Caring organisations & services
Understanding care in public sector organisations, and how design might intervene.
This theme is concerned with what it takes for public sector organisations to be capable of care—and what stands in the way. In the Dutch context the answer to the second question is largely structural. Decades of New Public Management have produced governance built on audit, contractual accountability, and the fragmentation of service delivery. These arrangements narrow the categories within which professionals may exercise judgement, and steadily erode the conditions under which care, craft, and attention remain possible.
The work this theme pursues sits at the level of those structures—beneath the touchpoints, journeys, and interfaces that service design typically engages. What does design intervention look like when its object is the organisational arrangements that determine whether professionals have room to listen properly, whether services can act coherently, whether the people the organisation exists for arrive as people rather than as case files? The case I draw on is a specific one—citizens navigating the path from occupational disability to employment—but the question it opens is broader.
Een wankel evenwichtvan Arkel et al., 2023 maps the governance structures shaping this domain, the constraints they place on professional agency, and the points where targeted intervention can open meaningful room for something different. The
A precarious equilibrium
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project has carried that work forward in collaboration with UWV;
Transforming a precarious equilibriumvan Arkel, Tromp & Ozkaramanli, 2026 traces how the design space for engaging with this complexity was constrained, negotiated, and expanded inside the organisation.
Projects
Designing with institutions
design research, systemic design, policy and governance
A precarious equilibrium
design research, systemic design, social design
Data-informed design experiments
design research, design for behaviour change
Het nieuwe thuiswerken
future vision, social design