This article is written by Benjamin Seibel, director, CityLAB Berlin, and Victoria Boeck, project lead, Open Data Informationsstelle of the Technologiestiftung Berlin.

How do you help governments be more digitally innovative when many aren’t even sure what digital innovation is or what it looks like?

This is one of the central problems we encounter through our work at the Technologiestiftung Berlin, a non-profit foundation that works closely with the Berlin city administration on technology-related issues. Over the last few years, we’ve specifically helped government officials in Berlin conceptualise, plan and execute digital innovation projects.

We’ve found that while talking about innovation helps (like presenting at meetings or publishing how-to guides, for example), a far more effective tactic is showing what innovation is – specifically, through a digital prototype.

We've summarised here three of our key learnings about why government innovation teams should prototype, strategies for effective prototyping, and what you should be aware of when utilising prototypes.

Jumpstarting conversations

Government employees are often unsure about what exactly digital innovation is, and they also often have the mindset that all digital projects are massive undertakings requiring significant advance planning and coordination.

This typically leads to painfully drawn-out meetings that attempt to map out all aspects of a digital tool before its development has started; the result is that many relatively small-scale digital projects end up with bloated budgets and years-long development phases.

Digital prototypes can break up these cycles, helping public servants create new mental baselines about what innovative projects look like, what’s possible to achieve using digital technology, and how easy or difficult it is to develop certain types of products.

In the absence of a prototype, it can be hard to reach a common understanding of what’s actually being proposed; people might use the same words to describe something yet still have completely different mental models of what the product will look like or how it will function

By “digital prototype”, we mean functional digital mock-ups that demonstrate the intended usage and look of a given tool, product or platform. The key phrase to keep in mind with prototypes is that they need to be “real enough to feel”, i.e. their chief purpose is to mirror the end product well enough to elicit useful feedback that can inform the future development of the project (but their purpose is not to be a finished product ready for widespread use).

Focusing on creating and refining a prototype early in the development process can also help meetings stay productive and focused. In the absence of a prototype, it can be hard to reach a common understanding of what’s actually being proposed; people might use the same words to describe something yet still have completely different mental models of what the product will look like or how it will function.

For example, through the Technologiestiftung's open data initiative ODIS, we’re working with Berlin’s districts to create a tool that will make it possible to automatically generate voting districts, using inputs like previous years’ district boundaries and statistical data on population distribution.

Because something like this has never been done before in Berlin – currently, the districts are drawn largely by hand with the help of a geographic information system – the chief priority of the project was to develop a prototype as fast as possible.

That way, we wouldn't have to try to convince officials to support the project using theoretical visuals and descriptions of how the tool would work. Instead, we could present them a digital prototype that they could already interact with, and we could quickly secure both buy-in and enthusiasm for the project.

Gathering feedback

When digital teams prototype in the open (i.e., publishing the source code and sharing information on your prototype publicly), they enjoy a range of possible benefits. For one, open source code makes it easy to gather community feedback on the quality of your code and get help to improve it, if desired.

This process is also an opportunity for public servants to experience firsthand what it means to "fail fast", and why that can be a good thing.

Putting a prototype in the open — showing the public a government project in its early, developmental stages — may lead to it being critiqued or otherwise garnering negative feedback.

Not only is that ok, but it’s also the very point of developing a prototype: through prototypes, governments can learn quickly what does and doesn’t work well, and potentially avoid sinking significant resources into a project, only to realise too late that a fundamental component of the project was flawed.

When we at the Technologiestiftung want to create a map-based prototype, we don't start from scratch. We first look at previous projects that were also map-based to see if we can re-use components from that prototype

In that sense, rather than being an inherently risky endeavour, open prototyping is actually a way to minimise risk (and the potential for wasted resources) in the long term. Of course, it's still important to communicate clearly to the public that the solution displayed by the prototype is by no means finished and that major features or functionalities may be missing. You can do so by prominently labelling your project as being “in beta” and including a FAQ page that explains the current development status of the project, for example.

Re-using the code for future projects – regardless of whether the original developer is still on your team – is also made easier through open source prototyping, since ideally the project has been published and documented via an organised repository hosted on a platform like GitHub. When we at the Technologiestiftung want to create a map-based prototype, we don't start from scratch. We first look at previous projects that were also map-based to see if we can re-use components from that prototype.

Lastly, publishing open source means you potentially have the chance to see how other communities develop your ideas further. Your digital prototype may never advance beyond the prototype phase, but it's possible other public administrations may be interested in taking your work and building on it. Open source prototyping lays the groundwork for international communities of practice from which we all can benefit.

Risking success

Recently, CityLAB Berlin (run by the Technologiestiftung in cooperation with the mayor's office in Berlin) launched the platform “Gieß den Kiez” (in English: “Water your neighbourhood”). The platform maps the locations of more than 625,000 trees in Berlin and invites Berliners to get involved in watering their local trees in order to help them survive Berlin’s increasingly hot and dry summers.

We developed the platform on our own to showcase how to use technology to engage citizens in creative ways. We expected that the site would pique interest in the civic tech community in Berlin, but it ended up achieving resonance far beyond our tech circles (and what we ever imagined possible). The platform was featured in numerous news articles, television spots and radio features, and thousands of Berliners from all walks of life have started using the platform (to date we’ve had more than 50,000 visitors, and just over 2,400 trees have been adopted).

We’re thrilled that the project has been so successful – but that also meant we had to transition quickly from thinking of this as a largely demonstrative project, and instead start thinking of how to beef up our technical infrastructure to support the platform’s heavy usage and how best to respond to the flood of user feedback and suggestions for improvement.

So be aware: your prototype may start as a short-term experiment, but it may take on a life of its own. That’s not a bad thing; it’s exciting when people use our prototypes. But just as prototyping in government requires being prepared to fail, it's also important to keep in mind that prototyping also requires being prepared to succeed!

Digital prototypes without the digital?

At the Technologiestiftung, we’re fortunate to have both developers and designers as part of our team, making it easy for us to create digital prototypes for our projects. But of course, many public servants do not not have these skill sets in-house. This doesn’t mean prototyping is completely off the table, however: there are a variety of analogue possibilities for exploring potential designs of digital products, like paper prototypes or even role-playing scenarios and other more “playful” approaches (Legos, modelling clay, etc.).

The results of an analogue prototype are obviously not directly comparable to a purely digital prototype, but they can still help move conversations from the abstract to the concrete. They can also be a useful way to introduce the concept of prototyping to a potentially sceptical government audience without a significant investment of resources. — Benjamin Seibel

(Picture credit: Unsplash)