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“Government may have lost sight of why it is there”: Christian Bason at CfPI
The Centre for Public impact has an appropriately impactful interview with Christian Bason, CEO of the Danish Design Centre, about the future of government. Bason starts off by tackling the ubiquitous obsession with efficiency and cost-saving:
To radically transform how government spending makes a difference you need to start with an outside-in perspective of how citizens and other actors engage with government. From that vantage point, it is possible to explore how we might create much more value at lower costs over higher efficiencies. If you start with the money, the money is likely to be the only thing you change – and often at a cost to citizens.
He also has a forthright position on solutionism that rather echoes that of doteveryone’s Better Care Systems project:
There’s a risk also that we simply grasp at the next big technology as a cure-all for whatever challenges government is facing. But the truth is that technology alone will not save us, especially if it comes at the expense of a more human government. […] if government practice becomes more technical and more digitally focused, where does that leave the human aspect? It’s not clear how we relate increased use of technology to the need for government to be more human.
There’s plenty more where that came from, so read the whole interview at the CfPI website. All that’s left unanswered is the biggest question of all: is anyone listening?