I recently had the pleasure of facilitating the\u00a0MAV Hacktivation conference<\/a> on innovation in local government in Melbourne.
\nInterestingly, half the participants had \u2018innovation\u2019 or \u2018improvement\u2019 in their job titles, so this was a real showcase of innovation in Victorian local government.
\n
\nIncidentally, we really had fun pushing the boundaries of ‘conference’, with lots of interactivity where participants worked together and shared their own knowledge, rather than only hearing from experts. I think we proved that works. We also made a process for participants to design their own prototypes during the conference. We proved that can work\u00a0too!
\nHere are my top take-aways.
\nBest quote: \u201cWhy do we insist on punishing our customers with our inner chaos.\u201d<\/em>
\n1) Thomas Frey, compulsory international Futurist<\/strong>
\nThomas tried to thrill us with a future of \u2018driverless cars\u2019, \u2018teacherless schools\u2019 and \u2018builderless houses\u2019, but, frankly, he just scared me. Dear Thomas: if democracy teeters when 20% of the population have no productive work, what happens when that figure is 30% or 40%?? This is the \u2018unmanning\u2019 (sexist term) of the economy. It made me realise that only a truck-load of governance, structural and social innovation, based on values,\u00a0can\u00a0save<\/em> us<\/em> from technology.
\n2) The City of Casey: Caz McLean, Chris O\u2019Connor<\/strong>
\nThe City of Casey, a big, rapidly growing peripheral council in Melbourne, has a Customer Focus and Redesign Division. To change culture, they started with the physical space. They created\u00a0a \u2018flexible workplace\u2019 with no fixed desks and lots of tech. People work wherever they need to, with whom they need to. A recent discrete innovation was HR recruitment: they replaced complex forms with just \u2018200 words on why you want to work with us\u2019.
\n3) City of Ballarat: Martijn Schroder, Business Transformation Manager<\/strong>
\n\u201cWe will pay dearly for continuing mediocrity in service delivery.\u201d<\/em>
\nHis advice: \u201cPublish data well.\u201d<\/em> Council has innumerable data sets so use them for decisions, not gut feel. Data \u2018slays myths\u2019 and \u2018creates conflict\u2019 which leads to improvements.
\nHe talks about: Value Demand (effort spent on providing services) versus Failure Demand (effort spent dealing with service failures). For example, missed bin collections waste everyone\u2019s time \u2013 council admin, drivers and customers.
\nMartijn is\u00a0currently creating an Innovation Lab to allow the City\u00a0to work with business and academia.
\n4) Sunshine Coast Council, Ann Yardley<\/strong>
\nAnn leads\u00a0the\u00a0regular Hackfest with a $20,000 prize. The idea is: make available lots of council and open source data sets about the local community; then invite a lot of clever local IT folk to mix-n-match it into useful community apps in an focused 2 day event. They make some cool apps!
\nOpen data is a good way to improve council\u2019s data integrity \u201cwe expose it and they tell us what\u2019s wrong with it.\u201d<\/em>
\n5) Lake Macquarie Council, Sharon Pope<\/strong>
\nThis is a council that was happy to receive cheques and had no credit card payments! So it clearly needed a digital strategy, so Sharon brought together community IT professionals and council staff and \u2018mashed them together\u2019. A Hackathon (workshop) with Danish Smart City thought leader and local \u2018tech heroes\u2019 got the ball rolling and started educating council staff.
\n\u201cDon\u2019t worry what people will use the data for. Don\u2019t second guess what purposes they will imagine and create. The Hackathon demonstrated to council staff that they just needed to get all the clean data out there!\u201d<\/em>
\n6) Adelaide City Council, Paul Daley, Advisor, Entrepreneurship and Innovation<\/strong>
\n\u201cA \u2018smart city\u2019 uses lots of data and tech, but, critically, it designs a public realm\u00a0which is great to experience, with active, creative public spaces.\u201d<\/em>
\nA nice risk-management tip: For \u2018Splash Adelaide\u2019, a community festival, council let anyone set up anything, with just one proviso: \u2018they take it down in 24 hours if there\u2019s a problem\u2019.
\n3 tips be an innovator in local government:
\n– start under the radar;
\n– work to win the personal trust and credibility of executives
\n– market success back to the organisation.
\nRecently opened: the Adelaide Smart City Studio, a prominent space\u00a0for events, workshops and showcasing. Every surface has a whiteboard. It\u2019s much used by smart IT and creative companies.
\n7) Service Design Melb, Yoko Akama and team<\/strong>
\nDemonstrated personas and empathy mapping, and offered a couple of neat brainstorming variants, which worked:
\n– The 6-8-5 rule. Each person comes up with 6-8 ideas in 5 minutes (puts the pressure on so people don\u2019t worry whether their idea is \u2018right\u2019).
\n– Brainstorming in pairs (resulted in better-fleshed ideas)
\n– \u2018What if\u2019 cards, that overturned common assumptions. For example: \u201cWhat if there\u2019s no money?\u201d \u201cWhat if there\u2019s no public open space?\u201d
\nI can\u2019t remember who said this \u201cYou don\u2019t need personas if you have people.\u201d <\/em>That\u2019s good.
\n8) Carlton Connection Initiative, Jacyl Shaw, University of Melbourne<\/strong>
\nCCI is a physical space in an old hospital building that\u2019s roughly fitted out for workshops, talks and creative spaces.
\nShe believes innovation depends on physical spaces (not virtual ones). CCI is amazingly dynamic, with a fantastic diversity of people and stimulation passing through each week. Modelled on Renaissance Florence: a physical space that brings together competition, collaboration, proximity and funding. It enables innovators\u00a0to \u201cNever walk alone.\u201d
\n9) Brimbank City Council, Justine Resta and Angela Robertson<\/strong>
\nBCC has a \u2018Business Transformation Unit. The aim: transform all council services and customer interactions into single online shop. It was a huge effort, for example it needed ALL council data aggregated into single Spectrum platform. They brought in a user experience (UX) design agency, did lots of journey maps, did lots of public consultations.
\nThe key to the change was an IT Governance Group involving the CEO and 2 directors. They \u201ccleared barriers and made quick decisions\u201d,<\/em> plus 4 internal staff full-time.
\nThe CEO said \u201cYou have permission to fail. Don\u2019t spend you time planning. Just do it.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cModels don\u2019t change culture, action does.\u201d <\/em>
\n\u201cThere was lots of conflict and push back, but we needed people to question things so we could get it right for them.\u201d<\/em>
\nThey used IDEO\u2019s superb www.designkit.org<\/a> and then made up their own processes.
\n10) Yarra Ranges Council<\/strong>, Joelle McKay, Innovation Lead\u00a0<\/strong>
\nJoelle is certified for \u201cLego Serious Play\u201d and done lots of it with council staff. An example with\u00a0Lego Serious Play: staff are told \u201cIf your job was a tower, build it.\u201d They then explain their models, which reveals\u00a0insights into\u00a0directions for improvement.
\nShe is about to lead a whole-of-council 3-day Hack(!) using Lego Serious Play and other tools to get\u00a0staff working in groups to develop new solutions and ideas. Day 3 will be a \u201cmarket place\u201d where staff\u00a0pitch their ideas to each other.
\n 
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I recently had the pleasure of facilitating the\u00a0MAV Hacktivation conference on innovation in local government in Melbourne. Interestingly, half the participants had \u2018innovation\u2019 or \u2018improvement\u2019 in their job titles, so this was a real showcase of innovation in Victorian local government. Incidentally, we really had fun pushing the boundaries of ‘conference’, with lots of interactivity […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-innovation-2","has-post-thumbnail","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pac6ss-uP","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}