Who we worked with
ARTA (Philippine Anti-Red Tape Authority)
What we did together
T7 Masterclass in Innovation
Since 2016 New Zealand and the Philippines have been working together on initiatives to improve the ease of doing business in the Philippines. In the 2020 World Bank “Doing Business” survey, the Philippines ranked 171st among 190 countries in the category of “Starting a Business” while New Zealand ranked number one overall in the Ease of Doing Business survey.
In 2021 the Anti-Red Tape Authority (ARTA), the Filipino government agency mandated to administer and implement the Ease of Doing Business law, and the NZ government signed an agreement to strengthen their relations and boost their efforts in the fields of ease of doing business and public sector efficiency.
Creative HQ was engaged to help ARTA tackle this big challenge. But how?
“The first part of the Masterclass made me a child once more. It gave me many aha moments, esp. on the tools and techniques of championing the Filipino people through evidence-based interventions.”
Karl Joseph D. Sanmocte, PDO V, ARTA
How we did it
At Creative HQ we believe in empowering individuals and organisations to take action, by developing the right internal capabilities. Since February 2022, Creative HQ has been providing innovation training for key ARTA staff members through Creative HQ’s School of Innovation T7 masterclass in innovation. The programme is built around our trademark training style: experiential and immersive learning, while tackling real-life challenges.
Due to Covid, we opted to deliver this programme remotely through interactive online workshops with 21 participants. The participants were grouped into three teams of seven and each team was supported by an innovation coach from Creative HQ.
How does the T7 Masterclass work?
The T7 masterclass is broken down into three tiers. With the ARTA cohort, we focus on tiers 1-3, which make up the Diploma in Innovation Certificate. We initiated the process by introducing the principles, methodologies and practices of effective innovation programmes.
Each team was given a “problem statement” that related to the work of ARTA. Building off these statements, we supported the teams to discover and understand the issue, ideate possible solutions and iterate and learn from prototypes.
Each tier of the T7 Masterclass Programme equated to around 80 hours of hands-on learning for the participants – a full immersion of innovation! We broke down the hours in weekly online workshops. Outside of the workshop hours, the teams were also given tasks and homework to further embed their learning. The teams learned to collaborate effectively via online whiteboard tools and had the chance to share the progress through a pitching session to executive committee members of ARTA at the end of each tier.
The result
Participants came out of tiers 1-3, with a better understanding of innovation – they can now apply their knowledge and experience of a wide range of innovation tools. They have learned the importance of human-centered design, by interviewing users affected first-hand by the problems they had identified. They also learned how to use their insights from the discovery phase to generate ideas and build prototypes to quickly test their assumptions.
By the end of the programme, the participants built prototypes to address challenges in internal HR, task coordination systems and monitoring and evaluation of Citizens’ Charters from other government agencies.
Human-centred design is at the core of the T7 programme. By putting citizens and end users at the heart of service delivery, ARTA staff have been empowered to create a more trusted and inclusive agency through a culture focused on innovation.
