"Help Us Frame the Problem": A Case Study of Public Sector Innovation

• In Event: What STS Can Do: Innovations and Alternatives for STS Practice – I

Abstract

In recent years, cities across the United States and Europe have assembled multidisciplinary “innovation teams” in an effort to rapidly transform government services and infrastructure through data-driven decision making and design methodology. The central objective of these teams is to develop solutions for long-standing challenges that cities have not been able to solve in partnership with city residents. As a practicing anthropologist and the “lead innovation researcher” of one of these teams, I spent 16 months immersed in a local government and city during this transitional period and working to develop solutions to address the city’s economic development and unemployment agenda. While the mission of innovation teams and public servants may appear to be honorable, in this paper, I take a more critical approach to illustrate the ways in which the ideologies of innovation are appropriated by people in government to reimagine the city as a place beyond these so-called social challenges. Ultimately, what are the ways ideals of innovation transform individual and social life and inevitably reproduce the social challenges that innovation teams are assembled to fix. As a case study of public sector innovation, this paper provides a glimpse into institutional power and practice and highlights the opportunities, challenges, ethical considerations and dilemmas of practicing anthropology and STS within institutional settings.

Author

• Holly Okonkwo, Purdue University