Shaping Legislation Together: Human-centered approaches in the legislative context
Expert report by Caroline Paulick-Thiel for Unit 133 (Bureaucracy Reduction Office) in the German Federal Chancellery, Berlin
October 2017
Originally published in German. Read the original here.
“Because our solutions must survive in a future that is different from today, the ability to design effectively becomes ever more important. We need to design society with regard for the future, not referring to a past that is becoming less relevant to the problems we face now; we need to realize better and more sustainable solutions by using our imagination and talent for creativity and design.” — Mulder 2011
Managing and shaping
The contemporary design of the public sector and the related changes put traditional ways of working in politics and administration worldwide under scrutiny. Bureaucracies with many thousands of employees currently face the challenge of not only monitoring laws and budgets, but also establishing new relationships between intersubjective realities (Harari 2017) and ecological-social consequences.
In Germany, nationwide strategies for the future and innovation focus mainly on the promotion of technologies for solving complex societal problems (BMBF 2017). This is understandable, but it has been proven that technological innovations can only contribute to a desirable transformation of our society if they can be effective in conjunction with social innovations and experience cultural embedding (Buchanan 2001, Jahn et al 2012).
Facing complexity
Especially in the area of law-making, problems emerge for which not only one suitable solution can be considered, but where their framing by the actors is disputed; where causes of problems, goals and responsibilities are the subject of a discursive debate (Hagan 2017). In order to deal with these so-called “wicked problems” (Rittel and Webber 1973, Buchanan 1992, Checkland et al 2006, Ferlie et al. 2011) transdisciplinary approaches and organizational learning processes are particularly considered in the fields of transformation and administration (Jacob et al. 2015).
In the case of unclear problem profiles and “soft” goals, therefore, there is a need for social learning processes that contribute to the adaptation of leading variables, goals or discursive framing and are referred to as “double-loop learning” (Agyris and Schön, 1996). Practice shows that this learning is very much in demand and is difficult to implement in organizations, because “double-loop learning” occurs when mistakes are identified and corrected in a way that incorporates changes in the underlying norms, policies, and goals of an organization (Smith 2001).
Experimenting legitimately
In order to meaningfully accompany the associated learning processes in the policy cycle, for several years now, innovation spaces in the public sector have been experimenting with participatory and creative methods (Bason 2010, 2017). For this, legitimate experimental spaces within political-administrative structures are helpful, in which overarching questions can be dealt with and concrete results can emerge.
It should be emphasized that there is a continuous engagement with design approaches that deliberately place people in their environment at the center of the development of public products, services and change processes (Buchanan 2007, Junginger 2015). Approaches from human-centered design combine creativity with feasibility. Ideas are designed and realized for processes and things that are intuitive and valuable, with which people like to interact. There are several areas defined by the nature of the challenge that needs to be addressed, from information, products and services to organizations and systems (see Matrix Buchanan). These approaches also enable technological innovations, but with the participation of representative groups with different needs.
Exploring design options
Internationally tested strategies from human-centered design can broaden the options for action of public organizations (Junginger 2015) and strengthen directional cooperation within and between organizations.
The associated processes and methods (for example, Design Thinking, but also Theory U, Art of Hosting, etc.) support multi-perspective cooperation through empathic research approaches and the explication of implicit knowledge, since they were developed especially for the treatment of complex problems (Kimbell 2011). The collective intelligence of the participants is used to develop practical answers to challenges that are specifically geared to the needs and issues of the affected target groups.
Documentation of the cooperation
Legal design provides ways to assess and develop information and interactions throughout the legal cycle. The focus is on how applicable,meaningful, and motivational the respective products and services are to the people who create and use them (Hagan 2017).
By involving relevant target groups, legal design can open up very different possibilities:
· Communicating information in a more meaningful and understandable way
· Promoting the development of ideas for desirable products and services
· Integrating social and technological innovations within or between organizations
· Supporting empathic interactions between people and impact-oriented collaboration
In order to not only refer to internationally successful examples, employees of the German Federal Government have tested human-centered design approaches on the basis of a relevant legislative challenge.
Too much data, too little information
The Better Regulation Unit of the German Federal Chancellery is frequently faced with the task of clearly and convincingly presenting the processes and functions that are required to draft laws and ordinances, as well as to ensure quality and improve standards. In the international context, the OECD, for example, is an organization that regularly gathers information from its member countries, which is intended for the implementation of recommendations on regulation policy. For this purpose, member countries answer a survey containing over 420 questions.
The data collection focuses on instruments for regulatory impact assessment, the participation of those affected and evaluation. In the future, a further aim will be to identify how the member countries organise oversight and quality management. For this, an extension of the questionnaire was developed.
Avoiding false conclusions
In the context of this questionnaire, in consultation with Unit 133 and the OECD, research has been done on how to gather information and improve cooperation between professionals. The study revealed that questionnaires are not sufficiently suitable for collecting the necessary data or deriving meaningful representations or even drawing conclusions. Some quotes from experienced users who tested the OECD’s draft questionnaire extension were:
P1: “Unfortunately, I have not consistently succeeded in grasping the questions or the apparent assumptions that were used in their formulation.”
P2: “The requested answering of the questions was only partially possible for me. I am afraid it will be the same later on, even with the finalized questionnaire, and this could lead to false or disadvantageous results.”
P 2: “I also was not able to achieve a comprehensible illustration of the respective legislative process by answering the individual questions or by merely rephrasing them.”
Making meaningful connections
Information about the organization and scope of quality management can only be presented and analyzed meaningfully in connection with information on the regulatory process itself and the use of the instruments mentioned. The guiding question for the further work process was:
How can we improve the collection, mapping and analysis of data in the context of legislative procedures?
In order to find possible answers, an explorative procedure and corresponding methods were required. The same applies to similar tasks within the Federal Government. In addition to traditional textual and graphical representations such as lists, organigrams, or charts representing the allocation of duties, new mapping opportunities should be developed and tested as part of the expert consultation.
Research of possible approaches
For inspiration a variety of images of processes were examined that show people interacting with products or systems. Especially in the area of service design, “user journeys” can illustrate one or more user groups in different situations, e.g. in everyday life or in a service system. This enables examination of how the situation is arranged, who the involved groups are, what points of contact there are with certain questions, and what needs and emotions the user group has in each case.
Drafting a process
Based on this research, ideas for the analysis of work processes in lawmaking were developed that focused on the pre-parliamentary process of developing a law. This resulted in a first “Process Journey Toolkit”, printed on paper, which offers the possibility of modularly representing selected process elements using color-coded forms: groups of actors and individual actors, process phases, timeframes, activities, decisions, results and quality assurance instruments.
Testing the method in a workshop
The toolkit was tested in a workshop with employees of the Federal Chancellery (Political Planning Department, Unit 133) and the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection. The aim was to interactively integrate the participants’ expertise into mapping the legislative process and to identify specific information on quality assurance during the respective procedural options. Instead of an extensive questionnaire, which is often filled out by one person alone, two teams of four people each worked in parallel to create a prototype mapping. One team mapped the specific process of a current legislative procedure while the other team worked on mapping a general procedure.
Revised presentation of the methodological collection, mapping and analysis of data
After the workshop, the images created using the “Process Journey Toolkit” were refined, digitized and adjusted in cooperation with the participants (Political Planning Staff Unit, Unit 133, BMVJ). Based on the joint process analysis and data collection and through the integration of different perspectives within the federal government, the group considered which comparative representation of legislative processes could be relevant in different governmental contexts.
The following presentation was developed to map parallel activities and different depths of detail in the process of drafting a bill with stakeholders, selected decisions, process outcomes, and quality assurance tools.
For the national context, further important needs were identified through interviews during the workshop:
Data quality: Requires reliable, verified data sets, comprehensible data sources, transparency with regard to use and processing. Reliable statements on efforts for implementation are a prerequisite for reducing unnecessary bureaucracy and reducing information loss through data collection, open-ended analysis and interpretation.
Comprehensibility: Tools for the better understanding of draft legislation (beyond the wording) and target group-specific processing, in order to promote data literacy, clarity and quality of data handling.
Collaboration: more collegiality between the various instances, because cooperation is the basis for mapping complex contexts and gaining acceptance from (political) clients to act more freely and innovatively.
Criteria for the suitability of methodological approaches in the legislative context
According to evaluation by the workshop participants, the methodological approach and the “Process Journey Toolkit” are suitable for further use in the national and international legislative context by employees in ministries or other persons, who are e.g. only secondarily involved.
The developed approach supports the discovery of real processes and offers a qualitative insight into different system logics. The instruments can be used in a variety of ways, for example for self-evaluation, for the parallel mapping of desired and actual states or in the international comparison of quality assurance instruments in regulatory policy.
Important for working with it is the definition of the task and what is being worked toward. It should be clarified, whether internal communication (more detailed understanding of processes in the organization) or external (to communicate processes to non-participants) is desired. For accurate representation, different stakeholder groups should be involved.
There was a very positive assessment of the cooperation between a diverse group and the interconnection of knowledge. Added value was the clear comparability of the processes and the discussions based on the mapping. The paper prototype was rated as a good basis for developing a digital version.
Adequate time should be planned for the cooperation, especially with regard to comprehensive consideration of the quality assurance elements of the exchange, so that it can be better understood who uses what and how (oversight). The cumulative approach related to the toolkit was considered meaningful and relieving.
For the further development, a group responsible for processes could be formed in the Federal Government, which can take on and test new instruments in order to specifically support future-oriented approaches in legislation and to strengthen participation in democratic processes. It would be useful to extend the “Process Journey Toolkit” and expand the resulting “Legislative Cycle” presentation.
Rather than using the linear presentation created during the workshop, the participants could work directly in a circular format. This would on the one hand create a visual overview and on the other hand, definitive work steps and results would be described in more detail. In national and international comparison, this type of collection, mapping and analysis of data could support the understanding and clarity of procedural quality assurance for different regulatory stakeholders.
Outlook
Exploratory research for new insights or solutions requires curiosity, creativity and the desire for renewal. Especially in the field of adult education, approaches that focus on “Learning to know, to do, to be and to live together” are of great important (Delors/UNESCO 1996). Preparing the legislative workforce for current and future challenges requires skills acquisition that tends from input-oriented management approaches to output-oriented learning processes. This requires flexible learning spaces and working cultures that value personal development of potential, open organizational development, collective knowledge generation and an openness for explorative, iterative possibilities (Paulick-Thiel and Junginger 2016).
Learning to change
Interesting in the accompaniment of learning processes in political-administrative organizations are the relationships between the various dimensions of knowledge and skills. The acquisition of new skills is more than the addition of different forms of knowledge, but requires a motivational, discretionary and social readiness (Weinert 2001) to learn and use different forms of knowledge to solve problems. Key and meta-skills typically include aspects of “learning to learn” and how to “handling uncertainty” (Winterton et al., 2006). In the context of Education for Sustainable Development, Germany has coined the term “design competence” (De Haan and Harenberg 1999), which is understood as the ability to apply knowledge on sustainable development and to recognize the problems of non-sustainable development, and based on that, make, understand and implement decisions with which sustainable development processes can be realized.
Combining the concepts of personal and organizational development
For the acquisition of skills, a distinction can be made between passive and active learning as well as personal and social learning (Stiglitz 2000). Here, the explication of implicit knowledge and empathy as a curious and diplomatic mindset (Sennett 2012) play a central role. The more frequently an organization’s employees can describe their observations on a course of action and decide together whether that process of action is in need of improvement, the sooner existing knowledge and value potentials can be used, recombined or expanded and made effective (Heitger 2004). Alongside explicit justifications for the expansion of their repertoire, adults need evidence of personal development. In addition to the cognitive and the practical access to a topic, emotional reflection is also required (Klein and Kiehne 2011).
Working aids as an impulse for design
The “Process Journey Toolkit”, developed as a working aid in the context of the expert consultation, can support organizational learning processes in a human-centered and co-creative manner if the procedure is appreciated and provided with legitimized spaces for experimentation and resources. The purpose of the work is just as important as the quality of the working atmosphere in order to develop new and robust knowledge.
About the Author
Caroline Paulick-Thiel is a strategic designer and expert in facilitating responsible innovation processes in cross-sectoral learning environments. Trained in design (BA) and in public policy (MPP), she is an expert in developing participatory and transdisciplinary processes to address public challenges. She is the co-founder of nextlearning, a German nonprofit association that supports societal transformation processes by fostering new learning approaches since 2012. In 2015, she initiated the non-partisan initiative Politics for Tomorrow to focus on new approaches to public sector innovation in Germany.
She is involved in several major transformation projects promoting new models of governance in research and innovation politics and co-leading a unique research project “Daring to transform” with the Research Center for Environmental Politics at Free University Berlin. The project seeks to develop a learning program for a Federal ministry and agency in Germany that will enable their employees to initiate and promote systemic change processes with actors from all sectors.
Caroline gives guest lectures at different universities, moderates talks for various national and international public organizations, facilitates workshops for institutions such as the Federal Chancellery, Federal Ministries and Agencies, the World Bank, The IMF, the German UNESCO Commission, research institutes or political foundations. She is a member of the Open Government Partnership civil society network and part of the Sounding Board of the GovLab Austria. For many years, she has volunteered in projects, which combine experiential learning, sustainable development and policy advice.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/caroline-paulick-thiel/
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