ICT-enabled public sector innovation: trends and prospects

This experience paper is a personal thinkpiece which outlines many of the main issues and discussions taking place in Europe and elsewhere about the future of the public sector and how it can respond positively to some of the acute challenges it faces in light of the financial crisis and other global challenges. The paper examines how ICT-enabled public sector innovation highlights concepts like open governance, public value, government as a platform, open assets, open services and open engagement. It develops a vision of an 'open governance framework', moving beyond 'new public management', based on ICT-enabled societal-wide collaboration. It recognises that although the public sector can in principle create public value on its own, its potential to do so is greatly enhanced and extended by direct cooperation with other actors, or by facilitating public value creation by other actors on their own. It also examines the role of bottom-up innovation and public policy experimentation, as well as the need to focus on empowering civil servants and changing public sector working practices and mindsets.