Connecting Government with an Innovation Hub

Australia is a multi-faceted, multicultural society, and this diversity is reflected in our workforce.

Diversity in the ACT Public Service:
*16.8% culturally & linguistically diverse
*17.8% aged 29 or younger
*50.2% aged 30-49
*32% aged over 50
*64.8% female
*35.2% male

People are our most valuable asset. Tech is only there as an enabler.

The ACT Public Service has around 20,000 employees (approx 10% of the total ACT labour force), and almost 47% of the ACT Government's budget was spent on staffing in 2013-14.

Other states: population (ABS Sept 2014) and Public Service Numbers (PS - state annual reports 2014)
NSW: population 7,544,500 PS 327,268 (4.3%)
QLD: population 4,740,900 PS 196,191 (4.1%)
WA: population 2,589,100 PS 137,607 (5.3%)
SA: population 1,688,700 PS 103,087 (6.1%)
VIC: population 5,866,300 PS 216,685 (3.7%)
TAS: population 515,000 PS 28,310 (5.5%)
NT: population 246,300 PS 19,942 (8.1%)
ACT: population 387,100 PS 23,137 (6.0%)

This is a significant investment, and it is absolutely vital that we work to empower and connect this valuable resource so that they can reach their fullest potential.

The story of the Little Innovation Hub That Could.

- Do you have little to no money to do things?

This story shows how you can do things with very little funding, and using tools and resources you already have.

It shines a light on how you can harness the power of your people to do great things by connect them with tech so they can connect with each other.

The world has changed and so too has the workforce.

Public services are striving to build digital cities and adapt to changing socio-economic conditions.

No money to do anything.

Public servants are trying to reconcile between their digitally enabled personal lives and digitally lagging work environments.

Dealing with the issue of transformational change through institutional mechanisms such as structural and legislative reform only takes us part of the way. The other part requires us to deal with changing 'culture' and that needs something much more dynamic and organic.

How do you empower and connect your staff when you have no money, entrenched ways of doing business, including silos.

You do it by bringing people together.

The Little Innovation Hub was built by a skunk work public service team, on a budget of under $10,000.

Built as a modest Microsoft SharePoint platform, MS SharePoint 2007, it began as a pilot in one division in 2012.

No moderation.

Open access to all public servants.

Not impeded by physical location.

To date, over 200 ideas and over 1,000 comments have been added to the site.

Who would have thought that dogs could be at work? Well, the Little Innovation Hub thought it could.

- many barriers to overcome
- robust processes were put in place to address concerns
- dogs appeared at work in 2013

But these were the ideas of one Division. The Hub could achieve bigger things. It was time to expand.

How was this to be achieved?

What was needed was a crowd to activate the Hub on a large scale, and so was born the Innovation Community of Practice.

Started in August 2013 with 60-70 representatives from all 9 Directorates and a couple of government agencies, they then needed a challenge to focus on.

One was created: the Whole-of-Government Hot Topic Challenge. A challenge that asked the entire public service to collaborate on one critical issue.

The Hot Topic was: 'How can we make information more accessible across Government and how could standardised business processes help us to do this?'

Power was handed over to the Innovation Community of Practice to champion the Challenge in anyway they saw fit. No rules, no restrictions, no red-tape.

What they did:
* spoke to people at the local cafeteria
* handed out muffins in exchange for comments
* held world cafes at the Canberra Hospital
* Used the Hub to hold live online meet-ups with their Director-General (a practice that is still occurring today)
* competitive spirit was encouraged by publishing scorecards highlighting which directorates were leading and lagging in their participation.

Results:
*Close to 2,300 unique viewers (approx 14,500 employees out of our total workforce of approx 23,000 were able to access the Innovation Hub during the Hot Topic Challenge)
* 16% participation rate
* 20,000 clicks through to the rest of the Innovation Hub site
* blew industry click-through rates out of the water by 100%
* close to 500 ideas were submitted
* no downtime on the site
* no crashes or freezes on the site
* experienced unprecedented engagement by public servants across the entire Service

Three major ideas have now been pursued further:
* a WhoG social intranet
* a One Government citizen portal (iConnect)
* an integrated WhoG electronic records management system

And that is the story of the Little Innovation Hub That Could.

The connections that happen with a little bit of tech and a lot of passion.

Now, if you are thinking of the next big thing, think about connecting your people not just your technology. People solve problems, tech just helps.

You don't necessarily need to spend millions or even hundreds of thousands of dollars as the Little Innovation Hub has shown us. You just need a small group of dedicated people.

You need to find ways to empower and trust your people
- connect passionate people
- hand over control
- give people freedom to collaborate
- create a self-sustaining crowd and use the power of the crowd
- create some competition
- be inventive, creative and courageous in trying new things

The pace of change is going to only get faster into the future. Start early, start now, with whatever tools you have, and make a habit of it so that you are prepared for the future. What you don't do now, will only become a bigger problem later.

So, if you are going to go away and build or buy a system to connect your people, ask yourself, why do you need it? How are you going to activate the tech? Who is it for? How will you make people care? How are you going to support them to allow them to continue to care?

When you are able to answer these questions, you'll have the real recipe to a Connected Government.

Ms. Oakley Kwon
INNOVATION MANAGER
(Government Information, Innovation and Planning Office - GIIPO) ACT Government

Email: oakley.kwon@act.gov.au
Phone: +61 2 6205 0821