FOFOS - Graduate School for Renewing the Public Sector

Sweden's public sector is facing major societal challenges such as increasing inequality, climate crisis, weakened democratic participation and a growing need for new ways of organizing welfare. To strengthen the power of change and develop new ways of working, the national graduate school FOFOS - Research School for the Public Sector of the Future is now being established.

The Graduate School is organized nationally and brings together researchers from several universities together with public actors, innovation environments and authorities. The initiative is part of the Impact Innovation program SustainGov and involves a long-term investment in new knowledge and practical renewal of the public sector.

Through FOFOS, doctoral students around the country will explore, challenge and further develop the structures that shape today's welfare system. The ambition is both to analyze the current situation and to contribute to concrete changes, not by making small adjustments, but by developing models for systematic change, co-creation and future thinking. This makes the graduate school a unique national gathering of forces where research, public operations and innovation actors together build capacity for future governance and organization.

Luleå University of Technology's contribution to FOFOS consists of the doctoral project "Human-centered Design-for-Change: co-design for collective thinking and systemic transformation". The project is based on the fact that the public sector needs new ways of working that not only include citizens, but also see them as active co-creators of value, policy and social development. Design plays a central role here, as a tool to make complexity visible, to support collective foresight and to enable experimental and co-creative processes in practice.

The project focuses specifically on northern municipalities and regions and is carried out in close collaboration with local needs owners to create relevance, data access and opportunities for implementation and scaling. Through policy labs, living labs, speculative design and reflexive methods, the project will develop concrete tools and structures for inclusive governance. At the same time, it examines how institutional logics - chains of command, distribution of responsibilities, power relations - need to change in order for design and co-creation to really have a systemic effect.

FOFOS is thus more than a graduate school. It is a national arena for knowledge development, practical development and long-term transformation of the public sector. Through initiatives such as LTU's design project, the graduate school contributes to creating new conditions for a more democratic, sustainable and inclusive future. FOFOS participating partners are Mälardalen University, Lund University, KTH, Luleå University of Technology, University of Gothenburg and Stockholm University through the research institute SCORE.