In early June 2025, we ran a morning workshop titled \u2018Design for policy\u2019. People from about a dozen nations participated. Most of them were in town for the Creative Bureaucracy Festival. We successfully piggybacked on that event and directed people interested in the topic to Digital Service\u2019s on the morning after.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We ran a 3-hour session, starting with an hour of input from various levels of government, followed by questions for the presenters, then breaking out into smaller groups for deeper exchange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The invite we shared openly said the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nA Creative Bureaucracy Festival-adjacent gathering of policy designers from around the world co-organised by the EU Policy Lab, German government\u2019s DigitalService, and the UK\u2019s Cabinet Office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What\u2019s the role of design in shaping policy? What\u2019s the role of trained designers in informing laws, regulations, and procedures? More and more designers are working further \u2018upstream\u2019 than before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Declining trust in government and low levels of satisfaction with public services indicate that we need a system-wide transformation of public service delivery. How can we embed agile, iterative and user-centred ways of working into policymaking? What does bottom-up policymaking look like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While most designers work on services and design interactions between users and governments, the role of dedicated policy designers is now firmly established. But what they do day to day varies a lot.\u00a0In this international morning gathering, we bring policy designers of different kinds together \u2013 to share work, approaches and questions.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
David Martens, policy designer at the European Commission\u2019s Policy Lab, was our first speaker. He spoke about the dynamic effects of design on policymaking culture and its impact on policymaking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He shared new frameworks they commissioned to capture the divergent nature of their work. He presented it more openly for the first time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n