Designing for Accessible Governance Innovation in Sierra Leone

Abstract

In 2002, pioneering government units in Australia and Denmark began experimenting with design approaches in the public sector. This launched a revolution in design-driven government innovation, developing a model that has now been replicated in dozens of governments across the globe.

That same year, Sierra Leone emerged from a decade-long civil war with the lowest Human Development Index on the planet. Today, building on two decades of peaceful democratic governance, the Government of Sierra Leone’s Directorate of Science, Technology and Innovation has codified its commitment to human-centered solutions. However, many of the resources available for embedding design in government still belong to, and consider the realities of, the Northern model.

Despite design’s ability to envision contextually-relevant solutions, the government design revolution has given surprisingly little consideration to the gap between the model developed by governments in the Global North and the needs and realities of governance in the Global South. This thesis addresses one aspect of that mismatch: it considers public sector innovation formats, tools, and methodologies created in the Global North and redesigns them for the Government of Sierra Leone.

This thesis uses literature review, qualitative design research, and material benchmarking to uncover themes important to developing contextually-relevant governance innovation tools and programming for the Government of Sierra Leone. Insights derived from interviews and observations drive design decisions. The designs delivered depart from other public sector design resources in the accessibility of language used, the illustrative value of imagery, and the reflectiveness of governance realities in Sierra Leone. This work acknowledges inconsistencies between existing government design models and diverse governance realities and provides an initial step in building out a body of more tailored solutions.