With the on-going effects of the global financial crisis still being felt, governments around the world have been struggling with a quandary: How to deal with the increasing demands on their services, while budget cuts and austerity measures force departments to make do with less.

Service-based interactions occur at all stages of the customer journey: discover, evaluate, buy, access, use, get support, leave and re-engage.

“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realise that what you heard is not what I meant.” – Robert McCloskey, author of Make Way for Ducklings

The public sector executive looked at their telephone and said: “It’s just a plastic box on a desk until there are services connected to it – we need to make sure both those things happen.”

The British Columbia Public Service (BCPS) is developing its Digital Service Strategy that shapes how services are holistically designed across channels.

Understanding barriers and challenges to government service innovation

How can governments encourage those who have been dependent on social assistance for years to find their own way in society? The Dutch city of The Hague looks to answer that question with a new service

Every day, people across the planet interact with a range of public systems that have been designed (and are operated and regulated) by governments and their partners.

A worldwide movement is growing between design and the public sector. It’s not just about design in urban planning or in public spaces.

Among the various issues after the Great East Japan Earthquake, one of the most serious issues was the evacuation facilities.

Enhancing Affordable Housing Application Processes with Community-Based Collaboration

Everybody’s been in a library, though the last time, for some of us, was when we were still children.

"Housing and education systems, along with ideals of religion and social behavior, have been all-but forgotten as unnerving vestiges of idealism."

Unlike a commercial service, the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration’s (UDI) primary goal is not to please individuals, but it still needs to engage them to succeed.

Local governments in the UK are changing rapidly.

How does one choose a preferred service design solution? What characteristics should be used to compare competing designs?

Developing product-service hybrids is an emerging practice that offers organisations a rich connection to their customers.

This article is about a new technique in design projects for citizen-centred government services: the 'dialogue'.

Creative Citizens (www.cittadinicreativi.it) is an experiment underway in Milan within a community of residents located in a particular neighbourhood (Zone 4).

A guest editor for this issue of Touchpoint, Varun Malhotra is a Principal with Changeis (www.changeis.com), a Washington, D.C. based management consulting firm that focuses on the public sector.