If the Head Doesn’t See the Whole, How Can the System? Applying systemic design at the heart of government – The Experience from Latvia

Complex societal challenges do not follow organisational boundaries. Yet public administration is largely organised, governed and financed in ways that encourage organisations to focus on their own mandates, responsibilities and results.

If the public sector is to develop the capacity to see and act on the whole, this challenge also needs to be addressed from the centre of government. The Government Offices have a unique role in creating the conditions – through governance, funding, regulations, mandates and ways of working – for agencies, regions and municipalities to collaborate and take responsibility for shared outcomes.

In this digital event during the Swedish Innovation Week, SustainGov has invited Jānis Ķīnasts from the Innovation Laboratory at the State Chancellery of Latvia to share Latvia’s experience of how they used systemic design at the centre of government to build capacity for more holistic and systemic ways of working across public administration. The event is moderated by Mariell Juhlin, Program Director of SustainGov.

The event will explore the practical experience of how Latvia has worked to enable systems perspectives within central Government and how it’s enabled the wider public sector to lead and work for the whole.

More about the speakers:

Jānis Ķīnasts works at the Innovation Laboratory at the State Chancellery of Latvia and is a designer specialising in strategic and conceptual design, visioning and participatory processes.

With a background in environmental science and design, he has worked for more than a decade with Latvian municipalities, public authorities and other organisations on complex challenges, collaboration and participatory development. He is the founder of Cēsis Pluriversity and an official New European Bauhaus ambassador and finalist.

At the State Chancellery, he leads work to strengthen innovation and design capacity across public administration and to develop new approaches to complex public-sector challenges. The Innovation Laboratory works with co-creation, design, experimentation and prototyping, while increasingly developing an ecosystem and infrastructure for systemic learning and change across government.

Mariell Juhlin is Program Director of SustainGov, a strategic innovation programme focused on strengthening the public sector’s capacity to address complex societal challenges and drive systemic change.

With a background in economics and public policy, she works at the intersection of systems innovation, governance and leadership. Her work focuses on how public-sector actors can collaborate across organisational and administrative boundaries, develop shared approaches to complex challenges, and create the conditions for long-term systemic change.