Innovating within Government Bureaucracies in Nigeria and Sierra Leone
Andre Arruda and Federico Vaz, MIT GOV/LAB’s inaugural Designer-Researchers
December 14, 2022 12:00PM MIT iHQ-5th floor training room, 292 Main Street, Cambridge, MA
Innovating within Government Bureaucracies in Nigeria and Sierra Leone
Wednesday, December 14, 2022
12:00-1:00 PM EDT | In-Person Event (MIT iHQ-5th floor training room, 292 Main Street, Cambridge, MA)
Register here
Lunch will be provided
An Introduction by Lily L. Tsai, MIT GOV/LAB Director and Founder, and Carlos Centeno, Associate Director of Innovation, and presentations by Andre Arruda and Federico Vaz, MIT GOV/LAB’s inaugural Designer-Researchers, followed by a Q&A with the audience.
Description
What can we understand about how bureaucracies in the Global South spark and sustain governance innovation solutions? And how might we use this evidence to help build government capacity to address the grievances of a new generation of tech-savvy citizens?
From September to November 2022, MIT GOV/LAB’s Governance Innovation Initiative embedded two inaugural Designer-Researchers within Sierra Leone’s city government and Nigeria’s national-level government to co-design solutions to governance challenges. While working with civil servants, the Designer-Researchers documented and analyzed the motivations, behaviors, and pathways that shape how individuals and bureaucratic networks innovate within their respective institutions. Andre Arruda will present his observations on co-designing improvements to community-consulted urban planning with Sierra Leone’s Freetown City Council. Federico Vaz will present his observations on co-designing improvements to business registration processes with the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC), in the Office of the Special Advisor to the President of Nigeria.
MIT Governance Lab’s Governance Innovation Initiative is a sandbox for researching and testing innovative tools and processes to design governance solutions. We aim to understand the future of governance through a series of case studies, engagements with thought leaders in governance and innovation, as well as the co-designing of governance innovation solutions through a Lean Governance Innovation Design (LGID) approach.