By Bano Barzingi, Daniel Cohen Stuart, Elle Dales and Merlin Landmann.
Many Value Creators’ (VC) begin their journey with high hopes, and uncertain moments. However, Bano, Daniel, and Merlin are doing the Value Creators for a second time, so they knew what to expect and how to prepare for it. So, upfront we all showed interest in Integrated Policy Design (IPD) because we saw many possibilities to create value. However, we knew perfectly that we are a group of strong-headed individuals, so balancing that out we needed to find someone who wants to work with us. And there was Elle! After the first meeting with Elle, we were directly convinced that she would be a great addition to the team. So, together with Elle, we started our journey! As the VC journey was guided by the 4E-Model approach, this blogpost follows our journey by addressing the E-model structure: Exploring the topic of interest, Engaging with relevant stakeholders, Elaborating on findings, and Evaluating the progress.
Explore
Daniel and Merlin worked on this previous VC and were quite familiar with it. Their knowledge basis helped us find information more effectively. However, we still wanted to explore and dedicate this time to better understand what IPD is. We noticed the importance of the topic but recognized that it is relatively new in practise. Before the 1990s, policymaking was a framework for building a new social or political environment. During the 1990s, however, the idea of using trans sector instruments evolved, creating more collaboration among different parties to accommodate a collective goal. The development of IPD has been given more attention since the need for a more collaborative approach is increasing tremendously.
Engage
As we understood the issue better, we began to select networks and stakeholders with experience in the field of IPD. To include multiple perspectives, the aim was to find various stakeholders from different backgrounds, but with some link to IPD. This created a big pool of people to contact from other disciplines. Therefore, we categorised governmental intuitions, international advisory organisations, media, academia, and citizens to structure our search and started contacting relevant parties to conduct meaningful interviews. Moreover, the engaging phase helped to validate the issue and work towards a solution with experts' input.
Elaborate
Moreover, we started the elaboration phase with the experts' input to work towards a well-informed solution. Through research and interviews we understood that the main challenges are 1) a lack of collaboration & linear thinking 2) lacking governing structure that can deal with complexity and 3) disparity/disconnect between governing bodies and the public. Therefore, we aimed to develop a roadmap that can assist during the integration process. From the interviews, we retrieved that many still struggle with the implementation of IPD, and in combination with the listed challenges, it seemed valuable to simplify this process. Yet, making a roadmap is quite complex, so we aimed to create our concept's skeleton for this semester.
Evaluate
Moreover, as we continued to the evaluation phase, we began tweaking our solution and plan to ensure continuity. Since creating a fully developed roadmap is not possible within the given timeframe, we aimed to make a booklet that explains the roadmap, the components, and the calculations through text and visuals. Moreover, to ensure continuity of the product and further develop the roadmap, Daniel and Merlin took the opportunity to continue to work on the topic during their thesis. Additionally, we have set up several launching sessions to present the product to our stakeholders and co-create further. Since this is not the final version yet, we are very excited how further developments will evolve and where the future might bring it.
This blogpost of our journey is utmost brief yet captures the complexity that came along with the process of tackling such a dynamic topic.
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