https://giacomograssi.eu/writings Essays on public-service design, user experience and innovation in government. en Wed, 29 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0000 https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/the-expectation-of-impact https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/the-expectation-of-impact Wed, 29 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Design becomes indispensable when it produces measured impact that decision-makers can act upon. The INPS per i Giovani case, and how France, Japan and the US compare. https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/design-in-the-age-of-ai https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/design-in-the-age-of-ai Thu, 05 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000 AI is turning solutions into a commodity: design's value shifts to choosing the right problems and proving impact. The INPS text-simplification case, reread as design. https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/making-things-that-work https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/making-things-that-work Wed, 03 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000 Government has no dissatisfied customer who stops buying: without a market, improvement is optional. The only external pressure possible is binding measurement of user impact — and design is the discipline of impact. https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/the-orca-model https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/the-orca-model Fri, 28 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000 Innovating in the public sector is not about doing new things: it's about making what really matters work. And the forces pushing back are always the same four: Hostility, Resistance, Complexity, Anxiety. https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/compass-team-fuel https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/compass-team-fuel Fri, 28 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000 Vision, managed collaboration and sponsorship: the three operational skills without which innovation in the public sector never makes it across the desert. https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/speaking-to-young-people https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/speaking-to-young-people Tue, 18 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000 How a public institution builds trust with younger generations: listening, translating, and putting young people inside the process — not just inside the message. The INPS per i Giovani case. https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/experience-authority https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/experience-authority Tue, 21 Oct 2025 09:00:00 +0000 A design system without enforcement soon becomes a forgotten manual. How INPS built a function that guards user experience the way it guards a budget. https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/meaning-first-structure-later https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/meaning-first-structure-later Tue, 07 Oct 2025 09:00:00 +0000 Before any component, Sirio started from a manifesto: vision, mission and eight values built through co-design. How to write a shared compass, and why it pays to publish it right away. https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/trojan-horse-iteration https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/trojan-horse-iteration Tue, 23 Sep 2025 09:00:00 +0000 Nobody votes against "continuous improvement". Coding it as a brand value smuggled evidence-based management into the identity of Italy's largest welfare institution — with binding operational consequences. https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/ai-text-simplification-government https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/ai-text-simplification-government Fri, 19 Sep 2025 09:00:00 +0000 How INPS simplified 2,100+ administrative texts, then put generative AI to the test: 50 documents, 1,620 users, blind evaluation. 71.4% preferred the AI version. https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/archetypes-of-resistance https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/archetypes-of-resistance Tue, 09 Sep 2025 09:00:00 +0000 Resistance to change rarely builds barricades. It smiles, nods in the meeting, and carries on exactly as before. A guide to the recurring archetypes — and why a governance is worth what it makes of exceptions. https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/the-rebranding-nobody-asked-for https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/the-rebranding-nobody-asked-for Tue, 22 Jul 2025 09:00:00 +0000 The INPS rebranding started from a problem the organisation didn't know it had. When innovation lies in the diagnosis: the brand platform as an imposed compass. https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/leadership-buys-visions https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/leadership-buys-visions Tue, 24 Jun 2025 09:00:00 +0000 How to sell innovation to the top of a large public organisation: never a problem without a solution, no premature details, four criteria, and the anatomy of a document that worked. https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/middle-management-pincer https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/middle-management-pincer Tue, 10 Jun 2025 09:00:00 +0000 Middle management resists innovation for rational reasons: conflicting incentives, a culture of keeping your head down, complexity used as a shield. The pincer unblocks, it doesn't punish. https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/leader-with-no-formal-authority https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/leader-with-no-formal-authority Tue, 27 May 2025 09:00:00 +0000 In the public sector, whoever leads an innovation project has no hierarchical or economic levers. Leadership works through influence: five traits for guiding people who owe you nothing. https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/collaborate-as-little-as-necessary https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/collaborate-as-little-as-necessary Tue, 13 May 2025 09:00:00 +0000 When alignment is low and competition high, workshops turn into protest arenas. The counter-intuitive strategy that saved the INPS rebranding: closed doors, pre-approval, constant storytelling. https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/objectives-are-not-tools https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/objectives-are-not-tools Tue, 29 Apr 2025 09:00:00 +0000 Building a shared vision takes a decision first: a few clear objectives, set by whoever leads, becoming the boundaries within which the group can move freely. Plus the distinction that saves projects: adopting a tool is not an objective. https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/public-sectors-secret-advantage https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/public-sectors-secret-advantage Tue, 15 Apr 2025 09:00:00 +0000 Private companies chase purpose marketing and nobody believes them. Public administration can write visions that are 100% true, because helping people is exactly what it exists for. https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/a-vision-is-a-compass https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/a-vision-is-a-compass Tue, 01 Apr 2025 09:00:00 +0000 Clear even 'upwards', ambitious yet 'just beyond the horizon', anchored to a real need, engaging like the three stonecutters, resistant like true north: the five characteristics of a vision that works. https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/anxiety-of-the-public-innovator https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/anxiety-of-the-public-innovator Tue, 18 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000 Innovating inside government means living under constant apprehension: public exposure, isolation, fear of discontinuity. The three forms of anxiety and how to live with them. https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/the-mechanical-watch https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/the-mechanical-watch Tue, 04 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000 Complex and complicated are not synonyms. The mechanical watch metaphor and three typical risks — the stone, the paper bridge, the maze — with real INPS cases. https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/resistance-absorbs https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/resistance-absorbs Tue, 18 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000 In the public sector, resistance to change acts without a face: endless referrals, cosmetic agreement, projects left to die on a side track. How to spot and beat it. https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/latent-hostility https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/latent-hostility Tue, 04 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000 The three kinds of hostility every public-sector innovator meets — out of conviction, interest, or competition — and why the latent form is the most dangerous one. https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/six-structural-conditions https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/six-structural-conditions Tue, 21 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000 Hiring exams built for legal profiles, the 'vendor available under framework contract', fear of error, short political cycles: the six structural conditions that make public-sector innovation so hard. https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/design-ops-from-scratch https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/design-ops-from-scratch Fri, 21 Jun 2024 09:00:00 +0000 Manifesto, design system, design framework, rebranding, Experience Authority: the five phases through which INPS built an experience design function from scratch — and why in this order. https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/function-is-a-commodity https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/function-is-a-commodity Fri, 01 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000 Why user experience decides the success of a service — and why it matters even more where there is no market: the UX transformation of INPS, from luxury e-commerce to pure public service. https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/sirio-design-system https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/sirio-design-system Fri, 10 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000 How a design system is born inside a large public administration: the story of Sirio at INPS — silos, resistance, collaboration, and the impact on millions of citizens. https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/collaboration-silver-bullet https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/collaboration-silver-bullet Fri, 10 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000 Collaboration is praised as a universal fix. In large, complex organisations it has real costs — time, control, agility. The Alignment-Competition model (ALCO) tells you when it works. https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/designers-not-artists https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/designers-not-artists Thu, 01 Jun 2023 09:00:00 +0000 The artist-designer syndrome, constraints as the engine of creativity, and why institutional identities must be instant classics rather than follow trends. https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/brand-promise-experience-proof https://giacomograssi.eu/writings/brand-promise-experience-proof Mon, 06 Jun 2022 09:00:00 +0000 Sovereign brand, frustrated brand, absent brand: how the designer's job changes across luxury, telco and government — and why brand and experience are inseparable.