Piret Tõnurist from OECD's OPSI visited Sitra Lab's HERÄÄMÖ XL breakfast event on 21.11.2019. Piret Tõnurist, an Estonian, works for the OECD’s Observatory for Public Sector Innovation (OPSI) where she promotes practical approaches in Systems Thinking and Anticipatory Innovation Governance. Piret works internationally with public-sector partners on these topics.

1. o e . c d / o p s i @ O P S I g o v
H ERÄÄMÖ X L
P I R E T TÕ N U R I S T
H e l s i n k i , 2 1 N o v e m b e r 2 0 1 9
@piret.tonurist

3. KNOWING
AND
‘KNOWING’Everyone knows that systemic change is needed, but
they don’t really know until their feet are wet… and
they get used to having their feet wet fast.

4. REPLACE WITH TITLE OF THE PRESENTATIONNEED FOR INNOVATION
Making the case beyond the need for systemic change…
Source:
unsplash.com
Source: abc.net.au

5. REPLACE WITH TITLE OF THE PRESENTATIONWHAT IS GOVERNMENT’S JOB?
Change is
your job!

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Systems thinking,
strategic design,
logic modelling, and
challenges and
prizesLean, business
process improvement,
service blueprinting,
quality control, and
behavioural insights
Horizon scanning,
weak signal detection
strategic foresight, futures thinking,
speculative design, regulatory
sandboxes, and longer-term
structured discovery-
based challengesPositive
deviance, co-creation,
human-centred design,
exploration of edge cases,
and ideas management
systems
And you need
different tools
to do it
PUBLIC SECTOR INNOVATION
#ToolkitNavigator

7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2S-S8cO5_k&t=5s

8. KNOWING
AND ‘DOING’
Knowing and analysing systemic problems is very
different than then doing something systematically
about them..

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I n d i v i d u a l , o r g a n i z a t i o n a l a n d s y s t e m i c f a c t o r s i n f l u e n c i n g p o l i c y s u c c e s s
Factors influencing the DSGs in their main roles in Estonia
Individual
Organizational
Systemic
Budgeting
rules
Consensus on
narrative & ToC
Public scrutiny and
participation in public
life
Time management
Buy-in
Network
management
Trade-off
management
Collaboration
Competing roles
CharismaPersonal characteristics &
capabilities
Contextual factors
and crises
Silos &
fragmentation
Functional
levels
Lackofstructuralleavers
Lack of mandate
Political interest &
planning cycles
Network span
Closeness to end users &
implementation
Evidence
base
Legacy systems and
layered policies
Money
Incentives Leadership style
Strategies & goals
New topics
Culture
Adopted processes: agile and
iterative development
Strong mission sense
Problem ownership
Solutionism
Selling ideas
Overarching vision
abstraction Decentralised
decision-
making
Blame game
Flat hierarchies
Flexibility to compose
teams & capacity
Underestimating
complexity
Lack of mandate
Complexity
paralysis

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IMPLEMENTATION OF SYSTEM CHANGE IN GOVERNMENT
M A K I N G P U B L I C P R O C U R E M E N T E F F E C T I V E I N S L O V E N I A
THE OBSERVATORY OF PUBLIC SECTOR INNOVATION
PREMISE OF THE PROJECT
▪ Effective procurement does not depend solely
on digital platforms
▪ The capacities inside and also outside the
public sector play a role
▪ Human behaviour and perception of
corruption can be very important
determinants of success
▪ The project will examine these and any other
systemic challenges to effective procurement
in Slovenia and propose systemic solutions for
the issues identified
BEHAVIORAL BIASES
PERCEPTION OF
CORRUPTION
TECHNOLOGY
(DIGITAL) CAPACITY
CAPACITY OF
PRIVATE
PARTNERS
EXPERIENCE WITH
ITERATIVE/AGILE
DEVELOPMENT
SECOTAL
FACTORS
RISK CULTURE
ACCOUNTABILITY
STRUCTURE
▪ The Observatory of Public Sector
Innovation (OPSI) will apply systems
thinking to analyse the main systemic
barriers and challenges to effective
procurement in Slovenia
▪ The project is funded by the EC through
the Structural Reform Support
Programme

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FINDINGS
TAKAWAYS FROM THE INTERVIEWS
LEADERSHIP FOR SYSTEMS CHANGE
Defining a
common
purpose

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Problem ladder for systems thinking
Team:
Designed by the OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation 2019 Version 1.0
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)
REASONS
Why might we
want to…?
Test script:
If we…would it help
us…?
BARRIERS
Why can’t we…?
Test script:
Is one thing blocking us
from…that we have not
yet…?
BROAD
NARROW
Start here
Step 5: Final problem statement
Step 1: Start with the initial problem statement presented to your group. Most of the broader components of the challenge
have already been discussed, but add others if you think they are missing. The goal of this activity will be to narrow the
focus.
Step 2: As a group, build your problem ladder. Some initial boxes have been added to get you started. To narrow your
problem, ask “Why can’t we [original barrier]”? Rephrase the answer into a “How might we…” question and add it below the
starting point.
Step 3: Ask “why else”? Add that answer left or right of the one you added in Step 2.
Step 4: Either continue adding barriers based on the starting point OR ladder up or down using the question prompts on
the left. Try to narrow the focus as much as you can until you get to more actionable “How might we…” statements. Draw
lines to connect related problem statements to the ones above or below it.
Step 5: Once you have built your problem ladder, choose the problem statement that you would like to use for generating
ideas in the next activity.

14. POWERFUL
FEELING
POWERLESS
The most powerful people in government and outside
of it feel surprisingly powerless as problems are not
directly within their control, under their mandate. They
lack efficacy: the belief and ability that they can
produce the desired result.

15. REPLACE WITH TITLE OF THE PRESENTATIONPUBLIC SECTOR INNOVATION MODEL I
Factors influencing change
INDIVIDUAL, ORGANISATIONAL AND SYSTEM LEVELS

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LEADERSHIP FOR SYSTEMS CHANGE
December 2017 in Helsinki
A SYSTEMIC APPROACH TO PUBLIC SECTOR INNOVATION

18. REPLACE WITH TITLE OF THE PRESENTATION
OUR JOURNEY
LEADERSHIP FOR SYSTEMS CHANGE

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OPSI
SKILLS AND LEADERSHIP FOR SYSTEMS CHANGE
WE HAVE QUITE A LOT OF KNOWLEDGE
ABOUT SYSTEMS THINKING METHODS,
BUT WE ARE PRAGMATIC ABOUT IT…
A SYSTEMIC APPROACH TO PUBLIC SECTOR INNOVATION

21. REPLACE WITH TITLE OF THE PRESENTATION
The evolutions towards a multi-method approach.
Cybernetics
Norbert
Wiener
General
systems theory
1st order
cybernetics
Ashby
Dynamic
systems theory
Forrester
Emergence of
complexity
science
Emergence of chaos theory
2nd order
cybernetics
Mathematics,
biology, phycology
Engineering,
computing,
information
technology
Family therapy, biology of
cognition, experimental
epistemology
Criticalsystemstheory
Use of CLDs,
stock flow,
dynamic
simulation
Soft Systems
Modelling
Methodological pluralism
Systems
archetypes
Meadows
Systems
processes
Seddon
Learning
organization
Senge
New
science of
networks
Dynamics in
systems
Kauffman
Visual
complexity
Multi-level
complex
systems
Network
organization
LEADERSHIP FOR SYSTEMS CHANGEA SYSTEMIC APPROACH TO PUBLIC SECTOR INNOVATION

22. Tactics for systems change
TO CREATE THE POSSIBILITY TO INITIATE AND CARRY OUT PROJECTS FOR SYSTEMS CHANGE IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR
PEOPLE
Combining a diverse set of
people:
“If you know everyone in
the room: you will fail”
PLACE
Creating the neutral space
to deliberate and set back
from the everyday system
DWELLING
Creating the time and
conditions to think and
deliberate on the end
purpose
CONNECTING
Connecting to all
stakeholders to both inform
the process and form
advocacy coalitions
FRAMING
Framing the issue based on
the outcome/purpose
(public value) not existing
system structures
DESIGNING
Based on the analysis
before, designing solutions
that may have systemic
effects
EXPERIMENTING
Reducing uncertainty by
experimenting on a smaller
scale with different
solutions and clear action
plans
PROTOTYPING
Creating a prototype for
scale that can be tested by
diverse populations
STEWARDING
Guiding and supporting the
process by both creating
the resources and political
backing for change
MEANINGFUL
MEASUREMENT
Measuring the effects
based on the outcomes
wanted to achieve, not
proxies
LEADERSHIP FOR SYSTEMS CHANGEA SYSTEMIC APPROACH TO PUBLIC SECTOR INNOVATION

23. HOW DO WE WORK? AN EXAMPLE
SYNTHESIS
801 observations,
quotes and
takeaways
22 DSGs plus
Strategy director –
semi-structured
interviews
Systematic: focus on individual elements
Systemic: focus on the interconnections
between a set of elements in relation to
their environment
1
2
3
50 trends identified
by coding
Articulating
7 systemic
takeaways
Clustering trends:
identifying
interdependences
Synthesis
analysis:
connections
between drivers,
resources and
outcome.

24. REPLACE WITH TITLE OF THE PRESENTATION
OPSI
SKILLS AND LEADERSHIP FOR SYSTEMS CHANGE
IT IS NOT ONLY ABOUT ADRESSING
WICKED PROBLEMS, BUT BUILDING
CAPACITY TO DO IT CONTINUOUSLY
A SYSTEMIC APPROACH TO PUBLIC SECTOR INNOVATION

25. REPLACE WITH TITLE OF THE PRESENTATIONA SYSTEMIC APPROACH TO PUBLIC SECTOR INNOVATION
Organisational transformation

26. REACTIVE
GOVERNMENT
Position of ‘wait and see’ or called forward when
‘hazards’ (moral, ethical or even physical) materialize.
‘End-of-pipe’ interventions, and often fail to anticipate
or address long-term systemic implications
PROACTIVE
GOVERNMENT
Government as a ‘technology maker’
Government anticipating various futures and actively
exploring and shaping them in practise.
ANTICIPATORY INNOVATION GOVERNANCE
Towards transformational, future-oriented change

27. REPLACE WITH TITLE OF THE PRESENTATION
Anticipation is the process of creating knowledge – no matter how tentative or qualified – about
the different possible futures. This may include, but is not limited to developing not just scenarios
of technological alternatives, but techno-moral (value-based) scenarios of the future (Normann,
2014).
Anticipatory governance is the process of acting on a variety of inputs to manage emerging
knowledge-based technologies and socio-economic developments while such management is still
possible (Guston, 2014). This may involve inputs from variety of governance functions (foresight,
engagement, policymaking, funding, regulation etc.) in a coordinated manner.
Anticipatory regulation is a function of anticipatory governance which uses regulatory means to
create space for sandboxes, demonstrators, testbeds etc. for various technology options to emerge.
This requires an iterative development of regulation and standards around an emerging field
(Armstrong and Rae, 2017).
Anticipatory innovation governance is a broad-based capacity to actively explore options as part
of broader anticipatory governance, with a particular aim of spurring on innovations (novel to the
context, implemented and value shifting products, services and processes) connected to uncertain
futures in the hopes of shaping the former trough the innovative practice (OPSI, 2019).
Why do we talk about anticipatory innovation governance?
ANTICIPATORY INNOVATION GOVERNANCE

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ANTICIPATORY INNOVATION FUNDING, LEADERSHIP AND WORKING METHODS AND EVALUATION ON THE CITY LEVEL

29. o e . c d / o p s i @ O P S I g o v
#OECDsys
@piret.tonurist
Piret.Tonurist@oecd.org
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