What is civic labs?
A consulting and simulation stream that helps public facing organisations understand how policies, strategies, campaigns and investments are likely to play out across communities and civic systems.
Test policies and strategies on a realistic civic model.
What we focus on
– How different groups in the community may respond
– Equity, trust and legitimacy risks
– System wide impacts, not just individual projects
– Trade offs between options before you commit
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Human and AI in Civic Lab
AI helps us run structured simulations across a realistic civic model built from your data, context and assumptions. Our consultants challenge scenarios, test credibility and translate results into clear choices and risks.
What you walk away with
A clearer view of likely community responses and system impacts
Evidence to support or refine policy and strategy directions
A Civic Lab Decision Dossier that can sit alongside formal advice and governance papers
Others help you choose the destination. We turn strategy into operational reality. Where ambitious plans meet operational truth.
Ministry of Insights is a consulting practice that helps organisations turn decisions into real, workable change. We focus on internal reality: people, processes, capacity and governance. We combine deep consulting experience and human insight with AI supported simulations so you can execute with confidence, not guesswork. Humans decide. AI helps us see further and faster.
Human and AI Philosophy
Your organisation. On demand.
We do not need every person in the same room at the same time to understand how your organisation works. Through simulation and modelling, we create a living picture of your organisation and environment so you can explore options, test change and surface risk without disrupting teams or waiting for perfect availability.
Humans first. AI in support.
We do not automate leadership or judgement. Our work keeps humans firmly in the loop, using AI to surface patterns, options and risks faster so your people can make better decisions with more context, not less.
Inside our Labs, AI helps with pattern detection, scenario generation and drafting narratives from complex inputs. Our consultants design the prompts, set the guardrails, challenge the outputs and decide what is useful. We never treat AI output as truth. It is structured input into a human conversation and decision.
Simulations do not make decisions for you. They give your leaders a clearer view of consequences so you can exercise judgement with more confidence.
Civic Lab FAQs
When should we use Civic Lab instead of traditional policy analysis
Civic Lab is useful when you want to explore how different groups and systems might respond to a proposal, beyond what static impact tables can show. It complements, not replaces, traditional policy and legal analysis.
Do you model individual citizens
No. We work at the level of segments, scenarios and system patterns, not individual profiling.
What inputs do you need to run Civic Lab
We typically use a mix of existing strategies, demographic data, stakeholder maps and previous engagement findings. We do not require perfect data to run useful scenarios.
How do you ensure Civic Lab simulations are credible
We validate assumptions with your subject matter experts, stress test extreme scenarios and sense check outputs against known realities before presenting them.
Can you focus Civic Lab on a specific community or issue
Yes. We can build scoped civic models around targeted issues such as transport, housing, environmental change or specific localities.
Can Civic Lab be used for political campaigning
Civic Lab is intended for policy, strategy and investment insight, not for microtargeted campaigning. However, it can simulate sentiments and responses from the simulated civic community for specific political views, communications and messaging.