Supporting Continuity for Public Design
in Latin America
By Luca Gaspari, Research Assistant
Innovation in government emerges from many forces: political will, technological advancements, civic energy. Design strengthens systems by offering methods that reframe problems, align diverse actors, and center human experience. These practices do not replace other drivers of change; rather, they instill innovation with a sense of responsiveness and participation. But when design practices go undocumented, their contributions are easy to dismiss as one-off experiments instead of building blocks for long-term impact.
Across Latin America, public-sector innovation units are utilizing design to address policy issues, co-create with communities, and guide regulatory design. These teams bring new ways of working into government – small scale but ambitious in their intent to make institutions more responsive to community needs. Yet, their work remains fragile. Shifting political agendas, limited resources, and scattered documentation prevent initiatives from building on each other, forcing many to start from scratch with every electoral cycle. What results is a landscape rich in experimentation but limited in memory and continuity.
This fragility undermines the credibility of design for public innovation. When emblematic labs close and promising pilots remain fragmented, the field struggles to sustain growth. This lack of consolidation is evident in the literature as well.
Our research demonstrates the scope of this challenge. Throughout the review, we analyzed more than 700 multilingual academic sources on public innovation in Latin America. Yet, as the animation below shows, only 15% contained the level of depth and detail necessary for meaningful study – underscoring how under-documented the field remains.
[Video by Tina Rosado. Visual depiction of the literature review process.]
This scarcity is not simply a matter of volume, but quality and continuity. In part, it reflects how research often limits itself to describing structures and early pilots, rarely tracking participants’ contributions as projects evolve. Uneven terminology further hinders discoverability, with labels such as “innovation lab”, “living lab”, and “public innovation unit” applied inconsistently across countries and years. Documentation varies significantly by region and scope: Spanish and Portuguese sources tend to provide deeper single-country case studies, while English-language accounts favor broad multi-country overviews. Without shared success criteria or ways to identify institutional gaps, the processes and everyday practices that sustain innovation are lost. Left unaddressed, these gaps prevent design-led innovation from delivering lasting solutions to public problems.
The effort of the Public Design Collective begins here. With UNIT, we are launching a multilingual survey and open repository to transform isolated cases into a network of collective knowledge and institutional memory. Without an evidence base, policymakers can’t see impact, funders can’t back what works, and teams can’t build on prior lessons. The goal is to capture the experiential lessons of design for public innovation in Latin America at scale —its governance structures, methods, and outcomes—before they disappear. These units are not simply replicating international models; they are adapting design to local contexts defined by volatility, inequality, and resource constraints, generating insights with global relevance. By documenting them, effective practices that center people’s needs and coordinate stakeholders toward change can gain continuity, credibility, and the capacity to shape governance over time.
In this light, the survey and repository take on immediate importance. Our survey is not designed to gather opinions alone but map the ecosystem of public design in Latin America across three levels: institutions, projects, and individuals. It asks about professional trajectories, flagship initiatives, governance arrangements, and methods used. It also invites reflection on memory, sustainability of practices, and networks of collaboration and support. By combining these dimensions, the survey generates a fuller picture of how design operates in government: who drives it, under what conditions, and with what results.
The repository will then organize this information into a shared, open resource. Instead of scattered reports and anecdotal accounts, it will provide a structured way to see the connection between actors, compare across countries, and trace the life cycle of initiatives. For policymakers, funders, and researchers, this means evidence they can act upon. For designers and public servants, it enables recognition and peer learning. For academics, it offers a structured dataset to analyze trends, test hypotheses, and ground new research. Together, the survey and repository assemble a collective practice, helping public design in the region to mature.
By building the first regional infrastructure of memory for design in the public sector, we counter the cycle in which strong work fades and teams start over. Our repository and survey are a collaborative step toward regional evidence with global relevance: a shared base that lets lessons compound across cycles, gives authorizers grounds to defend continuity, and offers designers and public servants a clear starting point for the next round of work. If you see your work reflected in this definition of Public Design, join us: add your data, link your documentation, and help build a living memory future Public Design teams can trust.
Project supported by the Center for Design and the
Center for Transformative Media at Northeastern University
Project supported by the Center for Design and the
Center for Transformative Media at Northeastern University
Supporting Continuity for Public Design in Latin America
Supporting Continuity for Public Design
in Latin America
By Luca Gaspari, Research Assistant
Innovation in government emerges from many forces: political will, technological advancements, civic energy. Design strengthens systems by offering methods that reframe problems, align diverse actors, and center human experience. These practices do not replace other drivers of change; rather, they instill innovation with a sense of responsiveness and participation. But when design practices go undocumented, their contributions are easy to dismiss as one-off experiments instead of building blocks for long-term impact.
Across Latin America, public-sector innovation units are utilizing design to address policy issues, co-create with communities, and guide regulatory design. These teams bring new ways of working into government – small scale but ambitious in their intent to make institutions more responsive to community needs. Yet, their work remains fragile. Shifting political agendas, limited resources, and scattered documentation prevent initiatives from building on each other, forcing many to start from scratch with every electoral cycle. What results is a landscape rich in experimentation but limited in memory and continuity.
This fragility undermines the credibility of design for public innovation. When emblematic labs close and promising pilots remain fragmented, the field struggles to sustain growth. This lack of consolidation is evident in the literature as well.
Our research demonstrates the scope of this challenge. Throughout the review, we analyzed more than 700 multilingual academic sources on public innovation in Latin America. Yet, as the animation below shows, only 15% contained the level of depth and detail necessary for meaningful study – underscoring how under-documented the field remains.
Innovation in government emerges from many forces: political will, technological advancements, civic energy. Design strengthens systems by offering methods that reframe problems, align diverse actors, and center human experience. These practices do not replace other drivers of change; rather, they instill innovation with a sense of responsiveness and participation. But when design practices go undocumented, their contributions are easy to dismiss as one-off experiments instead of building blocks for long-term impact.
Across Latin America, public-sector innovation units are utilizing design to address policy issues, co-create with communities, and guide regulatory design. These teams bring new ways of working into government – small scale but ambitious in their intent to make institutions more responsive to community needs. Yet, their work remains fragile. Shifting political agendas, limited resources, and scattered documentation prevent initiatives from building on each other, forcing many to start from scratch with every electoral cycle. What results is a landscape rich in experimentation but limited in memory and continuity.
This fragility undermines the credibility of design for public innovation. When emblematic labs close and promising pilots remain fragmented, the field struggles to sustain growth. This lack of consolidation is evident in the literature as well.
Our research demonstrates the scope of this challenge. Throughout the review, we analyzed more than 700 multilingual academic sources on public innovation in Latin America. Yet, as the animation below shows, only 15% contained the level of depth and detail necessary for meaningful study – underscoring how under-documented the field remains.
Video by Tina Rosado. Visual depiction of the literature review process.
This scarcity is not simply a matter of volume, but quality and continuity. In part, it reflects how research often limits itself to describing structures and early pilots, rarely tracking participants’ contributions as projects evolve. Uneven terminology further hinders discoverability, with labels such as “innovation lab”, “living lab”, and “public innovation unit” applied inconsistently across countries and years. Documentation varies significantly by region and scope: Spanish and Portuguese sources tend to provide deeper single-country case studies, while English-language accounts favor broad multi-country overviews. Without shared success criteria or ways to identify institutional gaps, the processes and everyday practices that sustain innovation are lost. Left unaddressed, these gaps prevent design-led innovation from delivering lasting solutions to public problems.
The effort of the Public Design Collective begins here. With UNIT, we are launching a multilingual survey and open repository to transform isolated cases into a network of collective knowledge and institutional memory. Without an evidence base, policymakers can’t see impact, funders can’t back what works, and teams can’t build on prior lessons. The goal is to capture the experiential lessons of design for public innovation in Latin America at scale —its governance structures, methods, and outcomes—before they disappear. These units are not simply replicating international models; they are adapting design to local contexts defined by volatility, inequality, and resource constraints, generating insights with global relevance. By documenting them, effective practices that center people’s needs and coordinate stakeholders toward change can gain continuity, credibility, and the capacity to shape governance over time.
In this light, the survey and repository take on immediate importance. Our survey is not designed to gather opinions alone but map the ecosystem of public design in Latin America across three levels: institutions, projects, and individuals. It asks about professional trajectories, flagship initiatives, governance arrangements, and methods used. It also invites reflection on memory, sustainability of practices, and networks of collaboration and support. By combining these dimensions, the survey generates a fuller picture of how design operates in government: who drives it, under what conditions, and with what results.
The repository will then organize this information into a shared, open resource. Instead of scattered reports and anecdotal accounts, it will provide a structured way to see the connection between actors, compare across countries, and trace the life cycle of initiatives. For policymakers, funders, and researchers, this means evidence they can act upon. For designers and public servants, it enables recognition and peer learning. For academics, it offers a structured dataset to analyze trends, test hypotheses, and ground new research. Together, the survey and repository assemble a collective practice, helping public design in the region to mature.
By building the first regional infrastructure of memory for design in the public sector, we counter the cycle in which strong work fades and teams start over. Our repository and survey are a collaborative step toward regional evidence with global relevance: a shared base that lets lessons compound across cycles, gives authorizers grounds to defend continuity, and offers designers and public servants a clear starting point for the next round of work. If you see your work reflected in this definition of Public Design, join us: add your data, link your documentation, and help build a living memory future Public Design teams can trust.
[Video by Tina Rosado. Visual depiction of the literature review process.]
This scarcity is not simply a matter of volume, but quality and continuity. In part, it reflects how research often limits itself to describing structures and early pilots, rarely tracking participants’ contributions as projects evolve. Uneven terminology further hinders discoverability, with labels such as “innovation lab”, “living lab”, and “public innovation unit” applied inconsistently across countries and years. Documentation varies significantly by region and scope: Spanish and Portuguese sources tend to provide deeper single-country case studies, while English-language accounts favor broad multi-country overviews. Without shared success criteria or ways to identify institutional gaps, the processes and everyday practices that sustain innovation are lost. Left unaddressed, these gaps prevent design-led innovation from delivering lasting solutions to public problems.
The effort of the Public Design Collective begins here. With UNIT, we are launching a multilingual survey and open repository to transform isolated cases into a network of collective knowledge and institutional memory. Without an evidence base, policymakers can’t see impact, funders can’t back what works, and teams can’t build on prior lessons. The goal is to capture the experiential lessons of design for public innovation in Latin America at scale —its governance structures, methods, and outcomes—before they disappear. These units are not simply replicating international models; they are adapting design to local contexts defined by volatility, inequality, and resource constraints, generating insights with global relevance. By documenting them, effective practices that center people’s needs and coordinate stakeholders toward change can gain continuity, credibility, and the capacity to shape governance over time.
In this light, the survey and repository take on immediate importance. Our survey is not designed to gather opinions alone but map the ecosystem of public design in Latin America across three levels: institutions, projects, and individuals. It asks about professional trajectories, flagship initiatives, governance arrangements, and methods used. It also invites reflection on memory, sustainability of practices, and networks of collaboration and support. By combining these dimensions, the survey generates a fuller picture of how design operates in government: who drives it, under what conditions, and with what results.
The repository will then organize this information into a shared, open resource. Instead of scattered reports and anecdotal accounts, it will provide a structured way to see the connection between actors, compare across countries, and trace the life cycle of initiatives. For policymakers, funders, and researchers, this means evidence they can act upon. For designers and public servants, it enables recognition and peer learning. For academics, it offers a structured dataset to analyze trends, test hypotheses, and ground new research. Together, the survey and repository assemble a collective practice, helping public design in the region to mature.
By building the first regional infrastructure of memory for design in the public sector, we counter the cycle in which strong work fades and teams start over. Our repository and survey are a collaborative step toward regional evidence with global relevance: a shared base that lets lessons compound across cycles, gives authorizers grounds to defend continuity, and offers designers and public servants a clear starting point for the next round of work. If you see your work reflected in this definition of Public Design, join us: add your data, link your documentation, and help build a living memory future Public Design teams can trust.
Project supported by the Center for Design and the
Center for Transformative Media at Northeastern University
Supporting Continuity for Public Design
in Latin America
By Luca Gaspari, Research Assistant
Innovation in government emerges from many forces: political will, technological advancements, civic energy. Design strengthens systems by offering methods that reframe problems, align diverse actors, and center human experience. These practices do not replace other drivers of change; rather, they instill innovation with a sense of responsiveness and participation. But when design practices go undocumented, their contributions are easy to dismiss as one-off experiments instead of building blocks for long-term impact.
Across Latin America, public-sector innovation units are utilizing design to address policy issues, co-create with communities, and guide regulatory design. These teams bring new ways of working into government – small scale but ambitious in their intent to make institutions more responsive to community needs. Yet, their work remains fragile. Shifting political agendas, limited resources, and scattered documentation prevent initiatives from building on each other, forcing many to start from scratch with every electoral cycle. What results is a landscape rich in experimentation but limited in memory and continuity.
This fragility undermines the credibility of design for public innovation. When emblematic labs close and promising pilots remain fragmented, the field struggles to sustain growth. This lack of consolidation is evident in the literature as well.
Our research demonstrates the scope of this challenge. Throughout the review, we analyzed more than 700 multilingual academic sources on public innovation in Latin America. Yet, as the animation below shows, only 15% contained the level of depth and detail necessary for meaningful study – underscoring how under-documented the field remains.
[Video by Tina Rosado. Visual depiction of the literature review process.]
This scarcity is not simply a matter of volume, but quality and continuity. In part, it reflects how research often limits itself to describing structures and early pilots, rarely tracking participants’ contributions as projects evolve. Uneven terminology further hinders discoverability, with labels such as “innovation lab”, “living lab”, and “public innovation unit” applied inconsistently across countries and years. Documentation varies significantly by region and scope: Spanish and Portuguese sources tend to provide deeper single-country case studies, while English-language accounts favor broad multi-country overviews. Without shared success criteria or ways to identify institutional gaps, the processes and everyday practices that sustain innovation are lost. Left unaddressed, these gaps prevent design-led innovation from delivering lasting solutions to public problems.
The effort of the Public Design Collective begins here. With UNIT, we are launching a multilingual survey and open repository to transform isolated cases into a network of collective knowledge and institutional memory. Without an evidence base, policymakers can’t see impact, funders can’t back what works, and teams can’t build on prior lessons. The goal is to capture the experiential lessons of design for public innovation in Latin America at scale —its governance structures, methods, and outcomes—before they disappear. These units are not simply replicating international models; they are adapting design to local contexts defined by volatility, inequality, and resource constraints, generating insights with global relevance. By documenting them, effective practices that center people’s needs and coordinate stakeholders toward change can gain continuity, credibility, and the capacity to shape governance over time.
In this light, the survey and repository take on immediate importance. Our survey is not designed to gather opinions alone but map the ecosystem of public design in Latin America across three levels: institutions, projects, and individuals. It asks about professional trajectories, flagship initiatives, governance arrangements, and methods used. It also invites reflection on memory, sustainability of practices, and networks of collaboration and support. By combining these dimensions, the survey generates a fuller picture of how design operates in government: who drives it, under what conditions, and with what results.
The repository will then organize this information into a shared, open resource. Instead of scattered reports and anecdotal accounts, it will provide a structured way to see the connection between actors, compare across countries, and trace the life cycle of initiatives. For policymakers, funders, and researchers, this means evidence they can act upon. For designers and public servants, it enables recognition and peer learning. For academics, it offers a structured dataset to analyze trends, test hypotheses, and ground new research. Together, the survey and repository assemble a collective practice, helping public design in the region to mature.
By building the first regional infrastructure of memory for design in the public sector, we counter the cycle in which strong work fades and teams start over. Our repository and survey are a collaborative step toward regional evidence with global relevance: a shared base that lets lessons compound across cycles, gives authorizers grounds to defend continuity, and offers designers and public servants a clear starting point for the next round of work. If you see your work reflected in this definition of Public Design, join us: add your data, link your documentation, and help build a living memory future Public Design teams can trust.
Project supported by the Center for Design and the
Center for Transformative Media at Northeastern University
Supporting Continuity for Public Design in Latin America
By Luca Gaspari, Research Assistant
Innovation in government emerges from many forces: political will, technological advancements, civic energy. Design strengthens systems by offering methods that reframe problems, align diverse actors, and center human experience. These practices do not replace other drivers of change; rather, they instill innovation with a sense of responsiveness and participation. But when design practices go undocumented, their contributions are easy to dismiss as one-off experiments instead of building blocks for long-term impact.
Across Latin America, public-sector innovation units are utilizing design to address policy issues, co-create with communities, and guide regulatory design. These teams bring new ways of working into government – small scale but ambitious in their intent to make institutions more responsive to community needs. Yet, their work remains fragile. Shifting political agendas, limited resources, and scattered documentation prevent initiatives from building on each other, forcing many to start from scratch with every electoral cycle. What results is a landscape rich in experimentation but limited in memory and continuity.
This fragility undermines the credibility of design for public innovation. When emblematic labs close and promising pilots remain fragmented, the field struggles to sustain growth. This lack of consolidation is evident in the literature as well.
Our research demonstrates the scope of this challenge. Throughout the review, we analyzed more than 700 multilingual academic sources on public innovation in Latin America. Yet, as the animation below shows, only 15% contained the level of depth and detail necessary for meaningful study – underscoring how under-documented the field remains.
[Video by Tina Rosado. Visual depiction of the literature review process.]
This scarcity is not simply a matter of volume, but quality and continuity. In part, it reflects how research often limits itself to describing structures and early pilots, rarely tracking participants’ contributions as projects evolve. Uneven terminology further hinders discoverability, with labels such as “innovation lab”, “living lab”, and “public innovation unit” applied inconsistently across countries and years. Documentation varies significantly by region and scope: Spanish and Portuguese sources tend to provide deeper single-country case studies, while English-language accounts favor broad multi-country overviews. Without shared success criteria or ways to identify institutional gaps, the processes and everyday practices that sustain innovation are lost. Left unaddressed, these gaps prevent design-led innovation from delivering lasting solutions to public problems.
The effort of the Public Design Collective begins here. With UNIT, we are launching a multilingual survey and open repository to transform isolated cases into a network of collective knowledge and institutional memory. Without an evidence base, policymakers can’t see impact, funders can’t back what works, and teams can’t build on prior lessons. The goal is to capture the experiential lessons of design for public innovation in Latin America at scale —its governance structures, methods, and outcomes—before they disappear. These units are not simply replicating international models; they are adapting design to local contexts defined by volatility, inequality, and resource constraints, generating insights with global relevance. By documenting them, effective practices that center people’s needs and coordinate stakeholders toward change can gain continuity, credibility, and the capacity to shape governance over time.
In this light, the survey and repository take on immediate importance. Our survey is not designed to gather opinions alone but map the ecosystem of public design in Latin America across three levels: institutions, projects, and individuals. It asks about professional trajectories, flagship initiatives, governance arrangements, and methods used. It also invites reflection on memory, sustainability of practices, and networks of collaboration and support. By combining these dimensions, the survey generates a fuller picture of how design operates in government: who drives it, under what conditions, and with what results.
The repository will then organize this information into a shared, open resource. Instead of scattered reports and anecdotal accounts, it will provide a structured way to see the connection between actors, compare across countries, and trace the life cycle of initiatives. For policymakers, funders, and researchers, this means evidence they can act upon. For designers and public servants, it enables recognition and peer learning. For academics, it offers a structured dataset to analyze trends, test hypotheses, and ground new research. Together, the survey and repository assemble a collective practice, helping public design in the region to mature.
By building the first regional infrastructure of memory for design in the public sector, we counter the cycle in which strong work fades and teams start over. Our repository and survey are a collaborative step toward regional evidence with global relevance: a shared base that lets lessons compound across cycles, gives authorizers grounds to defend continuity, and offers designers and public servants a clear starting point for the next round of work. If you see your work reflected in this definition of Public Design, join us: add your data, link your documentation, and help build a living memory future Public Design teams can trust.
Supporting Continuity for Public Design in Latin America
By Luca Gaspari, Research Assistant
Innovation in government emerges from many forces: political will, technological advancements, civic energy. Design strengthens systems by offering methods that reframe problems, align diverse actors, and center human experience. These practices do not replace other drivers of change; rather, they instill innovation with a sense of responsiveness and participation. But when design practices go undocumented, their contributions are easy to dismiss as one-off experiments instead of building blocks for long-term impact.
Across Latin America, public-sector innovation units are utilizing design to address policy issues, co-create with communities, and guide regulatory design. These teams bring new ways of working into government – small scale but ambitious in their intent to make institutions more responsive to community needs. Yet, their work remains fragile. Shifting political agendas, limited resources, and scattered documentation prevent initiatives from building on each other, forcing many to start from scratch with every electoral cycle. What results is a landscape rich in experimentation but limited in memory and continuity.
This fragility undermines the credibility of design for public innovation. When emblematic labs close and promising pilots remain fragmented, the field struggles to sustain growth. This lack of consolidation is evident in the literature as well.
Our research demonstrates the scope of this challenge. Throughout the review, we analyzed more than 700 multilingual academic sources on public innovation in Latin America. Yet, as the animation below shows, only 15% contained the level of depth and detail necessary for meaningful study – underscoring how under-documented the field remains.
[Video by Tina Rosado. Visual depiction of the literature review process.]
This scarcity is not simply a matter of volume, but quality and continuity. In part, it reflects how research often limits itself to describing structures and early pilots, rarely tracking participants’ contributions as projects evolve. Uneven terminology further hinders discoverability, with labels such as “innovation lab”, “living lab”, and “public innovation unit” applied inconsistently across countries and years. Documentation varies significantly by region and scope: Spanish and Portuguese sources tend to provide deeper single-country case studies, while English-language accounts favor broad multi-country overviews. Without shared success criteria or ways to identify institutional gaps, the processes and everyday practices that sustain innovation are lost. Left unaddressed, these gaps prevent design-led innovation from delivering lasting solutions to public problems.
The effort of the Public Design Collective begins here. With UNIT, we are launching a multilingual survey and open repository to transform isolated cases into a network of collective knowledge and institutional memory. Without an evidence base, policymakers can’t see impact, funders can’t back what works, and teams can’t build on prior lessons. The goal is to capture the experiential lessons of design for public innovation in Latin America at scale —its governance structures, methods, and outcomes—before they disappear. These units are not simply replicating international models; they are adapting design to local contexts defined by volatility, inequality, and resource constraints, generating insights with global relevance. By documenting them, effective practices that center people’s needs and coordinate stakeholders toward change can gain continuity, credibility, and the capacity to shape governance over time.
In this light, the survey and repository take on immediate importance. Our survey is not designed to gather opinions alone but map the ecosystem of public design in Latin America across three levels: institutions, projects, and individuals. It asks about professional trajectories, flagship initiatives, governance arrangements, and methods used. It also invites reflection on memory, sustainability of practices, and networks of collaboration and support. By combining these dimensions, the survey generates a fuller picture of how design operates in government: who drives it, under what conditions, and with what results.
The repository will then organize this information into a shared, open resource. Instead of scattered reports and anecdotal accounts, it will provide a structured way to see the connection between actors, compare across countries, and trace the life cycle of initiatives. For policymakers, funders, and researchers, this means evidence they can act upon. For designers and public servants, it enables recognition and peer learning. For academics, it offers a structured dataset to analyze trends, test hypotheses, and ground new research. Together, the survey and repository assemble a collective practice, helping public design in the region to mature.
By building the first regional infrastructure of memory for design in the public sector, we counter the cycle in which strong work fades and teams start over. Our repository and survey are a collaborative step toward regional evidence with global relevance: a shared base that lets lessons compound across cycles, gives authorizers grounds to defend continuity, and offers designers and public servants a clear starting point for the next round of work. If you see your work reflected in this definition of Public Design, join us: add your data, link your documentation, and help build a living memory future Public Design teams can trust.
