Innovation in the public sector often requires breaking away from historical thinking. Through our passion, clarity, and a reliable methodology, IDEO helps clients tackle some of the most inspirational — and challenging — issues that government leaders face. We’re committed to enabling meaningful participation among government employees and citizens that leads to large-scale, positive change.

At IDEO, we bring our private sector knowledge, connections, and experience to government and nonprofit projects to augment what clients already do well. We leverage an organization’s traditional strengths — such as hiring talented individuals, gathering evidence, and being compliant — to help build a culture of innovation, to modernize and humanize systems, craft forward-looking strategies, and to tap into new and existing networks.

IDEO’s approach gives our clients the comfort and confidence to move beyond compliance and really innovate. All of our solution sets are grounded in citizen/employee needs and aspirations, and informed by what’s leading edge not just within government, but more importantly, beyond it.

Rather than deliver formulaic answers, we ask provocative questions that spur dialog, ideas, and solutions within organizations. We strive to create realistic yet leading-edge scenarios that are sustainable and scalable over time. To this end, our multifaceted design process is participatory and people-centric. Our design team works closely with local, regional, and national groups on diverse challenges and budgets, from modest short-term projects to multimillion-dollar long-term endeavors. We’ve collaborated with the federal governments of the Iceland, Singapore, and the United States.

We focus on knowledge-management systems, business-process redesign, organizational transformation, service design, and innovation strategy and capability-building. We can help organizations make information more accessible, boost their transparency, and increasing customer engagement and participation.