Extract

In 2025, The Auckland Co-Design Lab marked 10 years as an Aotearoa New Zealand public sector innovation initiative.

The Auckland Co-Design Lab (The Lab) was established to test innovative, participatory and collective approaches to complex socio-economic challenges. It plays a deliberate and distinctive role in Aotearoa’s public sector—demonstrating new practice, building evidence, and strengthening capability and networks to improve outcomes.

This report reflects on a decade of work seeking to deliver on this remit, drawing on interviews with public servants and collaborators over this time.

It examines what we have learned about building public sector capability to address complex collective challenges and sets the direction for the decade ahead.

This report is intended for:

• Senior leaders wanting to accelerate change and innovation
• Kaimahi doing the work of systems change
• Others interested in systems-level innovation in the public sector.

Tuia ki te rangi,

Tuia ki te whenua,

Tuia ki te moana,

Tuia ki te herenga tangata,

Ka rongo te pō,

Ka rongo te ao,

Tihei mauri ora!

The Auckland Co-Design Lab is a local and central government innovation lab. We are nested inside The Southern Initiative, hosted within Auckland Council, and co-funded with central government. We work alongside whānau and hapori (communities) in South Auckland and with other initiatives with aligned kaupapa across Aotearoa.

Our focus is on enabling a more responsive, effective, and evidence informed public service. We do this by connecting the lived realities of whānau with system-level decision-making; bringing local practice and whānau expertise together with national policy and investment; and reshaping the relationship between whānau, hapori and government. ...

Auckland Co-Design Lab, June 2026

See also

Auckland Co-Design Lab

The Southern Initiative TSI