I am delighted to advise that we have now achieved endorsement from the Secretaries Board to our final report on how to implement action to make our public service more innovative. It has been a truly collaborative journey working closely with 7 other agencies to highlight the actions the leadership, organisations and officers can take to transform the APS.
While we await more formal releases, let me give you a preview of what we put forward. The Project Committee recommended:
- innovation be more explicit in the strategy of Australian Public Sector Agencies. This means increased use of fore-sighting capabilities, online tools such as networks and toolkits, and explicit articulation of the role of innovation in achieving agency goals;
- more openness of information to support innovation within Government. Agencies are encouraged to actively use online challenge platforms and knowledge markets and to broaden stakeholder engagement in the development of policy and sharing of data holdings;
- leadership should engender acceptance of, and permission for, an innovative culture. For example, agencies could include innovation as part of SES performance agreements and within agency performance systems;
- the Innovation Toolkit be used when solving problems, be they policy or delivery of policy;
- establishment of an APS Design Centre be considered, using new skills and techniques to engage with and respond to wicked problems and cross cutting issues; and
- innovation awards and competitions be established to promote and celebrate the benefits of innovation.
Now the work of transformation begins.
We want to build innovation as a core capability in the APS. It will take time to change the culture but I am heartened by the positive response from my fellow Committee members and the Secretaries Board.
All departments need to be engaged and we at DIISR are working with a range of other departments across Australia. Recently we spoke to all states and territories about what each is doing. We will be showcasing some initial examples on our Innovation Showcase, with more planned. We will keep you posted.
We will be posting more material soon including the Innovation Toolkit modules, and the APS Innovation Action Plan.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank those who have been reading and contributing to the project, through this blog, or through other meetings and discussions. Your insights helped shape our thinking and we will need your ongoing input to succeed.
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Will the Secretaries Board, the innovation department or some other Commonwealth body be doing a follow-up audit, say, in twelve months time, to see the progress of agencies in moving forward on the recommendations as normal day-to-day business throughout their structures?
I am concerned with the whole APS initiative on innovation trundling forward for over a year and a half now that you’d be hard pressed to see any transformation in most places. At this rate, governments will change faster than APS systems…
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Hi Bill. The members of the APS200 PSI Project Committee shared your concerns about building and sustaining change across the APS. To address this, they put recommended a range of measures they felt would be needed for real action. These measures included:
• the development of an annual report to the Secretaries Board to show progress against the recommendations,
• an in-depth examination in 2015 of innovation in the APS, reporting on progress and identifying gaps,
• the development of innovation metrics to identify and support progress against outcomes,
• establishing awards to recognise and share innovative achievements across agencies ; and
• embedding innovation into SES performance agreements.
The APS Innovation Action Plan, to be released soon, also commits the APS to implementing the public sector innovation agenda. Matthew
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I’m wondering where the best place to go for these updates is? Especially the annual reports, or perhaps even more significantly the data collected for these reports?
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Hi David – updates on our work are generally through our blog posts. We hope to provide some news about the inaugural annual report to the Secretaries Board in the near future. Public servants can also sign up to our Innovation Network mailing list (email us at psi at innovation.gov.au). Is there specific data you are interested in? You may want to refer to the Australian Innovation System report, which looks at the broader Australian innovation system (so not just the public sector), its performance, metrics and baseline indicators.
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As a Designer in the Service Design space, I welcome moves by APS in recognition of the need for external assistance in ‘insight’ and hope that a ‘Design Centre’ actually engages Designers in bringing innovation with meaning to public service.
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