7. Pilot selection and methodology
Experimental cases for anticipatory innovation should explore unknowns and unexpressed values or the impacts of uncertain future events. The chapter outlines the methodology by which the four pilot case studies – on continuous learning, carbon neutrality, child well-being and collaboration between politicians and public officials – were selected. Factors such as variety of case content, ownership, alignment with policy priorities grounded the selection. A collective sense making and scoping sessions with experts in Finland followed to prepare the content of the pilots.
“I have sometimes been asking this question: if our governance system of Finland had never been invented, what kind of system would we invent now?” - Senior executive in the Government of Finland
The OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (OPSI) is working with the government of Finland and the European Commission to examine how Finland's governance processes and mechanisms can be refined to deal with complex and future challenges in an even more systemic manner. As part of this work, four policy domains have been identified as case studies to gain greater understanding and pilot initiatives to build further Finland's anticipatory capacity: carbon neutrality, continuous learning, child-well-being, and collaboration between politicians and public officials.
This assessment has highlighted a variety of issues related to the anticipatory innovation governance system in Finland, and identified small and large changes that could help address these. How can these changes be made in reality? The next step is to develop a working anticipatory innovation governance model based on the findings of the assessment report. This prototype will be tested through four experimental cases in Finland and will help to tackle some of the challenge areas specific to Finland. The cases should inform learning about the effective governance of anticipatory innovation, demonstrating how Finland’s governance structures can deal with shifting values, new public expectations, uncertain future shocks and a variety of preferable futures that the country wants.
In April-May 2021, the OECD developed case selection criteria (Box 1.1) and discussed these with the high-level advisory board. In order to include the widest potential variety of governance mechanisms in the experimental cases and to address areas with disruptive potential, the OECD proposed including cases:
Involving deliberative or public participation methods, but with the flexibility to adapt them with future-orientation in mind.
Involving how leaders, both administrative and political, engage in shared sense making of knowledge about the future.
Involving a forum in which trade-offs are discussed and explored, but not necessarily decided
Addressing continuity and long-termism beyond political cycles.
Addressing anticipatory innovation capacity issues in ministries both on the political and administrative levels.
Experimental cases for anticipatory innovation should explore unknowns and unexpressed values or the impacts of uncertain future events. For these projects, cause and effect can be difficult or impossible to predict and often challenging to connect, even indirectly and after the experiment. Deductive reasoning is not the primary logical basis for these experimental cases. While research questions may serve as guidance, hypotheses, quantitative evidence and control groups are not well suited to an anticipatory innovation approach.
Characteristics of a good pilot
Variety – One of the outcomes of the overall anticipatory innovation governance project is to inform an emerging model, so pilots should represent a variety of different mechanisms in terms of both authorising environment and agency (see Figure 1.1). The cases should also be varied across different policy sectors.
Significance – The cases should be in policy areas that are important to the Government and serve as a significant demonstration case.
Ministry-level ownership – Cases should have top-level legitimacy but should not be subject to the same administrative constraints and evaluation methods as other innovation projects. Cases should be relevant to national government but can also be cross-governmental and involve agencies.
Willing partners – Cases should involve trusted relationships with project-owners in Finland. Experimental case owners and the OECD should be able to have frank and direct conversations about the experimental cases, both to design them well and to learn from them.
Alignment with current priorities – Given the limited duration of this project, and the need for both topical legitimacy and on-the-ground experimental case operational support, cases should involve ongoing work areas or work planned for 2021 or have a clear window of opportunity to propose/prepare change.
Do no harm - Experimental pilots should reveal and uncover unknowns and surprises. Invariably operating in emerging policy the impacts might not be known up front or to be benign or positive.
Avoid entrenched positioning – There are certain topics for which cultural narratives are deeply entrenched or about which open discussion is more difficult due to strong positioning by politicians or interest groups (e.g. immigration, employment policy). These topics should be avoided to allow for open exploration in the experimental cases.
Source: OECD.
Based on the discussion at the previous advisory board meeting and the following outreach, the OECD chose to support cases in four areas: 1) continuous learning; 2) carbon neutrality and evidence about the future; 3) children, youth and family policy; and 4) dialogues between politicians and leading civil servants on anticipatory innovation governance roles. Figure 1.1 illustrates how the case topics are connected to the challenges outlined in the assessment of the Finnish government system (Part II).
Source: OECD.
The cases are outlined as follows:
Continuous learning and implementation of reforms. One of the most frequent challenges described in the prior research was the ability to implement strategic visions in complex policy areas. Finland has been working on a strategic approach towards continuous learning over the last decades and has one of the most successful skill-development systems among OECD countries. Yet trends such as ageing and digitalisation are now challenging the system. The OECD conducted a review on the topic last year concluding that the Finnish skill-development system must get future-ready (OECD, 2020[1]). One of the goals here is to develop a new forward-looking system with partners from the public, private and third sectors participating in a continuous learning centre that anticipates and tests future needs in the policy area. The case will analyse how this future-oriented implementation system could look like in the context of continuous learning centre and what the new engagement model it would entail. The reform is supported by a parliamentary group that started its work in 2019, making a roadmap for the reform. In autumn 2019, Sitra facilitated the first phase of the work by applying constructive dialogue methodologies to facilitate the discussion between stakeholders in the policy area.
Carbon neutrality and evidence about the future. Much of policy making today, especially macroeconomic policy, depends on forecasting and predictions based on existing data. These models are probabilistic and only capture a small set of future possibilities. They tend to discount more transformative change that is difficult or impossible (due to complexity and uncertainty) to model robustly using quantitative methods. In complex policy situations like climate change, these models rarely illustrate the conditions in real life. This case will look at the anticipatory knowledge base, decision-making mechanisms and institutional roles of ministries in facilitating one of the biggest transitions of our lifetime: the green transition. The case will highlight which tools are needed to take anticipatory climate needs into account in macroeconomic policies and how climate actions could be better supported by macroeconomic policies in a future-oriented way. This is a topic where the learning could be shared across countries as Finland is the current acting chair of the initiative “Finance Ministers for Climate Action.”
Steering change across government levels in the area of child well-being. In 2020 Finland adopted its first ever National Child Strategy, which aims to create a more child- and family-friendly Finland. The strategy concentrates on developing a vision that spans across government terms and crosses administrative boundaries. Beyond the vision, many multi-level governance and co-ordination challenges emerge. A key issue is how to co-ordinate challenges specific to the area and support mechanisms of the future to deliver on the strategy. The Ministry of Finance has been working on the topic of phenomenon-based budgeting in connection to the strategy. Project leaders would like to explore what would this look like and how it could be incorporated into the anticipatory innovation governance model. Tackling these questions will help address several themes coming out from the research conducted by the OECD: policy cycles and continuity of reforms, resource allocation and co-ordinating across government challenges.
Interface between politicians and public officials on their role in anticipatory innovation governance. A well-functioning interface of politicians and leading civil servants is a vital part of public governance. Acknowledging the mutual roles, functions, processes and challenges connected to anticipation is vital for a new governance system. This topic has come out across the anticipatory innovation governance themes, from complex and long-term policy issues to knowledge creation and advice by civil servants. The case will take the format of joint dialogues between politicians and leading civil servants around the identified anticipatory innovation governance themes. Each dialogue will be undertaken by different groups of six to ten individuals, with positions divided equally between politicians and civil servants. The dialogues will be facilitated by the Finnish project secretariat and the OECD will use the insights for a guidance document on the emerging roles and communication mechanisms.
All of the pilot case studies were scoped in workshops with experts in Finland September and October 2021 after which core outputs were defined in project plans by the end of 2021. The pilot cases were developed and supported until April 2022. All the cases benefited learning sessions with international peers and owners of similar challenges, facilitated by the OECD. For each pilot case study a taskforce in Finland with relevant experts was assembled (see Annex B). The taskforces convened to discuss the issues connected to the case and co-create in workshops and meetings a way forward. In parallel, OECD consulted both internal and external experts, international peers for the relevant learnings to the case. Case on the relationships between politicians and public officials (Chapter 5) was conducted slightly differently as the Timeout dialogues (see further in Chapter 5) were organised by Finland which generated essential insights to challenges. OECD for the sake of the impartiality of the process and robustness of the methods did not participate in the dialogues, but relied on anonymised notes for the analysis. The findings and recommendations of all pilot case studies were validated in expert workshops at the end of May 2022. The findings of the cases fed into the revision of the anticipatory innovation governance model (Part I, Chapter 3).
Following sections will present the summary findings of the pilot case studies and their similarities, convergences (Chapter 2), which is followed by detailed descriptions of the pilot cases on continuous learning (Chapter 3), carbon neutrality and evidence about the future (Chapter 4), child well-being (Chapter 5) and collaboration between the politicians and public officials (Chapter 6). The chapters can be read independently from each other as they outline the pilot case studies in detail starting from the context of the specific case (based on semi-structured interviews and desk analysis), purpose of the research, and outline of current anticipatory activity, gap analysis and recommendations for improvement. As mentioned above, all pilot ca studies also feature international case studies and learnings from peer sessions. The cases were selected based on their potential to provide relevant insights into forms of collaboration in the context of AIG in general and in Finland more specifically.
References
[1] OECD (2020), Continuous Learning in Working Life in Finland, Getting Skills Right, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/2ffcffe6-en.