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Our reality: innovate or perish

There’s a way to do it better – find it.

Thomas Edison

Never before has the need ‘to do it better’ been so centralto the success of governments in supporting nationaldevelopment and safeguarding citizen welfare. Theincreasing interconnectedness between global issues andthe rapid pace of change has altered the course of publicservice solutions. This necessitates a high degree ofinnovation in policy development, strategy formulation andprogramme implementation in order to address competingand cross-cutting demands.

Innovation will also be required to translate nationaldevelopment objectives into reality. The great distancebetween the proposed objective and the implementation ofsolutions can only be bridged through a process of change.Often, innovation is marked by a series of small changesthat alter ways of thinking, doing or approaching issues andproblems.

Increasingly, the expectations of citizens outweigh themeans and ability of governments to respond and actaccordingly. Given increasing restraints on governmentspending and programmes (in a post-financial-crisisenvironment), public administrations are increasingly taskedwith ‘doing more with less’. Maximising limited resourceswill be a major task of the public service, and to do so willrequire innovative approaches in all aspects of governmentactivities.

Despite these challenges, there are also great opportunitiesfor improving how governments operate. New forms ofpartnerships with civil society and private firms offer widepossibilities for productive collaboration. Rapid changes ininformation and communication technologies (ICTs) providenew opportunities for gains in both efficiency andeffectiveness. Innovations in management practices alsohave the potential for increasing the performance of publicservice organisations. These and other advances in policyideas, governance concepts and technologicaldevelopments offer great opportunities for governments.

The perilous task of innovation

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, moreperilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success thanto take the lead in the introduction of a new order ofthings.

Niccolò Machiavelli

While there are many opportunities to innovate, publicservices face formidable pressures that can make innovationespecially challenging. The process of transforming an ideafor improvement into reality is a labour-intensive endeavourthat is fraught with challenges and setbacks.

One of the major challenges of innovation is getting aroundthe resistance to change. Established bureaucracies, setprocesses and policies, and often, the mindsets ofmanagement and staff have a negative impact upon thefostering and implementation of new ideas. To foster aninnovative change environment, these barriers must beaddressed to form a significant part of the solution.

Innovation is a fragile and unpredictable process with highrates of failure. Undertaking new ideas is a high-riskendeavour, and the fear of failure presents a significantbarrier to the implementation of new approaches. It isunfortunate that in the public service environment, the painof failure often outweighs the benefit of success. Withinthis environment, the status quo is often viewed as thesafer choice as the incentive to innovate is not readilyevident.

In light of these systemic challenges, special effort is neededto actively advocate for innovation in the public service, andto encourage the fostering of innovative changeenvironments. Special attention is needed to advocate andendorse innovation as an essential element of public serviceoperations.

Enabling a culture for innovation

The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not theturbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic.

Peter Drucker

Advocating for public service innovationThe CAPAM International Innovations Award

David Waung

The spark for a new idea can easily be extinguished beforeit has a chance to shine as a potential solution to pressingconcerns. While not all new ideas will evolve into successfulsolutions, the organisation needs to encourage innovativethinking, and have structures and processes in place toassess innovations and further those ones with goodpotential. This culture of innovation is what distinguishesorganisations that continue to grow and flourish from thosethat stagnate and decline.

Cultivating a culture for innovation requires a number ofkey ingredients:

• To recognise that there are always opportunities forimprovement and to be constantly on the lookout fornew ideas and new ways of doing things.

• To learn from the successes and failures of others,so that new ideas can be adapted to the needs of theorganisation.

• To accept that failures are an integral part ofinnovations, and to have processes in place to identify,control and manage risks to acceptable levels.

• To provide a safe space for experimentation,whether these are as limited pilot projects or assimulations. The lessons learned can inform on decisionsto expand or terminate the idea at hand.

• To open lines of communication within theorganisation and within the community of stakeholders.Such communications share the results ofexperimentation, open up sources for new ideas andbuild the culture of innovation.

• To share lessons learned from failures as theselessons will be the building blocks for new innovations.

• To celebrate successes and recognise contributionsin order to inspire others to take up the arduous task oftransforming new ideas into viable results.

The CAPAM International Innovations Award

The objective of the Commonwealth Association for PublicAdministration and Management (CAPAM) InternationalInnovations Award is to help public service organisationscultivate the necessary culture for innovation. It celebratesthe spirit of innovation in the public service by recognisingthose who have made significant contributions toimproving governance and services in the public sector. Inso doing, the award hopes to inspire and encourageinnovators to improve public service governance, as well asthe quality of life of citizens, communities and nations.

By documenting each innovation as a ‘case study’, theaward also creates a rich knowledge base from whichorganisations can learn about new concepts, the challengesof transforming them into results, and to generate newideas to adapt similar approaches to specific individual

needs. More importantly, the award builds a network ofsenior executives that can provide mutual support andshare experiences in their efforts to improve the efficiencyand effectiveness of public service operations.

Created in 1998, the award has received over 1,000submissions from more than 25 countries across theCommonwealth. The very difficult task of reviewing thesubmissions and selecting the winners is the responsibilityof an international panel of jurors. Each award’s juryincludes participation from senior levels of government,experts in public service innovation and other esteemedprofessionals.

As indicated by following list of Gold Medal Winners overthe past seven cycles, the diversity of topics and ideassubmitted is breathtaking. This speaks to the range ofservices that the public service is engaged in, as well as tothe vibrant innovative spirit of public servants from acrossthe Commonwealth.

2010: Mission Convergence, Government of Delhi1

Mission Convergence is an innovative approach thatrepresents a paradigm shift in governance. It takes concretesteps towards holistic human development with povertyalleviation and citizen’s empowerment in general, andwomen in particular, as core objectives. This policy decisionaltered the previously fragmented and vertical architectureby providing an integrated platform for convergence ofnine departments that provide welfare services.

The Mission changed the way Delhi’s governmentacknowledged urban poverty. Traditionally, income hasbeen used to measure poverty, and there have beensignificant inclusion and exclusion errors. A new criterion ofusing proxy indicators of income was developed by theMission in close partnership with civil society and academicinstitutions. The Mission also fostered effective communityparticipation in governance by creating a bottom-upimplementation structure that currently engages more than100 community-based organisations. These centres havenow enabled government to reach the doorsteps of thevulnerable.

2008: Traveller’s Road Information Portal(TRIP), Government of Ontario, Canada

Ontario’s provincial roads are safer thanks to the roadinformation system developed for travellers. This system,deployed with the support of citizen volunteers andcommunity groups, places emphasis on service delivery andcustomer satisfaction by providing bilingual road conditioninformation, 24/7/365 through its website and telephonehotline.

Ontario has 16,520 kilometres of provincial highways andis the gateway to Canada’s international trade. Goodsworth C$1.2 trillion are transported on this network ofhighways. There are approximately 8.7 million drivers and

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85,000 commercial carriers in the province of Ontario. Theidea for a portal originated when a customer pointed outhis difficulty in getting easy access to accurate andconsistent information on highway conditions. Millions ofdrivers need this information and one of the ministry’sstrategic goals was to improve customer services. Thisresulted in a project that was initiated for improving roadinformation services. The portal’s hotline was also anopportunity to rationalise telephone infrastructure and usecutting-edge voice recognition and computer technologiesfor improved equipment and staff operation efficienciesand cost savings.

2006: eBario – access to ICTs in rural Malaysia

The eBario project demonstrated a people-centredapproach in providing ICTs to an isolated rural communityin Bario, Malaysia. By engaging the community prior, duringand after the deployment of ICTs, Bario now has access totelephone and the internet, and is applying ICTs to enhanceits livelihood.

The eBario pilot project was conceived as a research projectby Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS). By applying apeople-centred/participatory approach, the project aimed todeploy ICTs to empower and train the Bario community toapply ICTs in improving their livelihood. Participants in thisproject include a multidisciplinary research team, the Bariocommunity, the government, private industries and schools.

2004: MARVIN community informationsoftware, Australia

MARVIN (Messaging Architecture for the Retrieval ofVersatile Information and News) is a character-basedsoftware platform created in partnership with industry andcommunity. MARVIN allows inexpensive, flexible andrelevant health, education and governance resources to becreated with the community, by the community and for thecommunity.

MARVIN represents one of the most fundamental shifts inthe way learning and knowledge is shared between culturesand language groups – especially in interactions betweengovernments and the people they serve. MARVIN will helpgovernments everywhere to engage in a real andcommitted way with citizen groups made up of variouscultural, linguistic and geo-ethnic subsets. This is a necessityif global trends towards best-practice governance are totake effect. After all, how can governments claim they arecommitted to engaging their citizens when the verylanguage and culture used to convey this message isforeign and without contextual substance?

2002: Community policing in Trichy City, Tamil Nadu

Innovative community policing initiatives effectively met thechallenges of gang wars and terrorism in fragmented TrichyCity, Tamil Nadu, India. Working from a status of mutual

distrust, ‘People-friendly Police’ has evolved through a free-flow of information, accountability and an ethical image.Partnerships between citizens, bureaucracy, electedrepresentatives, non-governmental organisations (NGOs)and philanthropists have greatly improved the community’squality of life.

2002: Connecting and clustering ministerialteams, Ontario

Ontario engaged the moto ‘making governments workbetter’ by creating new ways of connecting and breakingdown barriers between traditional hierarchical ministrystructures. Clusters of ministries are co-ordinating policy andplanning. A virtual government-wide network has beencreated to connect the inspection, investigation andenforcement function across ministries. Internal businesssupport services are delivered more efficiently across theorganisation through enterprise-wide models. Ontario isconnecting the delivery of routine public services throughmultiple channels to meet customer needs.

2000: Poverty reduction by state andcommunity, Kerala (Kudumbashree)

The Community Development Society of Malappuram inKerala, India, fights against the multiple manifestations ofpoverty through people’s participation and empowerment.The story of the largest women’s NGO in Asia and itsprogrammes, the Community-Based Nutrition Programmeand Poverty Alleviation Project, reveals how the empoweredwomen have brought about change to their dismally poorliving conditions.

1998: Education Guarantee Scheme, MadhyaPradesh (Rajiv Gandhi Shiksha Mission)

This initiative put into operation a 90-day trained schoolingprogramme for children aged 6–14 years in tribal areas withno schooling facilities. A trained teacher with teachingmaterials and other tools was allotted a local space forconducting teaching and learning. Following the 90 days,schoolchildren would be enrolled in an established ‘school’for the project. Over 500,000 children were successfullyenrolled in school programmes, and the project became amodel to implement schools in remote communities inIndia.

1998: Ontario delivers – improving quality ofpublic service

In 1995, Ontario faced the challenges many otherjurisdictions were dealing with, such as shrinking resourcescoupled with increasing customer demands. As a result, thegovernment proposed an agenda to reduce red tape,provide better service to the public, restore customerconfidence and get the economy out of a recession bycreating new ways to deliver quality customer service. By

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being customer-centred, changing the ideology ofgovernment from ‘inside-out’ to ‘outside-in’, andharnessing technology to increase efficiencies ingovernment, costs have been reduced, while meeting theexpectations and demands of an increasinglytechnologically sophisticated public.

Endnote

1 Government of National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi.

David Waung is Executive Director and CEO of theCommonwealth Association for PublicAdministration and Management (CAPAM). Davidjoined CAPAM in early 2008, bringing over 30 yearsof experience in the Canadian public service. Mostrecently, David was the Vice-President and Registrarat the Canada School of Public Service. His extensivepublic service background includes diverseexperience in research and engineering, policydevelopment and strategic planning, internationalpolicy and management leadership, and curriculumdevelopment. David is trained as an engineer, has aMasters from the University of Toronto and an MBAfrom the University of Ottawa.