Public sector innovation labs are becoming an increasingly visible instrument in public sector innovation and experimentation. Proponents of these labs claim they can play an important role in addressing pressing social challenges, changing government structures and thereby shaping ideas and practices of future governance. Whilst some research has been carried out on public innovation labs, the focus of inquiry has been primarily on the emergence, models and activities of labs in Europe and North America. This paper attempts to contribute to this growing body of research by bringing forth some of the particularities of this phenomenon as it emerges in Latin America. Using as starting point three experimental interests identified in the available literature, namely increasing flexibilization of public procedures, developing methods for citizen engagement and experimental development of public policies, the paper presents insights and observations from a study of ten public sector innovation labs in Latin America. In particular, our focus is on how these interests are confronted with different realities and therefore what kind of challenges the labs face. Experimentation in Latin America seems to concern not only flexibilization, engagement and public policies; it also includes juggling with the tensions arising from budgetary constraints, the need to weave networks of regional labs to collaborate and finally the need to align their agendas to those of other institutions, while being accountable to different levels of society. This places Latin American labs in a different light than their European and North American counterparts.

This position paper presents a prototype research agenda for design for sustainability transformations (DfST) in the (post-)pandemic context. COVID-19 has made visible vulnerabilities, structural dysfunctions, inequalities and injustices across health, environmental, social, economic, provisional and political systems. In response to the crisis, rapid, adaptive, technological and social innovations have started to emerge across all levels of society, opening up a multiplicity of alternative futures. This is an opportune time to address long-standing and urgent sustainability challenges in ways that move beyond the ineffective and business-as-usual approaches of ecological modernism. The authors used a co-creative process to identify weak signals relevant to sustainability transformations. In alignment with the deep leverage points framework, the identified weak signals are presented under two main headings: first, social structures and institutions; and second, values, goals and worldviews. The deep leverage points form the basis of a research agenda on how DfST could contribute to sustainability transformations right now and in the longer-term.

Aqui, partimos do entendimento oposto, ou seja, de que o processo de pesquisa não precisa (e não pode) ficar restrito ao âmbito da Universidade e nem no âmbito do pesquisador individual, principalmente, quando se trata de pesquisa operacional na área da saúde e da enfermagem. Este processo pode ser ampliado e tornarse mais criativo, mais aderente ao correto dos problemas e da realidade dos serviços de saúde quando houver a efetiva participação de profissionais que atuam nos serviços de saúde.A cooperação conjunta Universidade e Serviços de Saúde possibilita a troca de experiências muito saudáveis para ambas as instituições. Do lado da primeira contribui com a atualização frente às rápidas mudanças que ocorrem no setor saúde e consequentemente com um ensino dinâmico, realista e atual. Do lado dos serviços proporciona uma aproximação com elementos teóricos; e para ambas, uma fluidez na relação teoria-prática e pesquisas que respondam às necessidades do processo saúde-doença, bem como à organização das práticas sanitárias. Rev. latino-am. enfermagem -Ribeirão Preto -v. 5 -n. 2 -p. 17-22 -abril 1997

Governments across the globe are increasingly deploying design tools and methods to explore new ways of public policy-making and governance. Such design approaches are often portrayed as politically neutral. Building on contemporary research that argues the contrary, this paper proposes a framework for making their political dimension explicit by distinguishing between the artefacts, techniques, and discourses that compose them. This article is based on an interactive session held at DRS2018 titled 'Smuggling ideologies? Inquiring into the underlying ideas embedded in design for public governance and policymaking', where design practitioners and academics piloted the proposed framework, and follow-up interviews with some of the participants. An analysis of the discussions in the session and the interviews revealed the recurrence of certain themes, in particular the reinforcement of existing power relations and the encroachment of market logics into the public sector through the introduction of design approaches. The recurrence of these themes in the discussions, we argue, shows how the proposed framework makes visible the underlying political conceptions in the design approaches, and thus how it can contribute to the awareness and understanding of the political implications of (the otherwise proposed as neutral) design tools and methods utilised in the public sector.

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