Why does public administration need services that work? Because they make citizens feel heard and respected — and that is where trust in institutions comes from. "Making things that work" is not a technical objective: it is the enabler of change for the public sector.
Why public services "don't work"
Not out of ill will. Out of structure:
- The focus is on compliance: law → online service. Once the service exists, the obligation is fulfilled;
- There is no dissatisfied customer who stops buying;
- There is no competition;
- Performance is measured, mainly, on quantity.
In the private sector, improvement happens "physiologically" because a very simple selection mechanism exists: the market. If a product doesn't work, people stop using it, customers choose something else, and the company improves or disappears. In the public sector this actor doesn't exist: citizens cannot "switch welfare provider".
The functional substitute for the market
Precisely for this reason, a functional substitute for the market should exist: a culture of impact measurement that steers rules, objectives and decisions. The only form of external pressure applicable to the public sector is the impact on users — and for it to actually exert pressure, it must have three characteristics:
- centred on people's needs, not on the administration's outputs;
- objectively measurable — completion rates, errors, drop-offs, time, feedback;
- binding — an institutional objective, not an option.
Legislators and public management should define objectives not only of compliance, but of outcomes for people: speed, simplicity, accessibility, the ability to actually reach the intended recipients. Many rules were instead designed above all to avoid error, and we end up measuring quantity rather than perceived quality. Impact measurement doesn't empower citizens — it empowers their needs. It exerts the missing external pressure. And, not least: it can be understood by leadership.
Design is the discipline of impact
This is where design comes in — not as aesthetics or individual creative flair, but as method. Design:
- starts from the user's real problem;
- observes use, not intentions;
- measures the effect of choices;
- turns needs into a design constraint.
Design is the art of transforming what exists into something that works better.
Meanwhile, people's expectations have changed: those who use banking, e-commerce and digital platforms every day expect from government the same minimum level of clarity and usability. Young people are the clearest litmus test: if you don't speak an understandable language and don't offer digital products up to their standards, they simply ignore you. This shifts the centre of gravity from "are we compliant?" to "can people actually use this service — with how much effort, with what outcomes?". Regulatory compliance remains an essential constraint — but it stops being the only guiding criterion. The guiding criterion becomes making something that really matters work.
Trust is a side effect of predictability
When a citizen finds a coherent interface that works the same way from one service to the next, trust grows not for abstract reasons but because the experience is predictable, legible, and requires no decoding. A clear interface, a readable message, an understandable document are not aesthetic details: they communicate respect — they tell people their time is worth as much as anyone else's. That, ultimately, is what feeds trust in institutions.
How it's done: the virtuous loop
The operational question remains: how do you make impact measurement mandatory — a real institutional objective? Not by decree, and not from the bottom up on good will alone. You do it by igniting a self-feeding loop:
1. We design things that work — starting from people's real problems;
2. We measure — the impact on users, objectively;
3. We communicate the impact — in the decision-makers' language: results that leadership understands, and can claim;
4. An expectation of impact takes hold — decision-makers start demanding that every project prove its effect;
5. That expectation generates a need for design — because design is the discipline that produces and measures that impact;
↺ and the loop starts again, stronger: every turn produces more cases, more evidence, more demand.
The hinge is step three: measuring without communicating ignites nothing. Impact must be translated into terms useful to leadership — because it is the decision-makers' demand, not the designers' supply, that turns measurement into a binding constraint. Design stops asking for room when it is the organization that demands impact.
And it takes doing it together
No single person ignites the loop. It takes an ecosystem — government, designers, companies, academia — sharing language, cases and evidence, until "making things that work" becomes the standard leadership expects, rather than the exception to celebrate. This is why I founded Lo Stato del Design: a place where these worlds meet, to turn the quality of experience from the responsibility of a few into a public responsibility.