3 things cities do to foster innovative local government
From an article by Apolitical
Innovation is a notoriously slippery term. For city government it generally involves deliberately questioning how things are done, leading to new and hopefully better ways of working. Innovation is meant to help resolve the world’s thorniest public policy challenges — from housing affordability to the climate crisis — but also to make cities more liveable through more effective, responsive and efficient city government.
A research team has investigated city innovation in conversation with practitioners from around the world. They identified three dimensions as critical for city government innovation:
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New institutions that are “licensed to innovate”
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Approaches based in design thinking
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Nurturing more creative bureaucracies.
New Institutions
Urban innovation units have become a poster child for innovative city government. These units are usually modestly sized teams within city government. They are licensed to experiment with new processes, new services or new ways of developing urban policy.
These units generally aim to unsettle “business as usual” and work across habitual divisions of labour between departments and functions. They tend to draw in new partners, whether in the private, community or philanthropic sector. The emphasis is on collaborating to get things done, rather than following well-established rules and routines to deliver public services.
Such approaches challenge city government norms. They work with an explicit tolerance of failure and learning until a version of a policy, or a way of delivering a service, begins to work better. There’s an emphasis on building trust between the various partners, within and beyond government and creating a narrative about what innovative approaches can achieve. is also important. “Showcasing the wins” demands new storytelling resources and skills for city staff.
There is no predictable template that transfers smoothly across all locations. These units need to navigate unique local circumstances, conflicting priorities and political sticking points that crop up in different ways in different places.
Design thinking
While we may not traditionally associate city government with design, research participants often described their work in terms such as human-centred design, co-design, co-creation and prototyping.
Experimental and iterative practices underpinned their work: that is, testing a policy or service-design idea, seeing what works and what doesn’t, tweaking and testing again, and so on. Learning from the process is a priority. And that learning was derived from input from more than “the usual suspects”. At its best, design thinking is unashamedly focused on people, whether they work in city departments or are citizens impacted by the problem in focus.
Developing a creative bureaucracy
Practitioners commonly understand innovation in city government as being about creative problem-solving. This is some way from the stereotype of the rule-bound city government bureaucrat.
In response to perceptions that city governments aren’t adaptable, effective or open enough, there are efforts to unleash the creativity of their workers to solve problems. Berlin even has an annual Creative Bureaucracy Festival.
The desire for adaptive, responsive, open city government is changing recruitment priorities - seeking staff with qualities like empathy, persuasion, charisma, agility and a history of enabling teams to create solutions. Recruiting for so-called soft skills, not the hard skills of domain-specific expertise, is part of an effort to change the culture and bureaucratic capacities of city government.
Much remains to be learned about the long-term implications of city governments working in “innovation mode”. Clear-eyed evaluation is needed to avoid “innovation washing”: the notion that innovation is always a good thing and always delivers improvement. The research found city government innovation most often concerns changes to the everyday business of running the city. This includes more efficient processes, new ways to gather ideas from the community, new collaborations that allow resource sharing.
Read the full article here.
How innovative is your Local Authority? Have they an innovation unit? Have they published reports on innovations? Why not ask?
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From an article by Apolitical, 23/04/2024