Improving the experience of visiting the Civic Offices

The Digital and Customer Programme has recently got up and running. As the name suggests, there is a broad remit, and “digital” and “customer” are the kinds of words that can mean different things to different people. We thought it might be easier to just show what we’re doing. We work closely with our Head …

Senior leader perspectives – The barriers and enablers to civic participation

What could this look like in Bexley? We learnt from three exemplars that committed leadership was a vital feature to their establishment and continued success. Considering this, we deemed it necessary to gather senior leader perspectives on civic participation within Bexley. These conversations were designed in a way to gain insights on the following themes: -           …

Civic Participation – A Voyage of Discovery

Over the past four months, I’ve been part of a small team of colleagues in Bexley working to gather insights and explore all things civic participation. This discovery work forms just a small part of several enquiries which we currently have underway. These enquiries recognise that we must strive for better outcomes for citizens, while …

Connected Communities in Bexley, rethinking citizen participation

Last week, I joined several of my colleagues for our Connected Communities kick off meeting. The Connected Communities enquiry aims to explore a number of key themes around improving civic participation, unlocking the assets within our communities, engaging residents more in their local places and involving citizens in decision making. By harnessing design techniques, we …

Building a culture of design

This (long) post is based on a talk given by Anne-Louise Clark and Ellen Care on 7 March at Service Design in Government 2018, at the John McIntrye Conference Centre, Edinburgh. In this piece, we share our journey of design discovery over the last three years. We’d like to share with you our journey over …

Five things we learned at Design in the Public Sector

In February this year, a multi-organisational team from Bexley embarked on the first Public Health themed incarnation of the Design in the Public Sector programme, run by the Design Council and funded by the LGA. Staff from the Council’s Transformation & Change and Community Partnerships teams joined colleagues from Bexley Voluntary Service Council and NHS …

Slides from Service Design in Government 2018

Last week we were lucky enough to present a case study of our design work at Bexley at the annual Service Design in Government conference, held in Edinburgh from 7 - 9 March 2018. Our presentation was entitled "Building a culture of design" and shared our experiences over the last 3 years to embed a …

Design in the Public Sector: Workshop 1 + 2

A cross-organisational team from Bexley was successful in applying to the Design in the Public Sector programme, which this year focuses on challenges around public health. Earlier this month, four staff from NHS Bexley Clinical Commissioning Group, Bexley Voluntary Service Council and London Borough of Bexley kicked off the project at the first workshops hosted …

Service Development Day

On 5 January 2018, the Early Intervention and Specialist Teacher Service held a service development day. Head of Service Dr Shungu M’Gadzah attended an Innovation Event as part of her induction week in October last year and was interested in sharing the tools and opportunities she’d heard about with her colleagues. She invited the Transformation …

Service Design in Government 2018: Coming soon…

We’re really pleased to announce that we’ll be speaking at Service Design in Government 2018. Anne-Louise Clark and Ellen Care from Transformation & Change will be at the conference in Edinburgh to share how we’ve created a culture of design. Over the last three years the London Borough of Bexley has been exploring and embedding …