Inno­va­tion Office

The chal­lenge

A gov­ern­ment min­istry is always divid­ed into dif­fer­ent depart­ments and units, all of which deal with dif­fer­ent top­ics and tar­get groups. Dig­i­tal­iza­tion, how­ev­er, is an over­ar­ch­ing phe­nom­e­non that must be dealt with holis­ti­cal­ly. In addi­tion, civil soci­ety has very dif­fer­ent needs when it comes to seek­ing dig­i­tal solu­tions to the chal­lenges it faces. Find­ing and tai­lor­ing answers to all ques­tions is the ulti­mate task.

Our approach

Lis­ten first, then act: Instead of pro­vid­ing ready-made answers to the Min­istry, we first zeroed in on its needs and those of civil soci­ety. Inno­va­tion also often means work­ing towards some­thing that is yet unknown and undis­cov­ered. Thus, in this unique­ly ori­ent­ed office, it is espe­cial­ly impor­tant for us to be con­stant­ly on the look­out for orig­i­nal approach­es.

The result

Togeth­er with the Fed­er­al Min­istry of Fam­i­ly Affairs, we have devel­oped var­i­ous approach­es to bet­ter pro­mot­ing dig­i­tal inno­va­tion. This has affect­ed both the ori­en­ta­tion of the Ministry’s dig­i­tal pol­i­cy and has fed into projects car­ried out by the Inno­va­tion Office itself that are espe­cial­ly aimed at orga­nized civil soci­ety. The goal is to iden­ti­fy dig­i­tal inno­va­tion levers that as many actors as pos­si­ble can take advan­tage of. This is to be achieved ini­tial­ly through hackathons, net­work­ing events, a tool­box and the prepa­ra­tion of best prac­tice guide­lines and infor­ma­tion on spe­cif­ic top­ics. The Inno­va­tion Office is still young; this is only the begin­ning.

Fur­ther infor­ma­tion is avail­able at www.innovationsbuero.net.