Episode 38: Innovating Government for a Better Future

Speaker A: Welcome to the Local Government Insights podcast, Modernizing government leadership, your source and insights for local government technology. I'm your host, Ali, and today we are joined by Adrienne Brown, the Executive Director of the center of Public Impact. Adrian has a vast experience in public service innovation and has led efforts to rebuild trust and navigate complex challenges through smart governance. Drawing from his work with the UK Prime Minister's office and globally through the center of Public Impact, we'll be diving into how governments can harness innovation to transform public services and create lasting impact. Adrian, thank you so much for joining us today.

Speaker B: It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

Speaker A: Awesome. Thank you. Now, before we get started, can you share a little bit about your background and what led you to establish the center of Public Impact?

Speaker B: Sure. Um, I've always been interested in government and public service, um, but I started my career as a management consultant. And as a management consultant I was working across all sectors and industries. Uh, but I quickly realized that the public sector was the way I wanted to go. And that's what led me to, uh, the UK Cabinet office and the Prime Minister's office, which you mentioned in your introduction. I was working for Tony Blair at the time, which dates me, ah, somewhat, I realize. Um, so following on from that, I, I then became convinced that, uh, working with governments, especially improving the effectiveness and impact that governments are having, was, uh, something that was really motivating for me. And uh, I ended up, uh, doing a lot more consulting work in that field and then eventually, uh, left consulting to establish the Centre for Public Impact, which is a not for profit foundation. We work with governments, ah, at all levels. So from local, state, federal levels, and even sort of international governments like the un. Um, and our mission is what we call reimagining government. And when we say reimagining, we mean, uh, really thinking very fundamentally about how government can best adapt to tackle some of the most complex challenges that we face as society. So climate change, inequality, aging, society, you know, these are, uh, wicked problems that have any easy solutions. And many of the old tools and old mindsets and old ways of working in government are just not that well suited for tackling those. So we're really interested in exploring what can you do differently to make more progress with those types of complex problems. And that's what we do at cpi.

Speaker A: Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing. It really seems like your journey seems to reflect a deep passion for public service. So, really excited to dive more into CPI's mission. Um, and now I believe you guys are almost 10 years in and one of the core missions is finding innovative ways to tackle public service challenges. Can you walk us through some of the examples of innovation in action and how they've transformed services at a local or city level?

Speaker B: Sure. So um, I mean the first place I'd start with this is that we don't think of um, innovation as something that you can kind of cut and paste and copy across different areas. We think of it as a, as a mindset, as a way of rethinking the uh, context in which we find ourselves and the approaches that we might take to making more progress against uh, the challenges that we're trying to uh, address. So we're not um, uh, there's a, there's a great movement which I'm sure you're aware of around evidence based policy and what works, which is trying to identify the specific things that achieve better outcomes under specific circumstances. And whilst there's a lot to be said for that, we think of innovation as being something much more locally, um, held and culturally held and happening sort of in real time in an ongoing way. So it's not about coming up with the answer that's going to fix everything. It's about approaching something from a, from a completely different mindset. Now I know your audience are mainly based in the US so I'm deliberately going to choose examples from other parts of the world, maybe sort of unusual and interesting parts of the world. Um, uh, so the example, uh, I'll use an uh, innovative approach uh, that, that I find particularly inspiring is from Freetown in Sierra Leone. So in Freetown they uh, were, they're in a basin and they had a lot of deforestation and they wanted to plant more trees uh, to try and stop the landslides, but also to uh, help make the environment better and to, and to actually act as a carbon capture uh, device as well. And they came up with a way of doing that that was completely novel and new. They actually equipped local residents, anybody who wanted to take part, with the opportunity to download an app onto a smartphone and almost adopt some trees, some saplings that had been planted because those saplings need watering, need caring for, need measuring to see if they were growing. And this could all be done at a micro, micro level with micro payments to uh, compensate uh, people for doing this. And it created this incredible data set as well of all of these trees that were sort of individually being monitored. And the fact that they were capturing carbon could then actually be sold as carbon credits on the international carbon markets which helped pay for the uh, for the scheme. So that, that for me is just a whole range of things. There's technology in there, there's community in there, there's thinking really very differently about how to tap into different financing approaches, how to join up dots that haven't been connected before. And that ultimately I think is the definition of innovation. And that's why that's such an interesting, inspiring example for me.

Speaker A: Wow, that is fascinating. That is so cool to hear. And you're right, a mix of innovation and technology and um, community involvement. So thank you for sharing. That's really awesome. And I've heard you use the term, um, wicked problems. Um, can you expand on how local governments can use innovation to stress, to address local or wicked problems?

Speaker B: Sure. So, and let me be clear what I mean by wicked problems. So, um, uh, if you think about the world, uh, from a very sort of rationalist, sort of scientific, engineering enlightenment kind of model, then uh, you might take a problem like building a bridge and break that down into specific components and say we need to do process A with component B to lead to outcome, uh, C, that's going to result in next step D. And these, this is a, it's a very predictable linear sequence of events that will get you to your goal, which maybe in this case is building a bridge. And that way of thinking, which you might call a sort of yet rationalist, deterministic way of thinking, um, is fine for those kind of classical problems that can indeed be understood by breaking them down into their component parts, solving each one and then building back up. But most of the problems uh, in the world actually are not like that, especially the problems that policymakers are trying to tackle. So again, if we think of homelessness, if we think of addiction, uh, to uh, drugs, if we think of familial breakdown, if we think of crime and reoffending, any of these problems are not easy to bound, they're not easy to draw lines around and say this is the problem and then this other stuff isn't the problem they're in. They're wildly interconnected with many, many other aspects. They're highly unpredictable because many different factors are leading to many different uh, outcomes and interacting in many different ways. And at heart they're human social types of problem. So that's what we, that's what we mean by wicked problems. Wicked may not be the best word. Maybe just say complex problems, right? Or the normal type of problem that we face as policymakers. So those are the, when you're faced with that type of challenge, what we, what we're arguing, I suppose at uh, cpi, is that it's really misguided to sort of pretend that the traditional tools of problem solving, that is breaking down that problem into specific components, trying to solve each one and then building it back up again like a Lego set, are just not going to work. And in fact they're not just not going to work. The risk is that they take us down entirely the wrong path because we start coming up with answers, with solutions, maybe to only a bit of the problem. The bit of the problem we can easily measure or you can easily see. And it encourages to think simplistically when we're faced with that complexity. So it actually potentially takes us entirely down the wrong path and may in the worst cases lead us to doing things which are perversely going to result in things actually getting worse rather than getting better, even though our data might be saying that things are getting better, which is almost the worst situations. Like we think we're making a difference positively, but actually we're making things worse. So we encourage people, instead of using those approaches, to try different toolkit, if you like, a different way of thinking about, uh, approaching those challenges. So that would, uh, for example, include, rather than saying, we know the whole, uh, problem here, we can measure and sort of analyze the whole problem. You start with a much more open, humble mindset. And we say, actually we'll never know everything. So how can we adopt more of a learning posture rather than a solutionist mindset? How can we say, what would it take for us to really learn, uh, and adapt our way through this, uh, issue rather than trying to sort of build an answer to it? And if we start thinking like that, then we'll say, okay, well, we need a lot of information. We need to be connecting with all sorts of different groups and voices who've got different perspectives. Because it's only by getting all of those different perspectives that we'll start to even begin to understand the complexities of the challenge we're facing. So you'll place much more emphasis on engagement, for example, with a local community, you'll place much more emphasis on open problem solving and open learning rather than keeping it all behind closed doors. So these are just a few examples of where this approach leads. But as you can see, it sort of starts with a different philosophy. And that's almost the most important thing because I can reel off different tools and approaches. But at heart, it's a philosophy that instead of being, um, really confident that we can measure and manage and control the world around us to lead to solutions to these problems. And instead we adopt a mindset of humility, of openness, that emphasizes the importance of relationships, emphasizes the importance of learning, and at heart tries to, uh, be more adaptive and experimental than sort of adopting a solution.

Speaker A: Thanks for sharing that. Uh, you made a real critical point there. There really is no one size fit all solution for complex issues like homelessness like you just described. So thank you so much, that's very interesting. Um, and I know that you've worked with cities across the globe. Um, what are some of the similarities that you're seeing with challenges faced in cities around the world, not just in the US and not just in the uk, but, um, and how are you seeing innovation play while addressing those challenges?

Speaker B: Yeah, so an obvious challenge which all humans are facing is, uh, related to the climate crisis. And cities around the world are having to wrestle with adaptation and mitigation, uh, challenges, uh, in relation to climate of a different nature. If you're in New Orleans, then you've got a very different, uh, type of set of challenges than if you're in, um, I don't know, Paris. But, uh, for each of these cities, the scale of the challenge is so huge in terms of the progress we need to make on, on the climate agenda. And, uh, often the path forward is so uncertain because we're not quite sure what's going to happen or which of these, um, aspects of say, climate induced weather change are going to impact first or to what extent. So we need to, wherever we are, whichever city we're in, approach that with a sort of similar philosophy to the one I was outlining. And that's why, um, groups like C40, which connects cities on the climate agenda, uh, are so powerful because they're encouraging cities, again, not to necessarily come together and just say, here's the answer that we fixed it in our area, but just to perhaps more powerfully say what is the mindset, uh, that we should be adopting as we start to approach these challenges related to climate? So that's one whole area where there's a lot to be learned and a different way of thinking and a different approach, especially in the face of uncertainty, is particularly relevant, I think.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's interesting to see, um, despite the different culture and economic context, cities really share similar challenges. Um, and I know that a lot of our viewers tune into this podcast to learn and hear what other cities are doing m and see how they can navigate these challenges. How do you navigate the difference between replicating successful models and adapting them to local contexts?

Speaker B: So we certainly believe in the importance of learning and sharing, uh, ideas. So, uh, that is something to be encouraged. We have a lot of case studies on our website. We share very openly as much as we can, all of the work that we do to provide, I would say, inspiration rather than opportunities for imitation. Right. So, and this is how often in our lives we operate. So we, it's, it's rare that we actually look around as a human being and say, I want to copy that person. Exactly. But you might look at a, I might look at a great sports person and say, well, look, I'm never going to, never going to be a great sports person. But that inspires me to go and try maybe a different activity or to do, to try and build more activity into my life. And for me that, that makes sense because I'm not a professional sports person. But we get, we get inspired by it. I think that's what we're looking for when we share examples is how can we inspire one another to think differently, to try new things and to learn. And oftentimes that's a, that's a, uh, ah, feedback loop that just keeps on going because one area might inspire another area that then might do something that also inspires the original place, uh, when they see what they've done and they learn something from that too. So, um, yeah, that's how I would approach it. I would think of it as inspiration rather than imitation.

Speaker A: I love that. Inspiration rather than imitation. I'm going to start using that. And another thing, another mission that I know you're heavily involved in is rebuilding trust in government institutions and um, how innovation can help government strengthen their relationship with their citizens. Um, can you dive into that a little bit more?

Speaker B: Yeah, so there's, there's a very, um, direct relationship actually to, to between the trust and legitimacy within which governments are held, whether there's a city, state or federal governments, and the extent to which people believe that those governments are actually acting in their interests and achieving things which are meaningful in their lives. Right. So if you have a government that is failing to, or being seen to fail to, uh, deliver the kinds of outcomes that citizens expect, then trust and legitimacy will fall.

Speaker A: Ah.

Speaker B: And that's what we've seen around the world, by the way, over the last 10 or 20 years in very different sets of circumstances, different types of government in different parts of the world, trust has been in decline. And there's a lot of reasons for that. It's not all about, uh, government, uh, not necessarily delivering the goods. But I think part of the story is that People are disappointed often in what government achieves or fail or fails to achieve, uh, and therefore their belief that government can make a real difference in their lives or can actually support them and their families, uh, starts to go down. And the real risk with this, the real danger with this is that legitimacy and trust are not just um, factors that are the outcomes of government, but they're also the inputs to government. Because as trust and legitimacy falls, it actually becomes harder for governments to engage with the communities and citizens that they're trying to serve, uh, and bring them into the problem solving and the development of better ways of working that would lead to better outcomes. And so it sort of become, the risk is that it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy because as people start to lose trust, start to disengage, governments become weaker, they become less effective and the whole thing starts to spiral. And that's exactly the kind of uh, uh, doom loop that we want to try and avoid. Instead, if we start with uh, how we think about the relationship between governments and communities, we start by saying, you know, one of the things that governments should be doing as a matter of course is saying how can we really bring people into this conversation, not just for a uh, sort of checkbox way of doing that, but how can we really engage with citizens, how can we really engage with communities in a meaningful and deep way so that they are part of this process? Because it's only by doing that that you start to build the trust, you start to build ownership, you start to build a sense of real partnership and collaboration that can then lead to, I believe first of all better results and then get over time, increase trust and increase literacy. And rather than having the doom loop, you'll have a positive uh, reinforcing cycle. So whilst that might sound a bit, um, I don't know, optimistic, I ah, think it's, it's certainly possible to do. I think there are places that have done that and uh, and as people working in government or, or people working in the community, you know, this is what, something that we should all be striving for.

Speaker A: Yeah, you're absolutely right. Trust is essential yet fragile part of the relationship between government and citizens. So I appreciate hearing your perspective on that. Um, and earlier in this conversation, um, you mentioned the need for governments to adopt more experimental adaptive mindsets. Um, how can governments foster culture of experimentation and what are some of the barriers that you're seeing that typically prevent this from happening?

Speaker B: So the biggest barrier in government to an experimental mindset I believe is uh, the fear of failure. And when I Say that. I mean in government and in public services it is hard to fail for a variety of reasons. One reason is because politically it's hard to fail. Politicians do not welcome things not working out. They don't like to publicize that or advertise that. And it's all swept under the carpet. So people want to keep those failures, uh, behind closed doors. Another reason why it's hard to fail in the public sector is often we are dealing with people's lives. So whilst it might be frustrating if Amazon lets you down and doesn't deliver a package when you expect it to arrive, it's a lot more serious if the health system that you're relying on or the justice system that you're relying on, uh, makes an error and perhaps incarcerates you erroneously. You know, these, this is huge, huge implications for people. So uh, we are both sort of afraid of failing because of the sort of embarrassment factor, the political factor, and we're afraid of failing very legitimately because of the effect that they can have on people's lives. But it is a truth as well to say that if you want to learn anything, you're going to have to fail because if everything just happens exactly as you expect, you are learning precisely nothing. So we need to come up with ways within the public sector to make the sensible balance between of course having a duty of care and respecting the fact that politicians do need to get elected and they're not going to just clap their hands when things go wrong, but also create spaces and create cultures within our public services that have space that allow for a little bit more variation, um, in results, let's say that allow us to say, you know, we don't exactly know how this is going to work. Let's see. So we're not going to have a yardstick against which we get measured and then pass fail. We're going to be more open minded, we're going to be more adaptable and therefore we're going to be more experimental. So that's, I think what we're trying to um, get, get through. Uh, those are the barriers that we're trying to uh, challenge. There are different ways you can do that. You can create innovation, uh, labs or innovation hubs, which are actually sort of purpose built areas within a government system that are deliberately designed with this in mind. That's perfectly good idea. And a lot of places have these kinds of labs or hubs. The risk with that I'd say is it tends to put the innovation off to one side. So it's like Those people over there that are being innovative and then everybody else is just sort of getting on with their, uh, day jobs. When, of course, in reality we need innovation to be infused throughout the system, not just in one small part. And that requires more of a fundamental culture shift throughout the whole organization. Not just leaving it to a small group of people, but saying, we are a place where we welcome new ideas. We are a place where we do take calculated and managed risks. We are a place where we don't just jump on failures and critique them. We say, oh, that's really interesting as to why that happened. Let's learn something. And if you can address those kinds of cultural factors, you've got a much better chance of being innovative and creative within your public system.

Speaker A: Yeah, and you said it just there. You know, it is important to take calculated risks in order to innovate. So I love hearing your perspective on that. It almost feels like a complete shift in mindset, too. Um, and from your work across the globe, um, is there any standout innovations or, or approaches that you think governments in the US could learn for? Learn from? I know you mentioned, um, that really interesting innovation with the carbon and the trees earlier today. Um, are there any more approaches that you think would be beneficial to our audience here in the US Listening?

Speaker B: Uh, well, on the cultural dimension, then, this is an example from a country, although it's a small country, so a lot of cities are actually the same size as, uh, Finland, which is where I'm talking about. So in Finland, the whole government, uh, uh, over the years has adopted what they call humble government. And humble government is trying to culturally shift the dial in the direction I was just talking about, rather than saying, we've got the answers, we've got the solutions, we've. We know the processes are going to work and we know what's going to happen. They say completely the reverse. They say, we do not know, we do not know how to improve the education system, but what we want to be part of the conversation. And that conversation will involve teachers, that conversation will involve parents, it'll involve students, it'll involve business, it'll involve the community. And let's create a learning system to improve the school system. That's what they did in Finland, but it had to. But that came from the top. So that came from right at the top of the Finnish government. Prime Minister down them saying, we are going to adopt this humble government approach. So that shows you that not only can you sort of make this cultural shift, which sounds a bit outlandish maybe when I described it earlier, but you can do it even on the level of an entire country. So if Finland can do it for the whole of Finland, then I'm sure that a city, uh, of a few million people or just a few hundred thousand or tens of thousands of people in the United States could give it a go as well. You need a political backer, so you need your mayor on board, you need the senior leaders in the city on board. Uh, and then you can, and, but if you've got that, you can start to build a coalition of the willing, then you'll absolutely have a, have a, have a fair chance of achieving something really meaningful.

Speaker A: It's very interesting. It's fascinating to see how much we can learn from approaches in different parts of the world. And it sounds like there's a lot of untapped potential here in the US to adopt some of these innovative solutions. So thank you for sharing that. Um, you know, as you look ahead, what are some of the emerging trends or challenges in government innovation that you're most excited to see unfold?

Speaker B: So it's a bit of a cliche, but I think it's true that AI is going to just change everything. And that's, um, uh, that's already true. If we just stop the clock today with the level of AI development as it exists right now and is available for free, uh, to anybody who wants to use it, and just incorporated the uh, the applications of that level of technology into our public systems, we would already see huge levels of innovation and positive disruption in the sense that it would really allow us, enable us to radically rethink how we did a lot of processes within government and public services. And that's if we stop the clock today. The thing about AI that is so unusual and uh, I think actually would say completely unique within our lifetimes is that this technology is accelerating so quickly that we are unable to even keep up with what's possible. That forefront, that sort of cutting edge of this technology is rapidly accelerating off into the distance. And we're still trying to incorporate what it could do three, four, five years ago. You know, arguably we're still trying to incorporate the Internet or you know, digitization into many of our public services. AI is leaping ahead. I think that what that means is those governments, those public systems that are able to, if not keep up with that pace because it's just so extraordinary, but are able to be open minded enough and um, change oriented enough to embrace some of the possibilities that AI has to offer, those governments and public services will have the opportunity to really radically change and could be really astonishing levels of innovation and change happening in public services. Now, whether that happens in a city in the United States or whether I think we might be surprised that we might see it happening in, uh, a city, as I was saying earlier, in a city in Sierra Leone like Freetown or another part of the world where perhaps historically, you know, and this is a very Western, rich, Western sort of colonial mindset, historically we thought that, oh, we're going to come to that part of the world with some answers because they, they need our help. But I think I would suspect in the future, given that they don't have often in, uh, less developed countries, they do not have the legacy, uh, systems, the legacy organizations, the legacy cultures and mindsets around certain ways of doing things, certain ways of organizing, I think they'll be much, much more able to capture some of these benefits of an emerging technology like AI. So I'm excited to see where that leads. I'm excited to see, you know, parts of the world which for years and years have had to put up with people like me saying, we know what the answer is. Turning around and saying, actually, we can do this better now, and here's how. Here's you can learn from us. And I think that will be. That'll be very. That will be very great to see if that happens.

Speaker A: I completely agree with that. And AI has been a hot topic at Avenue and a lot of the cities that we work with as well. And you're completely right. It's emerging fast and quicker than we're used to, and we need to adapt quickly to it. And we are here at Avenue, which is great, and we're trying to instill that on the communities that we work with as well. And it's great to hear from other leaders like you and experts in the field to kind of reiterate what we're trying to say as well, and continue to learn, because we're learning every day and it's changing, um, the way we work and the way our communities engage with our government and our everyday practices. So it's great to hear that. I'm not surprised that that's what you're looking forward to because a lot of our guests here say the same thing. So, um, thank you so much for sharing that and thank you so much for sharing all your insights today. Today it's really fascinating to hear how innovation and reimagined governance can lead to these transformative results. And it's interesting to hear globally, um, with your expertise, um, globally, how other communities are operating and how some cities in the US can learn from what other places are doing. So for our listeners, we'll include. We'll make sure to include some links to the center of Public Impact in the show notes. Um, Adrian, is there anything else that you'd like to add before we wrap up today?

Speaker B: Well, just to say thank you for allowing me to join. It's been a great conversation. And to underline that point that you were making at the end. I think everybody, whether you're in a city in the United States, a city somewhere else, or any other type of government, have got, uh, enormous potential to learn from anywhere else in the world. And that can be overwhelming because the world's a big place and life is short and we're all busy people. But that's why, you know, if you come to our website@, uh, centerforpublicimpact.org and we spell it the British way. Apologies, uh, us friends, but we spell it center with re rather than er. Centreforpublicimpact.org you'll find lots of links to the work that we do and hopefully inspiration, uh, that might set off some new ideas, uh, for where you're working.

Speaker A: Thank you, Adrian. I look forward to continuing to follow your work. And thank you to our listeners today. Um, and thank you for listening and I hope you guys check out center for Impact, um, online, and, uh, we'll tune in for next episode. Thank you so much, Adrian.

Speaker B: Thank you.