Public Services Innovation (PSI)
Led by Rob Wilson, the Public Services Innovation (PSI) group in KITE (formally SBI) is an interdisciplinary research group drawing on the theoretical basis of social science, management practice and information systems grounded in the real world challenges of public service, multi-agency partnership working. The group has an established reputation in applied action research and development projects in the context of public service delivery.
Much of our current (and past) work in this area is focussed on public service partnership working (including the role of the VCS/third sector) and public service innovation (e.g. multi-agency information sharing). The challenges the public sector increasingly face are among the most complex of organizational problems, including the delivery of local governance processes, issues of identity management, the articulation and building of business cases, and the promotion of sustainability. Our work has encompassed a range of research, R&D and consultancy projects which have informed national, regional and local policy and practice, particularly around the partnership working and information sharing agenda. The five core strands of the group’s activity are:
- an emerging set of facilitation and visualisation methodologies (forming the basis of a ‘social informatics lab’) based on over 12 years of experience working across the broader public service delivery agenda taking a co-productive approach to resolving issues and problems with practice and management communities moving from improving understanding between partners to working prototypes of socio-technical systems
- an established reputation at a national level and active working relationships at a national, regional and local level supporting the building of understanding and insights into the challenges of service co-ordination and innovation (e.g. around current issues in service innovation and identity management).
- a set of capacity building material in the form of a range of modules currently available through the Business School’s programmes (including modules on 'Understanding Partnership Working' and the ‘Transformational government’ stream in the MSc in E-Business);
- the capacity to offer short/CPD courses on a range of specific (e.g. social care; education (inc schools, FE and HE) and service co-ordination issues) and general issues of information sharing/governance and partnership building/development (e.g. ESRC project on commissioning and procurement issues);
- and a set of materials (e.g. the recent desk research report for the NE Empowerment Partnership) and web-based tools (e.g. FAME - www.fame-uk.org/).