Collective capability for public problem-solving 

Over the summer, a group of design and policy practitioners from around the world came together to share ideas, compare approaches, and spot patterns in how we work. The goal? To learn from each other and build something useful for the wider design and government community. 

All the participants worked in “cross-gov” teams...units, labs, departments that work tangentially across a range of different topics and policy areas, not defined by one unique topic, or focus area. We had participants from: Policy Lab in the UK government,  EU Policy Lab in the European Commission, US Government, Scottish Government, Experio Lab in Sweden, and Services Australia.

Common ways of designing policy 

Collaborating across multiple countries, disciplines, and levels of government exposed both the opportunities and the challenges of working in diverse teams.

We found differences in terminology, local practices, policy frameworks, yet at the same time, this diversity proved to be a strength. It allowed us to see familiar challenges from new angles, surface hidden assumptions, and raise questions on whether patterns we take for granted in one context hold true elsewhere.

By navigating these differences and discussions, we not only deepened our understanding of policy design in practice but also built the foundations for stronger cross-border collaboration.

We use different terms, sit in different structures, and respond to different political cycles. Yet when we looked underneath that, we found we are often wrestling with the same issues: how to involve people meaningfully, how to work across silos, how to turn learning into long-term change.

We uncovered some powerful common threads: shared patterns, tensions, and building blocks that seem to show-up across our work.

Patterns for approaching policy design 

We identified five core patterns in policy design work:

1. Building knowledge: Gathering evidence, mapping systems, and understanding the context, so insights are grounded and can inform meaningful decisions not only for the design team but for all the key actors that will apply the work.
2. Building relationships: Establishing trust and connections among stakeholders to navigate tensions and enable collaborative action. Engage the people who influence or are influenced by the work as partners including internal experts across disciplines and people with lived experience in using or delivering a service.
3. Socialising and making insights actionable: Communicating insights effectively and translate them into practical steps, ensuring that learning informs decisions and is shared with the right audiences.
4. Generating transformative action: Identifying opportunities for systemic change, addressing tensions creatively, and driving initiatives that can shift practices and outcomes not only of immediate actions but of future-proof and -informed ambitious initiatives.
5. Adopting and implementing action: Turning solutions into policies, structures, and processes, ensuring that design interventions are truly embedded to have lasting impact.

Tensions to navigate

Tensions are the push and pull between different priorities, values, or approaches that shape how policy design works in context. They are not necessarily problems to be solved, but dynamic forces that need to be balanced or acknowledged as they represent possible trade-offs, negotiation, and reflection that are needed to make progress.

By analysing, materialising, and exploring these tensions, we gain a deeper understanding of how design patterns operate in real-life policy contexts and what it takes to navigate complexity.

For instance, when thinking about how citizens might participate in a policy design project, the “building relationships” pattern becomes especially important. What is the ask of people with lived experience of accessing and delivering services in terms of their involvement? Are they dipping in and out of the design process, or are they embedded in the team from start to finish? What is feasible, ideal and practical came up as key elements of tensions that bring you to one or the opposite side of that scale.

This helps you consider what kinds of training and support might be needed to prepare and empower people to be part of the design process across policy teams. When moving into a co-design space, the emphasis should be on understanding where decision-making can be shared and learned together. More time will be required for upskilling and capacity-building, and strong relationships will be needed to work together on challenging or potentially sensitive areas of decision-making.

The toolkit for design projects will also vary depending on the context. Where you are co-designing a policy topic, crossing organisational boundaries, you may need to develop a bespoke design process, with time and effort up front on creating the system conditions. That may involve agreeing to new governance arrangements to support strong collaboration and senior level sponsorship to ensure the vision and goals of the work are well understood and prioritised.

Building blocks to drive outcomes

Across our discussions we also surfaced some of the practical ingredients that make these patterns work in real projects. These include: 

• Time and space for sense-making, not just delivery, so that we can understand the system before we intervene 
• People who can bridge across disciplines and departments, translating between policy, operations, data, and lived experience. 
• Lightweight governance that gives permission to experiment while keeping sight of core public outcomes. 
• Simple artefacts – diagrams, stories, prototypes – that make complexity visible and help others act on the insights 

We see these building blocks as reusable components. They can be assembled differently in each context, but they help turn abstract patterns into real shifts in how governments work with and for people. 

So, what’s next? 

By naming common patterns, tensions, and building blocks, we start to create a shared language for this work. That matters because: 

• Value in creating common language. It helped us realise we are often working with the same building blocks, even if we call them different things. 
• Value to convening as a peer group. We have built new relationships and networks that stretch across countries. 
• Value in working asynchronously ...and we are keen to keep improving how we do it. 
• Reduces duplication. Teams in different places do not have to start from scratch every time; they can build from what others have learned. 
• Makes invisible work visible. Much of design and policy work is relational and experimental. Patterns help describe that work clearly so colleagues, leaders, and partners can see its value. 
• Strengthens the case for investment. When similar patterns show up across governments, it becomes easier to argue for sustained capability in design, participation, and systems thinking. 
• Keeps the focus on outcomes for people. Patterns link our methods to what changes for citizens, rather than to internal processes or tools. 

For us, the real value is not a perfect taxonomy. It is having a living, shared map of how design and policy can work together in practice. That map helps new colleagues orient themselves, helps leaders understand what they are commissioning, and helps us all move faster towards better outcomes for people and planet.

We can build on what we have started by continuing to share knowledge, deepening our understanding of design in different policy contexts.

The value in developing this further is straightforward.

A shared pattern language and evidence base can help governments everywhere design better policies and services, faster, with and for the people affected.

It gives us a way to connect local experiments to global learning, and to turn individual projects into a growing, collective capability for public problem-solving.