Some recent developments and articles of interest:

• Last week Vivek Kundra, former CIO for the US Federal Government, was in Canberra and spoke about technology and public sector innovation. Pia Waugh writes about the event, including a short interview she undertook with Vivek
• In the UK, the 2012 Reform Scorecard found that reforms combined with cuts in public expenditure can improve public services. “In services where the budgets are ringfenced quality is declining: the absence of sufficient financial pressure means that reform has stalled. People will call for more money, but pouring more money back into services does little to drive innovation and reform. In stark contrast, public service leaders across the country are using the cuts as a real catalyst for improving services.”¹
• The Australian Government Information Management Office has finalised the Cloud Computing Better Practice Guides
• The public sector is often thought of as risk averse, but if that is true then should the public sector actually be more innovative? Tim Kastelle discusses how innovation can be less risky than not innovating
• John Steen considers the balance between innovative teams and teams of innovators. “The best predictors of radicalness and novelty was the presence of individual innovators. However, the overall level of innovation was closely linked to group processes that are related to execution such as commitment to objectives, participation and task orientation to ‘get the job done’. Putting together a team of innovators is important but unless this is backed up with an execution discipline, the results are less likely to appear.”²

As always, please feel free to identify any other developments or articles of interest in the comments below.