5 govtech open innovation labs and projects: What have we learned?

Since Gobe started in the spring of 2022, we have raised 2 Govtech Labs, 3 open innovation govtech projects, 3 govtech reports with institutions such as the Provincial Council of Bizkaia, the Community of Madrid, the Basque Government, the City of Madrid, the European Commission and CAF-Development Bank of Latin America. Between them, there are more than 30 challenges, more than 600 startup proposals received and 3 pilots completed and 15 in progress.

During these almost 2 years of running, we have been perfecting our own govtech methodology, which is based on open innovation processes and incorporates the design of services and a scouting of startups and SMEs with products that can impact the public sector. We have also learned a lot about the opportunities and challenges posed by these processes and I would like to share 3 of them with you:

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1. The definition of problems: space for reflection and opening of new ways of solution.

‍Here we tell you the importance of defining good problems for govtech labs and for innovation in general: A good problem definition attracts a good solution. We work directly with the departments, to open up the problem, investigate its causes and decompose it, transforming it from a broad original problem to several narrower challenges, with the causes clearly identified and above all actionable.

During these two years, we have continuously noticed the following benefits for the challenge teams:

• Space for Reflection: Day-to-day urgencies limit our vision of the problems. The teams have valued very positively having a space and methodology to reflect on their problems and their causes.  
• Order and Clarity: The main feedback we have received from the teams could be summarized in the following sentence: "We thought we were aware of our problems, but now we have them in order and we know where to start".
• Bounded, actionable challenges with different solution paths: the process culminates with the identification of up to four challenges, although only one is selected for the govtech open innovation process. However, having identified 3 other challenges that are bounded and actionable, although de-prioritized for govtech, opens the door for them to identify other solution paths: either with internal developments by the public technology company, with one of the large technology providers, or it is not so much a technological problem but has a lot to do with redesigning the service.

2. Govtech pilots: an opportunity to rethink service.

With the first govtech solution pilots, we understood that service design was not only extremely important in defining the challenge, but also in piloting and, above all, scaling a solution.

The incorporation of a new digital solution to our service implies a complete impact on the way of working, raising questions such as: Should the way the team is organized change? Should we think about new roles? Are new processes going to appear? How is the new internal or external user experience going to be? In short, in the service we offer.

We decided to incorporate this reflection using the Service Blueprint tool in the Learning Session at the end of the pilot. The result? The teams identify what changes they have made to the way they work and consider positive and the situations they would like to manage differently.

Clearly, redesigning a service is work that requires more resources and time, but just including this final reflection provided them with a visualization of the work done and clues to move forward in scaling the solution. As one colleague described "finding out where the seams would burst if we scaled this solution".

3. Activation of the relationship with the digitalization team and government areas, and if applicable, public technology company.

The various departments or business teams of a public institution often feel that their digital needs are not a priority for the digitization teams or in their case the associated public technology company, and rely on the latter, even though it does not always fully understand their needs.

Over two years, we have observed that open innovation processes activate the relationship between departments and the technology company in the following way:

• Optimization of technology demand: Business teams have their needs more organized and structured as a result of the challenge definition process, improving their dialogue and demand for solutions to the technology company.
• ‍Learnings from the pilots: the teams have been able to experiment with real solutions, identifying which functionalities are most useful and providing key information to inform the future demand for technology channeled through the public technology company.

Finally, including a person from this technology company in the challenge team to participate in all phases of the open innovation process has been very positive in strengthening this relationship.

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These have been the 3 main lessons learned about govtech's open innovation processes in these first two years of operation. We believe that years of experience only help if we focus on learning, iterating and improving our methodology and processes to promote a digitalization of the Administration that has a positive impact on people's lives.