On 31 January and 1 February this year, the Public Policy Secretariat organized a workshop for the representatives Ministry of Tourism and Youth, Tourist Organization of Serbia and tourist organizations of local self-government units to improve the process of public policy making. The workshop was held thanks to the support of the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ) in cooperation with the Design Thinkers Academy (DTA).
The two-day workshop on the implementation of the innovative Design Thinking (DT) tool in public policies was organized interactively, through practical work on a case from the field of tourism. Representatives of the Ministry of Tourism and Youth and tourist organizations had the opportunity to learn by practical team work on a case study, through active exchange of opinions and ideas and joint work with other participants. Thanks to Design Thinking tools, the participants were able to look at the challenges present in the tourism sector from a different angle, to focus on the wishes and needs of end users and to come up with creative solutions through joint work.
The workshops were realized with the aim of knowledge transfer to state administration representatives about the use of DT’s innovative approaches and methods in their work. The second goal of the workshops is to come up with conceptual solutions for redesigning specific public service under the competence of the Ministry of Tourism and Youth. The achieved results of the workshop represent the framework of the continued cooperation with the Group for Innovations in Public Policies on their support to the Ministry of Tourism and Youth and tourist organizations in redesigning their public service, using the innovative DT tools. After creating the conceptual solution, in the next phase, the developed solution will be tested to determine the justification of its introduction, ultimately aiming at improving the tourist offer or the work of tourist organizations of the local self-government units.
After this two-day workshop, all participants received Design Thinkers Academy certificates for the successful course completion.