Public Sector Innovation (UK0078)

Commitment Text: Develop a more innovative and entrepreneurial culture in the local public
sector to address major societal and environmental challenges
Objective: Developing a more innovative public sector
Status quo: The local public sector faces significant challenges, which will require much greater
degrees of innovation than it has traditionally deployed
Ambition: Increasing the culture of innovation in the public sector will mean it will be more open,
more agile and see a much greater degree of public participation
Milestones:
1. In line with the Executive’s Innovation Strategy introduce a SBRI Challenge Fund to support
public sector innovations (April 2016 March 2017)
2. Seek to establish a New Executive Innovation Fund to support public sector innovation
including SBRI and Challenge Prizes (October 2016 March 2017)
3. Explore funding opportunities for Public sector innovation beyond the region (Ongoing)
4. Explore opportunities for exemplar projects using data analytics to address voluntary,
community, social enterprise, public and private sector needs
5. Explore opportunities for the Executive for projects under the Space for Smarter
Government Programme (April 2016 March 2018).
6. Develop a proposal for data analytics and research exploitation centre (April 2016 June
2017)
7. Explore opportunities, such as Govcamp, for promoting cross border knowledge sharing and
collaboration on digital government ideas and issues. (December 2016 May 2018 (March
2018)

2. Promote greater levels of public sector innovation (Northern Ireland)

Commitment Text: Develop a more innovative and entrepreneurial culture in the local public sector to address major societal and environmental challenges

Objective:Developing a more innovative public sector

Status quo:The local public sector faces significant challenges, which will require much greater degrees of innovation than it has traditionally deployed

Ambition:Increasing the culture of innovation in the public sector will mean it will be more open, more agile and see a much greater degree of public participation

Milestones:

1. In line with the Executive's Innovation Strategy introduce a Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) Challenge Fund to support public sector innovations (April 2016 March 2017)

2. Seek to establish a New Executive Innovation Fund to support public sector innovation including SBRI and Challenge Prizes (October 2016 March 2017)

3. Explore funding opportunities for Public sector innovation beyond the region (Ongoing)

4. Explore opportunities for exemplar projects using data analytics to address voluntary, community, social enterprise, public and private sector needs

5. Explore opportunities for the Executive for projects under the Space for Smarter Government Programme (April 2016 March 2018).

6. Develop a proposal for data analytics and research exploitation centre (April 2016 June 2017)

7. Explore opportunities, such as Govcamp, for promoting cross border knowledge sharing and collaboration on digital government ideas and issues. (December 2016 May 2018 (March 2018)

Responsible institution: Department of Finance

Supporting institutions: Department for the Economy, in partnership with other Executive Departments and the wider public sector

Start date: 1 April 2016

End date: 31 March 2018

Commitment Aim:

The commitment sought to develop innovation within the Northern Ireland public sector to make it more open, agile and participative. Broken down, the commitment involves securing funding for projects, training staff and engaging with the wider community.

The commitment text contained different milestones of varying lengths with some areas unclear (for example, exactly what the funding would be for and how was unclear, and not all funding was from a specific area). CSOs felt the link to open government was unclear and pointed out that, of all the four Northern Ireland commitments, this was the one that was mostly created inside government.^{[Note 159: Colm Burns and David McBurney, Northern Ireland Open Government Network, 11 August 2017.]}

Status

Midterm: Limited

By the end of the first year, Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) and challenge funding had been secured and an innovation lab was being created via EU funding from a collaborative project.^{[Note 160: Nick Cochrane, Department of Finance and Dr Kelly Wilson, Head of Public Sector Reform Division, 15 August 2017.]} Similarly, the funding for the second and third milestones was waiting for bid details or the application was being drawn up.^{[Note 161: Nick Cochrane, Department of Finance and Dr Kelly Wilson, Head of Public Sector Reform Division, 15 August 2017. ]} Officials were working to submit a project on SMART space and new resources were made available for data exploitation. Several government representatives attended the Open Gov Camp in September 2017 and the Open Data Camp in October 2017.^{[Note 162: ‘OpendataNI, ‘Open Data Camp Is Coming to Belfast', https://www.opendatani.gov.uk/blog/open-data-camp-is-coming-to-belfast ]}

End of Term: Substantial

Note: the final government update was not available at the time of writing this report.

The commitment appears to have progressed substantially, particularly in securing funding. According to the December 2017 update, more funding was secured, with a further £1m secured for projects in 2017/18 for SBRI. In the past, SBRI across the UK has helped develop innovations around drug prices, smart cities and analytics and search engine trials.^{[Note 163: UK Gov (2018), https://gov.uk/government/collections/sbri-the-small-business-research-initiative#success-stories]} There was also a further £160k for NI Innovation in its work on behavioural change and ‘nudging'. Other projects around the Space for Smarter Government continued, with the bodies involved developing exemplar projects and cases based on the themes of environment and local and regional development.^{[Note 164: Northern Ireland (2017), Narrative for inclusion in UK Open Government, National Action Plan Self-Assessment Report. NI, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/669433/Northern_Ireland_Input_to_3rd_UK_Open_Gov_National_Action_Plan_-_Self_As..._-_Copy__2_.pdf ]}

Did It Open Government?

Access to Information: Did Not Change

So far, the commitment has focused on obtaining funding for projects and so has not resulted in any changes to improving public access to information.

Carried Forward?

This commitment was not carried forward.