Assessment and Development of Public Servants Using the Design Thinking Methodology for the Reforms and Innovations Introduction

The purpose of the study is to investigate the features of assessment of public servants’ characteristics and their ability development to introduce reforms and innovations in public authorities using the design thinking methodology. The following tasks were set: 1) to investigate the problems of assessing the personal qualities and behavioral characteristics before and after training activities; 2) to find out what peculiarities of the introduction of reforms and innovations in public authorities should be taken into account in the assessment of public servants and their practice-oriented training; 3) based on the results of the research, to determine the features of the use of design thinking methodology in the public servants development. To achieve the research objective, the dialectical research, content analysis, questionnaire survey, expert assessment, methods of statistical analysis, and modeling were used. The results of the study testified that in many cases the method of self-assessment of personal qualities does not ensure the indicators objectivity. Therefore, such indicators should be compared with expert estimates. Based on the analysis of the results of empirical research in the public sector, the peculiarities of the reforms and innovations introduction related to bureaucracy and political influence, drivers of reforms and their outcomes, strict control over the use of resources, evaluation of the performance of public servants have been identified. The research allowed substantiating the proposals for the use of the design thinking methodology in training of public servants and evaluation of its results.