The Contribution of Service Design in Public Sector Modernization: Challenges, Barriers and Opportunities of the Design Methods

Service design is an emerging transdisciplinary research field that has received an increased interest in the last years. It has been used to improve service delivery, develop new and innovative services and provide value-added solutions in all the major domains of the service sector. It has been applied also in public administration, but in a limited and incomplete way. Nonetheless, it offers great promise for modernizing public services through human-centered approaches and innovative methodologies. This paper investigates the application of service design in public administration in order to improve public services and support addressing effectively citizens’ growing needs. It analyzes the service design philosophy as compared to the theories and the requirements of public administration in order to determine the opportunities, as well as the challenges for, and the barriers to, the application of service design in public services. In addition, it outlines the major methods of service design in order to assess their potential in the design of public services. Finally, it reviews the current implementations of service design in public administration in order to reveal the methods used, the outcomes, the shortcomings and the opportunities for future implementations.