The Adaptive State
Putting people before policy in public service reform
Although who we work with and what we work on is pretty diverse, there are a number of central principles that informs much of our thinking. For example:
A deep understanding of user experience: consultation is a blunt tool and yet all too often it is all that is used to illuminate user needs; this is despite the fact that the emphasis on personalising services makes understanding users ever more important. With all our projects, we start with people, not only asking users to help us find the solutions, but also to define the problem in the first place.
Collapsing the distinction between users and providers: we don’t believe that effective public services can be simply ‘delivered’ to users. Improvements in education and health come from complex interactions between people and services. But public service reform is usually focused on the supply side of organisational efficiency, without properly considering the demand side of users’ needs.
Thinking holistically: creating effective public services requires institutions that are flexible enough to adapt to the needs of individual users while responding to changing social and political demands. Demos takes a whole systems approach, which emphasises adaptiveness and public value over incremental improvement.
Learning and innovation: major improvement to the increasingly diverse world of public service provision is less and less likely to come from the centre alone. We believe transformation will instead depend on civil servants and practioners alike experimenting with small-scale innovations and ensuring that policy learns from these. Demos bridges the gap between centralised policy-maker and user reality by working with practioners and many intermediary organisations.
Recognising value: the value created by public services is not simply an economic value and yet all too often these are the metrics we use to determine the success or otherwise of public services. But as citizens we value more than efficiency alone: equity, democratic control and fairness all rank highly too. The work we do aims to help the public sector think about the value it creates and how it can best be described.
For more information about the Adaptive State work in general and a run-down of our methodologies, please contact sophia.parker@demos.co.uk . See below for specific project contacts. If you want to see what we'd like to work on next scroll down.
Current projects
We have a wide range of projects in progress at any time. We work hard to make sure that each project learns from the others.
Open Secrets
Open Secrets is a series of seminars and workshops hosted jointly by the National College for School Leadership and Demos, addressing issues at the cutting edge of the debate about the future strategic environment of schools. We've called them Open Secrets, since the aim of the series is to widen the conversation, debate and learning experience across sectors, levels of expertise and countries.
In many cases, the leading edge practice in areas such as the scaling up of innnovation, system leadership, making users the designers of their own services or creating effective urban networks remain 'secrets' confined to certain sectors, countries or localities. A wide range of participants and diverse, authoritatitve speakers will meet at these monthly seminars to exchange experience and discovery. For more information please contact kirsten.bound@demos.co.uk. We will be posting notes from each of the events as they take place over the rest of 2005.
Organisational Literacy
We are frequently told that the knowledge economy has arrived and that the workplaces of the future will be radically different to those of twenty years ago, but what does this mean for the people working in them? Which skills will they need to thrive and survive? What will be needed to give businesses competitive advantage, and to improve our public services? If you would like to get involved in the project contact Duncan O'Leary.
The future of further education
Demos has recently begun a project to develop a set of uniting principles for the future of the further education sector. Working closely with both practitioners around the country, and policy makers at DfES, we will be exploring how local, context-specific solutions for further education can be developed, and reflecting on how this work can enrich and shape the future policy context. For more information please contact sarah.gillinson@demos.co.uk
The future of Scottish social care
As part of a major review of the Scottish social work sector, Demos is working with the Scottish Executive on the question of how to make user-centred social care both a shared aspiration and reality. In order to set the agenda for change, we are operating at a number of levels, with the aim of bridging the divide between policy and practice. Our approach includes expert interviews and focus groups, user journeys (in partnership with IdeasBazaar ), and development workshops. For more information please contact hannah.lownsbrough@demos.co.uk
Teaching and the new professionalism
While teachers are under ever-greater pressure to deliver, the environments in which they operate are more complex than ever before. But while collaborative working, shifting public attitudes and new technology pressure existing models of professionalism, there is an opportunity for teachers to forge new ones for themselves. In partnership with the General Teaching Council, this project aims to contribute to the professionalism debate within teaching, and help teachers to frame their own images of their public role. For more information please contact john.craig@demos.co.uk
All for one: leadership and governance in Children's Trusts
Children’s Trusts will, for the first time, bring together all children’s development needs into a single, locally delivered service. This project, with Gatenby Sanderson, will examine some of the challenges that lie ahead for both policy and practice – including leadership of the Trusts, the dynamics of the system as a whole, and the role for children in shaping their own services. For more information please contact hannah.lownsbrough@demos.co.uk
Scaling up innovation
Despite a plethora of government strategies aimed at promoting system-wide change, it is still a cause of frustration that innovative practices in schools and other public services do not spread more rapidly and effectively throughout the system. There are many ways to scale up and scale out: competition, networking and collaboration, venture capital, viral marketing - even crisis! This project, for the DfES Innovation Unit, aims to explore them all and understand more about the most effective ways of scaling up. For more information pleae contact paul.miller@demos.co.uk
Out-of-school hours learning
Demos is working with ContinYou, to learn from the innovative work in out-of-school hours learning taking place across our education system. From the Every Child Matters Agenda to community regeneration to combating anti-social behaviour, we argue that out-of-hours provision can be a vital space for connecting both national policy agendas and local communities. Our work has included workshops, interviews and a policy summit in an attempt to help forge a clear vision for the next phase of Study Support's development. A policy report will be published by ContinYou during the summer. For more information please contact john.craig@demos.co.uk.
Picture this! Planning for personalisation
Over the last year we have worked with the DfES Innovation Unit to develop a toolkit for teachers that aimed to help them think about how they might better personalise practices within their own schools, both through shifts in teaching and learning, but also through new relationships and connections to the community and parents. Working with Engine, we designed a 'visualisation' workshop that helped groups of teachers explore the future together and work out how they might get there. The workshop uses a combination of techniques including role play, scenario building and action planning. You can download the resources here. For more information please contact hannah.green@demos.co.uk
Learning futures: building innovation
Demos has been working with a range of partners from the construction, design, education and architecture worlds to explore the relationship between school buildings and the future of learning. We are currently in the process of developing our recommendations for how buildings of the future can genuinetly support the ambition of creating active, engaged and motivated learners. For more information please contact sophia.parker@demos.co.uk
Figuring it out
Schools are being deluged with data. Whilst some schools have the expertise to analyse that data and apply it, for many schools the figures can feel bewildering and disconnected from the real business of teaching and learning. We have been working with the Leading Edge Partnership Team at the DfES to understand how data can be harnessed by schools and groups of schools to help them achieve their goals. Having worked with many of the Leading Edge Partnership Schools, we will be producing a guide to practitioners about emerging practice. For more information please contact sarah.gillinson@demos.co.uk
NCSL 360
Why do some online communities flourish and others falter? What encourages participation from a wide community of users? And what role can the web play in helping to forge effective communities of practice among professionals? In this project with the National College for School Leadership, we will be examining how Talk2Learn, a community with 60,000 registered users, can build on previous success and serve as a source of constant learning and engagement for the teaching profession. For more information please contact duncan.o'leary@demos.co.uk
Strategic partnerships
We are increasingly working at a local level, and over the last year have acted as a strategic partner to Birmingham LEA, Kent LEA, Cornwall Local Strategic Partnership, and Westminster Education Action Zone where we have worked on a range of issues from innovation, to collaboration, to creativity and regeneration. If you are interested in hearing more about this work, or would like to explore the possibility of teaming up with Demos please contact sophia.parker@demos.co.uk
Things that we're scratching our heads about
Universities face a recruitment and retention crisis, and unless they can make a persuasive offer to new academics, more than ever before will leave the sector. While debate about the future of higher education has focussed either on the experiences of school leavers or very senior academics, Demos is looking to develop a research project focussing on those at the very heart of the system – those who have recently completed their PHDs and are looking to shape their university career. What are their experiences of higher education? How is this new generation changing academia? And what can the sector as a whole learn from their experiences? By reviewing the policy terrain and the staffing challenge facing
Can we reconnect politics to authentic emotions? Political discourse is full of references to emotion - indeed the politcal world seems to be awash with the stuff. Yet despite the hand-wringing over voter frustration and apathy and the bemoaning of our - apparently - dwindling social capital, we are no closer to an understanding of the role of emotions in politics. You can read more on this in the forthcoming issue of Prospect where Demos senior researcher Catherine Fieschi explores some of the questions. If you'd like to help us grapple with this one please contact catherine.fieschi@demos.co.uk
We're all professionals now... What do concepts of co-production and personalisation mean for future professionals? It seems like professionals face a barrage of reforms, with demands for them to work more across silos, in greater partnerships with users, whilst at the same time needing to do more to create genuine value rather than simply co-operate with performance frameworks. Does this feel like 3D chess to anyone else? We'd like to get a project off the ground to consider the future of the public service professional. Let john.craig@demos.co.uk know if you're interested.
Where's the 'public' in public services these days? The world of public services is growing in complexity, where contestability and market development are central to future policy. Yet what does this increasingly diverse group of providers mean for public value and personalised services? Can we do more to understand the relationship between diversity and equity? What do you think? Please contact simon.parker@demos.co.uk
Parent power. So Ruth Kelly says that parents are important and need to be more involved in their children's education. Schools are increasingly focusing on how to engage parents and make them active participants of these institutions. And we also know that parents have a far greater impact on learning outcomes than schools do. So what should the relationship be between state and parent? For more information please contact john.craig@demos.co.uk
Recent publications and resources
The Adaptive State(2003) Tom Bentley and James Wilsdon (eds)
Leading thinkers on system change explain why adaptivity is the key.
Personalisation through Participation (2004) Charles Leadbeater
Building services around user need will mean better services and better organisations.
Picture this! A planning tool for personalisation (2004). Demos, in collaboration with Engine and the DfES Innovation Unit. Download the resources here.
Education Epidemic (2004) David Hargreaves
Schools should be able to share good ideas through networks rather than rely on top-down policy interventions.
System Failure (2003) Jake Chapman
Understanding the interactions between different parts of a large organisation is as important as understanding how the constituent parts work.
Public value in education (2004) Tom Bentley, Peter McCleod, Duncan O'Leary and Sophia Parker We need to develop a new way of measuring and articulating the value of schools in creating learning outcomes.
Our partners include:
National College for School Leadership
Hay Group
Gatenby Sanderson
Scope
WRVS
Westminster Education Action Zone
Becta
Education Foundation, Australia
General Teaching Council
ContinYou
Specialist Schools Trust
Hewlett-Packard
EdExcel