Enabling civil servants to experiment with ideas for improving public service delivery using insights from their ‘empathy journey’.

Farmer’s Window- Solution of Your Plant’s Problem Lies Here

The desperation and hopelessness in the eyes of a cattle farmer brought a paramount shift in mindset within a livestock extension officer in one of the remote sub-districts in Bangladesh. Learn how Dr. Amitavo Chakrovorti conceived and implemented an innovation on livestock information services.

Read The story: https://a2i.gov.bd/blog/cheaper-livestock-service/

Empowering citizens’, particularly the underserved

Empathy’ is the first guiding principle in a2i’s 3-phased approach (Initiation–> Execution–> Celebration) to help civil servants embark on a journey of innovating citizen-centric public services.

Empathy triggered citizen-centric innovation

a2i’s empathy methodology arranges for relatively senior government officers to act as secret shoppers and visit citizens’ access points for services outside of their ministry or area of expertise. This effectively places them in citizens’ shoes since they are forced to navigate public systems without any official privileges. The critical eye that participants develop from this experience allows them to identify ‘pain points’ or improvement areas from the citizen’s perspective.

Supporting & managing innovation in the public sector

At this crucial stage, a2i equips the innovators with tools to engage citizen-beneficiaries and organizes workshops to learn from their feedback so the ideas are refined to effectively meet their needs. Moreover, through Public Service Innovation Bangladesh – a social media-powered peer-support and mentor-ship network –we connect the innovators with present and former colleagues from across Bangladesh Civil Service who offer inputs based on their experience and act as mentors. Improving the service delivery of one department often involves dependencies, especially coordination at the field level, with departments from other ministries. Innovation Circles organized at the divisional level are thus designed to bring in another dimension to the exchange of ideas and whole-of-government collaboration necessary for the pilots to mature in both design and scope, form partnerships and mobilize the funding necessary to scale and sustain. These consultations also help the innovators to develop pragmatic solution designs and sound implementation plans. The solution and implementation plans are shared with the concerned directorates and ministries before the finalization of the pilot initiative.

Results

To date, over 1586 Innovation Pilots have been initiated and scores up-scaled in diverse service sectors ranging from health to agriculture, education, youth development, environmental conservation and many more – tangible exhibitions of the new culture of innovation that a2i is fostering in Bangladesh Civil Service.