Behavioural Science for Public Service Improvement Training Course

Course Introduction

Public services succeed when they reflect how citizens actually think, decide, behave, and interact with government systems. Traditional service improvement approaches often focus on processes, structures, technology, and resources without fully considering behavioural barriers such as friction, habits, trust, cognitive overload, social norms, motivation, and limited attention. Behavioural science adds a practical human-centred perspective that can help governments improve access, uptake, compliance, satisfaction, and outcomes.

Behavioural Science for Public Service Improvement Training Course provides public sector professionals with practical methods for applying behavioural science to the design, delivery, management, and continuous improvement of government services. Participants will learn how to identify behavioural barriers affecting service users and frontline employees, diagnose the factors driving those behaviours, and develop interventions that make desired actions easier, clearer, more timely, and more achievable.

The course focuses on real public service challenges, including incomplete applications, missed appointments, low digital service adoption, limited programme participation, payment delays, weak compliance, poor information use, service drop-outs, and difficulties navigating complex administrative processes. Participants will learn how to investigate these challenges systematically and distinguish behavioural constraints from structural, financial, technological, institutional, legal, and accessibility problems.

Participants will explore practical tools including behavioural journey mapping, user research, choice architecture, friction analysis, behavioural segmentation, COM-B analysis, EAST principles, social norms, reminders, defaults, prompts, feedback, simplification, and behavioural experimentation. These tools will help participants move from assumptions about citizen behaviour toward evidence-based understanding and interventions that can be tested, measured, refined, and scaled.

The course also addresses the responsible use of behavioural science in public administration. Participants will examine ethical questions involving autonomy, transparency, consent, privacy, fairness, vulnerable populations, unintended consequences, manipulation, and the appropriate use of behavioural data. Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, personalization, predictive analytics, digital nudges, and automated communications will be considered alongside their implications for accountability and human oversight.

By the end of the course, participants will be able to diagnose behavioural barriers within public services, design behaviourally informed improvements, test interventions, interpret evidence, and embed successful approaches into service delivery systems. The course ultimately helps government institutions create services that are easier to access, simpler to navigate, more responsive to citizen needs, more inclusive, and more effective in delivering measurable public value.

Duration

5 days

Who Should Attend

• Senior government executives responsible for public service performance, citizen experience, policy implementation, and service improvement.

• Permanent secretaries, principal secretaries, directors, and senior administrators overseeing public service delivery and institutional reform.

• Public service managers responsible for improving service accessibility, responsiveness, quality, efficiency, and citizen satisfaction.

• Service designers and citizen experience professionals developing human-centred government services and user journeys.

• Policy officers applying behavioural evidence to public policy, programme design, implementation, and regulatory improvement.

• Programme managers responsible for service uptake, citizen participation, compliance, programme outcomes, and implementation performance.

• Monitoring and evaluation specialists assessing behavioural outcomes, intervention effectiveness, service performance, and programme learning.

• Communications and public engagement professionals designing behaviourally informed messages, campaigns, reminders, notifications, and public information.

• Digital government professionals designing online services, forms, platforms, notifications, authentication processes, and digital service journeys.

• Data and analytics professionals working with administrative, behavioural, service usage, survey, and citizen experience data.

• Human resource and organizational development professionals seeking behavioural approaches to improve frontline performance, employee engagement, and service culture.

• Regulatory and compliance officials seeking to improve voluntary compliance, reporting, payment, participation, and adherence to government requirements.

• Local government and public agency managers seeking practical approaches to improve citizen-facing services and institutional performance.

• Consultants and public sector advisors supporting governments with service transformation, behavioural science, citizen experience, policy implementation, and performance improvement.

Course Objectives

• Explain fundamental behavioural science concepts and demonstrate how human behaviour influences public service access, usage, compliance, experience, and outcomes.

• Diagnose behavioural barriers affecting citizens and frontline employees by examining capability, opportunity, motivation, friction, habits, trust, incentives, and social influences.

• Map public service user journeys to identify behavioural bottlenecks, decision points, administrative burdens, drop-off points, information gaps, and opportunities for improvement.

• Apply practical behavioural frameworks such as COM-B and EAST to develop structured explanations of behaviour and identify appropriate intervention opportunities.

• Design behaviourally informed service improvements using simplification, prompts, reminders, defaults, social norms, feedback, salience, and improved choice environments.

• Integrate behavioural science into public service design, programme management, communications, digital government, regulatory processes, and continuous improvement initiatives.

• Develop behavioural experiments and pilot interventions that enable government teams to test service improvements before committing significant resources to large-scale implementation.

• Evaluate behavioural interventions using appropriate indicators, comparison methods, user feedback, administrative data, and implementation evidence to determine effectiveness and scalability.

• Apply ethical and inclusive principles when using behavioural interventions, ensuring transparency, autonomy, privacy, fairness, accessibility, and protection for vulnerable service users.

• Establish sustainable behavioural improvement capabilities that connect user research, service design, experimentation, analytics, implementation learning, and performance management across public institutions.

Comprehensive Course Outline

Module 1: Foundations of Behavioural Science for Public Services

• Understanding behavioural science and its relevance to improving government service access, uptake, compliance, satisfaction, efficiency, and outcomes.

• Exploring insights from psychology, behavioural economics, cognitive science, social psychology, decision science, and related disciplines.

• Examining why actual citizen and employee behaviour can differ significantly from assumptions embedded in policies, procedures, service standards, and programme designs.

• Identifying opportunities for behavioural improvement across public services including health, education, taxation, social protection, licensing, regulation, and digital government.

Module 2: Understanding Citizen Behaviour and Service Use

• Examining how attention, memory, habits, emotions, trust, incentives, social norms, cognitive biases, and context influence interactions with public services.

• Understanding bounded rationality, present bias, status quo bias, loss aversion, framing effects, choice overload, and other behavioural mechanisms affecting service decisions.

• Distinguishing capability, opportunity, motivation, structural constraints, financial barriers, administrative burdens, and behavioural barriers within public service environments.

• Using observed behaviour, administrative data, user research, interviews, surveys, observations, and service analytics to challenge assumptions about service users.

Module 3: Behavioural Diagnosis and Service Journey Mapping

• Developing behavioural problem statements that define the target behaviour, affected population, service context, desired outcome, and evidence required for diagnosis.

• Mapping citizen journeys across awareness, eligibility, application, registration, payment, service use, follow-up, renewal, and completion stages.

• Identifying friction points including complicated forms, unclear instructions, excessive steps, waiting periods, uncertainty, digital barriers, and poor communication.

• Applying behavioural diagnostic tools to determine whether service problems arise from capability, opportunity, motivation, environmental design, institutional processes, or other factors.

Module 4: Behaviourally Informed Service Design

• Applying behavioural insights to redesign service processes so that desired actions become easier, clearer, more accessible, timely, and consistent with user circumstances.

• Using simplification, defaults, prompts, reminders, salience, feedback, social norms, commitments, and improved choice architecture in public service environments.

• Designing behaviourally informed forms, letters, websites, mobile services, notifications, appointment systems, payment processes, and application journeys.

• Integrating behavioural principles with human-centred design, accessibility standards, service standards, process improvement, and digital transformation initiatives.

Module 5: Improving Service Uptake and Citizen Participation

• Identifying behavioural reasons why eligible citizens fail to access benefits, complete applications, attend appointments, participate in programmes, or use available services.

• Designing targeted interventions that address awareness, trust, complexity, timing, convenience, social influences, perceived benefits, and practical barriers affecting service uptake.

• Applying behavioural segmentation to understand differences in needs, motivations, constraints, digital behaviour, service preferences, and responses among population groups.

• Developing communication and engagement strategies that make important information timely, understandable, relevant, credible, accessible, and actionable for service users.

Module 6: Behavioural Approaches to Compliance and Service Completion

• Applying behavioural science to improve tax compliance, regulatory adherence, payments, reporting, licensing, documentation, appointment attendance, and other government requirements.

• Understanding how fairness perceptions, trust, social norms, enforcement expectations, administrative burden, reminders, and ease of compliance influence citizen behaviour.

• Designing behavioural communications that encourage voluntary compliance while maintaining transparency, proportionality, dignity, fairness, and appropriate enforcement mechanisms.

• Measuring whether behavioural interventions improve completion, compliance, payment, reporting, participation, or other desired behaviours without creating unintended burdens or inequities.

Module 7: Behavioural Science for Frontline Service Improvement

• Examining how workplace environments, organizational norms, incentives, routines, leadership, feedback, workload, and technology influence frontline public service behaviour.

• Applying behavioural approaches to improve staff responsiveness, adherence to service standards, teamwork, communication, productivity, ethical conduct, and citizen-centred service.

• Designing interventions that support frontline employees through clearer processes, timely feedback, appropriate prompts, supportive defaults, and improved decision environments.

• Integrating behavioural insights into organizational change, performance management, employee engagement, capability development, and service improvement programmes.

Module 8: Experimentation, Evaluation, and Continuous Improvement

• Designing behavioural experiments, pilots, A/B tests, randomized trials, quasi-experimental assessments, and other practical approaches to test service improvements.

• Establishing behavioural indicators, outcome measures, baselines, comparison groups, implementation measures, and evaluation criteria for public service interventions.

• Interpreting experimental results by considering effect sizes, statistical uncertainty, implementation fidelity, population differences, context, costs, and practical significance.

• Creating improvement cycles that use evidence and user feedback to refine interventions, determine scalability, discontinue ineffective approaches, and institutionalize successful practices.

Module 9: Digital Behavioural Science, AI, and Emerging Issues

• Exploring digital nudges, personalized communications, automated reminders, predictive analytics, behavioural data, and AI-supported service improvement opportunities.

• Examining ethical risks involving profiling, surveillance, sensitive behavioural data, personalization, automated targeting, manipulation, and unequal impacts on different service users.

• Addressing algorithmic bias, explainability, transparency, privacy, cybersecurity, human oversight, data governance, and accountability in technology-enabled behavioural interventions.

• Assessing emerging behavioural challenges arising from generative AI, digital exclusion, misinformation, platform dependence, changing citizen expectations, and increasingly automated public services.

Module 10: Institutionalizing Behavioural Service Improvement

• Developing institutional frameworks for embedding behavioural science into policy design, service transformation, programme management, evaluation, communications, and performance improvement.

• Establishing behavioural insights teams, governance arrangements, ethical review mechanisms, research standards, experimentation protocols, and evidence-sharing processes.

• Creating practical pipelines for identifying service problems, conducting behavioural diagnoses, designing interventions, testing approaches, evaluating results, and scaling successful improvements.

• Measuring behavioural service improvement through uptake, completion, compliance, accessibility, citizen experience, service quality, cost-effectiveness, equity, and measurable public outcomes

Training Approach

This course will be delivered by our skilled trainers who have vast knowledge and experience as expert professionals in the fields. The course is taught in English and through a mix of theory, practical activities, group discussion and case studies. Course manuals and additional training materials will be provided to the participants upon completion of the training.

Tailor-Made Course

This course can also be tailor-made to meet organization requirement. For further inquiries, please contact us on: Email: training@upskilldevelopment.com Tel: +254 721 331 808

Training Venue 

The training will be held at our Upskill Training Centre. We also offer training for a group (at a discount of 10% to 50%) at requested location all over the world. The Onsite course fee covers the course tuition, training materials, two break refreshments, buffet lunch, airport transfers, Upskill gift package, and guided tour.

Visa application, travel expenses, dinners, accommodation, insurance, and other personal expenses are catered by the participant

Certification

Participants will be issued with Upskill certificate upon completion of this course.

Airport Pickup and Accommodation

Airport pickup and accommodation is arranged upon request. For booking contact our Training Coordinator through Email: training@upskilldevelopment.com, +254 721 331 808

Terms of Payment:

Unless otherwise agreed between the two parties’ payment of the course fee should be done 3 working days before commencement of the training so as to enable us to prepare better.