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Public & Collaborative: Designing Services for Housing CHELSEA MAULDIN Public Policy Lab

How can members of the public help create government services that are simpler and more satisfying to use? And can user-centered public services better meet public-policy goals, while saving government money or time? Those are the questions that the Public Policy Lab, a New York City non-profit, is dedicated to exploring. PPL executive director Chelsea Mauldin will describe insights and pitfalls from an ongoing project – a collaboration with the NYC Department of Housing Development & Preservation and DESIS Lab, a research group at Parsons The New School for Design – to co-design better services for housing, particularly for low- and moderate-income New Yorkers, with agency staff, housing developers, community-based organizations, and local residents in the Bronx.

Introduction to Public Policy Lab: our mission is to improve the design and delivery of public services. Public & Collaborative is a partnership between PPL, the NYC Department of Housing Preservation & Development, and Parsons DESIS Lab. Why should you care about public services and their design? Aren't public services inherently terrible? The argument from compassion The argument from mobility The argument from efficiency The argument from the social compact So, if public services are valuable, why aren't there more effective attempts to improve them? Public agencies: their strengths and opportunities

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EPIC 2012 Proceedings| 355

Public agencies: their weaknesses and threats The peculiar complications facing public services in the United States The potential of service design to provide low-cost, low-risk model for public-sector innovation, plus the five crucial qualities of a service-design approach. How this works in practice: the Public & Collaborative project timeline Scoping and discovery Research and design with members of the public Research and design with front-line service producers Implementation practices: documentation Implementation practices: piloting Evaluating process and outcomes Thank you!

Public & Collaborative is a project of the NYC Department of Housing Preservation & Development, Parsons DESIS Lab, and the Public Policy Lab, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation’s New York City Cultural Innovation Fund.