Bureaucracy to Breakthroughs

Government is often seen as slow-moving, resistant to change, and bogged down by bureaucracy. It’s not an entirely unfair assessment—any system built to serve millions (or billions) of people comes with inherent complexity. But what if the very structures that make government rigid could be reimagined through design thinking? What if policymaking, public services, and civic innovation operated with the same agility and user-driven approach that startups and tech companies use to build products that people actually want?

For years, I’ve worked at the intersection of policy, innovation, and design—whether developing youth policy programs, working on special projects at a venture capital firm, or building capacity through Next Phase Labs. The throughline in all of it has been one simple truth: solutions work best when they are built for and with the people who use them. The public sector has traditionally struggled with this, often designing policies in a vacuum and rolling out initiatives without the feedback loops necessary to adjust to real-world needs. This is where design thinking comes in.

At its core, design thinking starts with empathy. Rather than assuming what people need, it demands direct engagement—observing behaviors, conducting in-depth interviews, and mapping user journeys to uncover pain points that aren't always obvious from a policy desk. Imagine if city planners designed transit systems not just based on historical ridership data, but by embedding themselves in the daily commute of working-class residents, understanding their frustrations in real time. What if social services weren’t dictated by top-down mandates but co-created with the communities they aim to serve?

The next phase of government innovation won’t be driven by more efficiency memos or restructuring initiatives. It will be driven by iterative, user-centered problem-solving—rapid prototyping policies at a local level before scaling them, creating feedback loops that allow citizens to be active participants rather than passive recipients of public services, and borrowing from product development methodologies that have fueled some of the most impactful private-sector innovations.

We’ve already seen glimpses of this approach in action. Cities like Boston and San Francisco have experimented with urban innovation labs that use design thinking to test solutions before full-scale implementation. In healthcare, Medicare and Medicaid pilots have leveraged human-centered design to rethink patient care models, leading to better outcomes with lower costs. But these examples are still the exception rather than the norm. The real challenge is embedding design thinking at every level of governance—not as a niche experiment, but as a standard approach to how we solve problems at scale.

For government agencies, this shift requires a mindset change as much as a structural one. It means accepting that the best ideas don’t always come from the top, that failure is an essential part of iteration, and that no solution is ever truly finished—it’s just a work in progress that can always be improved. It’s the same philosophy that has allowed startups to disrupt entire industries, and it’s one that government must embrace if it wants to remain relevant in a rapidly changing world.

We don’t need a faster bureaucracy—we need a smarter one. One that listens before it acts, prototypes before it implements, and evolves alongside the people it serves. Design thinking is the way forward, and the sooner we stop treating it as a corporate buzzword and start embedding it into our institutions, the sooner we’ll see real breakthroughs in the way government operates.

The future of public service isn’t just about making processes more efficient—it’s about making them work better for people. And that starts with design.