Public Innovation on a Shoestring
“OMG I’m so glad this position exists”!
“Your job is to change government? Good luck with that”!
These are examples of the polarizing comments I have heard since I accepted a position in the Government of New Brunswick as the Executive Director of Open Government and Innovation (you can read my reflection on year one here). My mandate is to advance open government, grow the government’s innovation capacity and foster a culture of innovation. A dream job for sure; yet not a job for one person. In two year’s we have made impressive progress through a combination of executive support, a prototyping mindset, grassroots support and emergent strategy.
In a rapidly changing world, “the company that learns fastest wins” (Eric Ries). This is as true for government as it is for the private sector. You know the truism: Governments cannot afford to operate like a Blockbuster in a Netflix world. “The big, complex problems facing governments demand new approaches”.
In this context, at a minimum governments need to meet the changing expectations of their customers, citizens, and end-users. At best governments should strive to surprise and delight customers, meet the needs of citizens, and manage resource constraints.
To do this governments around the world have established innovation programs and labs that have successfully:
Improved efficiency – the optimal use of all kinds of resources for the delivery of government services through partnerships, networks, and joined-up efforts. For example the CityMakers initiative in Dubai.
Achieved greater customer centricity – placing customers at the core of government service design, development, and delivery, and focusing on their (often unarticulated) needs and expectations through human centred design, new forms for engagement, and co-creation. For example MindLab in Denmark.
Prepared for the Future – enabling greater agility, responsiveness and adaptability of government (and its partners) by ensuring policies, programs, and services are prepared for emerging opportunities and challenges through strategic foresight and scenario planning. For example The Natural Step and CoLab in Alberta.
In order to achieve these results we are required to create the conditions for innovation by:
1. Attracting, retaining, and refreshing innovation talent, problem solvers, and public leaders.
2. Seeing government services and challenges in new and different ways.
3. Sourcing more, better, and uncommon ideas to solve public problems.
4. Developing the ability to test ideas for desirability, feasibility, viability, and impact.
5. Surfacing new approaches to develop, scale and accelerate the delivery of what works.
6. Fostering an engaged, networked and boundaryless public service.
7. Building greater capacity to use new tools and techniques with an awareness of the right tool for the job.
At GNB Open Government and Innovation Unit we have been working tirelessly to create these conditions.
Year one – exploring the strategic context
Year one was largely an exploratory year: seeking out opportunities for change, beginning to develop a common language for innovation, and connecting with long time public servants who knew the system and were committed to change.
Some of the things I worked on in my first years included: 1) Using Innovation Week to highlight and connect innovators in all corners of the province; 2) helping the Opportunities Summits become more participatory and transparent; 3) testing a Public Innovation 101 workshop to develop a common language for innovation and surface our own cases; 4) offering Executive Training to help senior staff make better decisions when presented with problems requiring innovation; 5) launching a Public Innovation Challenge to provide staff with opportunities to work in different ways while leveraging their collective intelligence to solve public problems; and 6) demonstrating the value of co-creation and a collaborative space through the Craft Alcohol Policy Lab.
In year one the strategy was to 1) begin developing a network of interest in public innovation - identifying those public servants already working differently or with a desire to work differently; 2) improve our innovation literacy and develop a common language for the work through information sessions and the Public Innovation 101 workshop; 3) provide opportunities to apply new tools and approaches through the NouLAB Academy and the Public Innovation Challenge. In that year approximately 300 public servants were reached through various activities (this is not including the complementary work being performed by NouLAB through their Academy and Economic Immigration Lab).
Year two – starting up
Innovation in the public sector isn’t always a supply problem. The executive level of the organization needs to create the demand to pull on the supply. In January 2018 with inspiration from the Government of Canada and the Government of BC we created an ad hoc Deputy Minister Public Innovation Council (DMPIC) consisting of deputies who proactively reached out for support with building innovation capacity in their departments. This council is: 1) identifying priorities requiring innovation; 2) learning about innovation practice; 3) removing barriers and resourcing initiatives as needed; and 4) overseeing progress on our activities. The Council is meant to create the demand for innovation and signal that it is a priority. In concert with the DMPIC we have designed a number of mutually reinforcing initiatives to spread, support and sustain innovation in the government of New Brunswick.
The Public Innovation Challenge has demonstrated the supply of innovation capabilities that exist in our public service and is strengthening that through networking, training and experiential learning. This initiative has helped us learn ways in which we might better support “everyday innovation” and leverage the collective intelligence of existing public servants. In many ways this initiative has served as a a prototype for an incubation program, and has the potential to evolve into what Christian Bason calls “a common political-administrative platform” for addressing strategic innovation needs.
The Public Innovation Internship Program was designed and implemented in 2018 to grow GNBs innovation talent pool. The design team consisted of staff from multiple departments and reviewed and reimagined the staffing lifecycle from finding to growing talent. To do this we took much inspiration from the GC Free Agent Program, GC Entrepreneurs, Talent Cloud, and the NESTA Innovation competency framework. Finally, working with Alongside we developed a novel job ad and agile social media campaign to recruit recent graduates into the public service. The end result was a multidisciplinary group of 10 new staff; five of which were placed in departments while the other five made up the complement for an innovation team (the i-Team).
The i-Team consists of systems thinkers, a data scientist, engagement architects, designers, and facilitators. Collectively this team is developing its capacity and that of other public servants in a variety of fields such as citizen engagement, systems mapping, behavioural insights, strategic foresight, human-centred design, prototyping and data science. The i-Team is also developing a means of supporting strategic innovation projects.
The Innovation Lab is a combination of developing innovation practice and a physical collaboration space (without beanbag chairs). In 2018 the DMPIC selected three strategic innovation challenges and assigned cross-departmental teams to explore the problems and test solutions. The i-Team has been providing support and organizing training sessions since September which included a five-day design sprint facilitated by NouLAB. The current cohort will be wrapping up their work with three innovation proposals this Spring with the second iteration of the program beginning this Summer.
As these programs continue to develop we are finding ways to achieve greater integration with an annual innovation cycle. For example, how might we use the Public Innovation Challenge as a way of vetting challenges, drawing on a network of internal talent, and accelerating problem definition to feed into the innovation lab? Might we use the internship program to provide experiential learning opportunities to new staff along with surge capacity to the strategic innovation challenges?
Coming up
GovMaker V is April 29 and 30 at the Fredericton Convention Centre
The Public Innovation Challenge III launches February 28 with the final competition day May 1st at the Fredericton Convention Centre
