Government open innovation labs

I'm a big proponent of the open labs concept in government, because it creates space for a more inclusive approach to innovation beyond just a position or department.

The United Kingdom and Argentina governments are working on what they call the Policy Innovation Exchange that creates the potential for a much-needed, broad-scale government-to-government open collaboration organization that addresses common issues each -- and others -- have.

Ultimately, what this can enable is better sharing of policies, technologies and culture exchanges, helping innovation to holistically be free beyond localized innovation bubbles.

Government labs around the world are finding ways to improve the decisions that public officials take. We are generating evidence that enables co-creation of public policies, we have an interdisciplinary perspective of problems and we prototype before implementing in order to reduce risk.

But we need to remember that our efforts are part of something bigger. Labs are changing the paradigm of thinking, designing and implementing public policies.

Perhaps it is time to move from labs learning from each other, to labs working together and executing projects jointly?

Read more about this collaboration in English or Spanish.