This article is written by Miguel A. Rozo, Apolitical Insider Fellow and Policy Advisor at Global Affairs Canada. This article has been edited by Rebecca Heywood, Apolitical Insider Fellow and Strategic Operations Advisor, NYC DCAS

The Covid-19 global pandemic offers the public sector a window of opportunity to reimagine.

An opportunity to rethink the way we work and to make systems thinking accessible in the workplace to tackle today’s complex policy challenges.

Within a few weeks in March and April 2020, governments worldwide brought forward wide-sweeping changes and mobilized resources ahead of and throughout what would become an unprecedented global lockdown. The decisive actions taken to avoid the spread of coronavirus challenged the prevailing attitude that government is slow to react and resistant to change. As we learned the gravity of Covid-19, many of us underwent a range of emotions — panic, worry, uncertainty — but one thing was ultimately clear: resilience and adaptability proved to be essential for the continuity of the work of the public sector. It was demonstrated that with enough will, resources and people can be mobilized to confront issues that threaten our local and global community.

Today, as governments begin to lay the groundwork for post-Covid-19 recovery plans, we have a duty to take an in-depth look at the lessons from this pandemic. As we do that, I strongly believe that our ability to think in systems will be critical to our success.

The duty of public servants

For many, particularly my generation of 20- and 30-somethings, reverting to “business-as-usual” is not an option.

There is simply too much at stake. The environmental challenges ahead of us, rising inequality, increased civil unrest, polarization and the threats to the international rules-based order, are just some of the by-products of systems that are in need of reform. As a former entrepreneur in the social innovation and youth advocacy space, I can sense the yearning for change, the desire for renewed systems, but I can also see a growing discontent with the status quo amongst the general population.

Today, as governments begin to lay the groundwork for post-Covid-19 recovery plans, we have a duty to take an in-depth look at the lessons from this pandemic

To serve the public is a privilege. In my experience as a former internally displaced refugee, being in this space as a Canadian public servant is a reminder of the privilege I hold and the responsibility that comes with that. I believe it is our shared duty to stay grounded in how the public is impacted by our work and in how our work touches on people’s lives. Part of that lies in how we listen to a wide range of stakeholders throughout all the phases of the policy and programming development process.

As more of us experiment with new digital tools and envision what a 21st-century workplace could look like, we have a unique opportunity to “work better in concert, break down silos, and engage citizens and the right partners to address the root cause of issues, not just their symptoms,” as the OECD writes in a 2017 report on systems approaches to public sector challenges. As public servants, we have the agency to redefine our internal systems and those which directly impact the public. I believe the approach of systems thinking can deliver that change so many of us yearn for.

Systems thinking approaches like design thinking and user-centred design have gained popularity as means to overcome institutional barriers to analyze systems as a whole rather than individual parts. Systems thinking is especially useful to the public service given the complexity and the interconnectedness of policy issues.

Systems thinking offers possibilities beyond streamlining our work — it opens the window to break silos, to engage more meaningfully with partners and citizens, and to empathize with the needs of the people we serve

The phases of design thinking include — Empathizing, Problem Framing, Ideation, Prototyping, Testing — and at all stages, the end-user (in our case, the citizen) is at the core of solution building.

Incorporating systems thinking into public institutions

Many public servants have already heard of these concepts before, but as the authors of a 2019 OECD report on systems thinking write, “systems approaches cannot be introduced in the public sector through theory alone.” Their implementation needs to be “learnt by doing and has to be continuous and inclusive, not ad-hoc.” In other words, institutional support is essential to mainstream these concepts to ensure individual systems thinkers can transform their work into systemic solutions.

The Covid-19 outbreak though in some ways demonstrates what can be achieved when there is sufficient political and institutional will to mobilize resources decisively for the end-user.

Many already agree that public service renewal is a must. Once embedded in public institutions, systems thinking offers possibilities beyond streamlining our work. It opens the window to avoid shifting consequences from one system to another, to break silos, to engage more meaningfully with partners and citizens, and to empathize with the needs of the people we serve. What we need now is to make systems thinking more approachable - do away with the jargon — boost institutional will, and build on the momentum catalyzed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Through these actions, we can renew public institutions to ensure they are resilient and adaptable to the complex and quickly-evolving challenges of the 21st century. — Miguel A. Rozo

(Picture credit: Unsplash)