It was in connection with the Swedish Tax Agency's analyses and dialogues with the platform companies in the sharing economy that they understood that they needed to develop new rules. Rules that can handle the situations that arise related to the sharing economy.
- In that work I had followed similar project abroad where you used policylab as a form of work and I thought it seemed interesting.
So when Vinnova heard about the question of whether the Swedish Tax Agency wanted to try to work in police lab, Rebecca Filis was not difficult to persuade.
- It was rather that I jumped out of joy, she says.
In what way did you see that the Swedish Tax Agency could benefit from working in police labs?
- When we analysed the sharing economy in 2016, we saw that there were problems with getting the players to comply with existing rules. The regulations are simply not adapted to the sharing economy. Therefore, we need to talk to and listen to both platforms and users to see how this can be made easier and better. And then policylab is a perfect tool.
How did you get with your colleagues in the idea of working in police lab?
It was difficult first because there were many who thought that the form of work seemed flabby, or they simply had too little time. At the same time, our new guidelines say that we should put the customer at the center, be in the customer's environment and put a customer perspective on the issues - all that the police lab does. When we were able to show that connection, it was much easier to get people in the project. Then of course it helped that we received a grant from Vinnova that covered the consulting costs.
How have you worked with police lab so far?
There are many aspects of the sharing economy that need new solutions, but we chose to investigate how we can get more people to report income from letting private homes. It was good as a first test project because it is an area that touches many while it is easy to delimit so that it does not swell and becomes too big. We got a lot of support and help from Vinnova when it came to finding the right direction, and during the actual process we took the help of a consulting company that started with making in-depth interviews with customers. We used the customer insights as a basis for a three-day workshop where we gathered employees from different departments who worked with idea generation and with developing prototypes.