growing challenges from climate change to the future of work, there is a desperate need to be able to solve problems more effectively but also more legitimately.
The challenge is less our loss of trust in government than the claim that government does not deserve our trust.
There is a growing realisation that for the public sector to perform better, public servants need to work differently. There is a widening skills gap between the public and the private sector’s use of creative problem solving methods, enabled by new technologies.
The innovator’s DNA
Clayton Christensen writes about the Innovator’s DNA, not an innate but a learned set of practices that help people in business solve problems more effectively. So, too, in government we need to identify and invest in the skills and abilities that make people more effective public problem solvers. If we do, we can improve how government works, creating a more effective and efficient government.
The 21st century public leader — the public entrepreneur — needs the ability to innovate and this requires new skills, including the know-how to define actionable and specific problems. The effective leader, according to the OECD, is able to apply participatory design practices to deepen her understanding of the problem by talking to those most affected by it rather than working behind closed doors.
The public entrepreneur knows how to use data analytical methods and evidence-based decision-making to complement those qualitative with quantitative methods. That’s why Bloomberg Philanthropies invests in teaching data sciences to public officials as well as design, engagement and other innovation skills.
The public entrepreneur, however, does more than define the problem with the public, she also leverages the collective intelligence of our communities, working across agencies and across sectors, using methods like open innovation and crowdsourcing to devise better solutions.
To get things done, the public entrepreneur learns how to implement solutions faster and measure what works, often by building coalitions and partnerships.
Training for the future
So how do we develop these better ways of working in government? How do we create a more effective public service?
Governments, universities and philanthropies are beginning to invest in training those inside and outside of government in new kinds of public entrepreneurial skills. They are also innovating in how they teach.
Image from the ten recommendations for training public entrepreneurs. Read all the recommendations here.
Canada has created a new Digital Academy to teach digital literacy to all 250,000 public servants. Among other approaches, they have created a 15 minute podcast series called bus rides to enable public servants to learn on their commute.
The better programs, like Canada’s, combine online and face-to-face methods. This is what Israel does in its Digital Leaders program. This nine-month program alternates between web- and live meetings as well as connecting learners to a global, online network of digital innovators.
Many countries have started to teach human-centered design to public servants, instructing officials in how to design services with, not simply for the public, as WeGov does in Brazil. in Chile, the UAI University has just begun teaching quantitative skills, offering three day intensives in data science for public servants.
The GovLab also offers a nifty, free online program called Solving Public Problems with Data.
The Public sector learning
To ensure that learning translates into practice, Australia’s BizLab Academy, turns students into teachers by using alumni of their human-centered design training as mentors for new students.
The Cities of Orlando and Sao Paulo go beyond training public servants. Orlando includes members of the public in its training program for city officials. Because they are learning to redesign services with citizens, the public participates in the training.
The Sao Paulo Abierta program uses citizens as trainers for the city’s public servants. Over 23,000 of them have studied with these lay trainers, who possess the innovation skills that are in short supply in government. In fact, public officials are prohibited from teaching in the program altogether.
Recognizing that it is not enough to train only a lone innovator or data scientist in a unit, governments are scaling their programs across the public sector.
Argentina’s LabGob has already trained 30,000 people since 2016 in its Design Academy for Public Policy with plans to expand. For every class taken, a public servant earns points, which are a prerequisite for promotions and pay raises in the Argentinian civil service.
Rather than going broad, some training programs are going deep by teaching sector-specific innovation skills. The NHS Digital Academy done in collaboration with Imperial College is a series of six online and four live sessions designed to produce leaders in health innovation.
Innovating in a bureaucracy
In my own work at the GovLab at New York University, we are helping public entrepreneurs take their public interest projects from idea to implementation using coaching, rather than training.
Training classes may be wonderful but leave people feeling abandoned when they return to their desks to face the challenge of innovating within a bureaucracy.
With hands-on mentoring from global leaders and peer-to-peer support, the GovLab Academy coaching programs try to ensure that public servants are getting the help they need to advance innovative projects.
Knowing what innovation skills to teach and how to teach them, however, should depend on asking people what they want. That’s why the Australia New Zealand School of Government is administering a survey asking these questions for public servants there.
Image credit: The Govlab
Finally, because what matters is not how many people take a course or listen to a podcast but how much these innovation skills contribute to their ability to solve public problems better, the State of New Jersey this week unveiled a free, online training program in public entrepreneurship designed to introduce people to the basic skills for moving from idea to implementation.
Covering ten initial topics, the program includes lectures, practitioner interviews, readings and self-assessments.
In sum, investing in training and learning new ways of working is imperative if we are to respond to the challenges of our time and cultivate public entrepreneurs who solve public problems.

Thank you to the Australia New Zealand School of Government for supporting the research in this essay.
Professor Beth Simone Noveck is Professor in Technology, Culture and Society and Director of the Governance Lab at New York University. She was also Deputy CTO and head of the Open Government Initiative in President Obama’s White House. She has served as an advisor to Prime Minister Cameron and Chancellor Merkel. She also serves as the Chief Innovation Officer of the State of New Jersey. Her new book Public Entrepreneurship will appear with Yale University Press in 2020.
Full Post: GovLab: How to train and teach for 21st century public leadership