Design processes form an interdisciplinary practice of the Policy Lab established by the Government Strategic Analysis Center (STRATA). The project “COVID-19 Lessons: Towards a More Resilient Public Sector” is an example of how design methods and competencies are used to capture existing practices and translate them into future actions, helping institutions to become more resilient, flexible and to recover from systemic shocks and uncertainties in the crisis. The function of the design process in this project is to "humanize" problems, explore contexts, feelings, and other human aspects, and discover new, perhaps even unexpected concepts and experiences through the principles of co-creation. Participatory design and future thinking tools and co-creative activities were used to identify user needs and create future simulations. This project took place in the context of a pandemic, when the Lithuanian public sector had to address various challenges. The project was implemented in cooperation with the following institutions: Employment Service under the Ministry of Social Security and Labor of the Republic of Lithuania, Board of the State Social Insurance Fund under the Ministry of Social Security and Labor, State Labor Inspectorate under the Ministry of Social Security and Labor. In order to assess and imagine the impact of future changes on the institutions, their links with each other and with consumers (clients), short term and long term solutions were co-developed as well as user “personas” and 6 small-scale scenarios, which were used as process moderation tools in co-creative activities with institutions. The result of the project is recommendations for the institutions that cooperated in the project on how they could better prepare to meet the challenges of the future.
