Stay ConnectedFrom the Wiki for local government innovation, the Govlaunch podcast shares the stories of local government innovators and their efforts to build better governments. Through conversations with cities and towns around the world, each episode explores creative solutions to the challenges communities face, and what local governments can learn from each other’s successes and failures.
Visit govlaunch.com for more stories and examples of local government innovation.
Copyright: © 2021 Govlaunch Inc.
In this short series, we’re talking all about Citizen Engagement. I’ll be highlighting some of the innovators in local government leveraging available tools to better engage with the communities they serve.
Our goal is to expose more local governments to the tools available to help by efficiently providing useful information about some of the leading products out there. We’d love it if you could spend less time finding and researching products and hopefully get to launching your digital efforts to engage with your residents more quickly. Stay tuned for more episodes on leading citizen engagement tools and the innovators in local government putting their products to use. Read the Guide.
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Featured government: Cheshire West and Chester Borough Council, UK
Government Guests:
Beverly Wilson, Insight and Intelligence Manager
Anna Miller, Research Team Manager
Featured Maker: Bang the Table
Maker Guest: Jonathan Bradley
Visit govlaunch.com for more stories and examples of local government innovation.
Olivia from our team chats with the City of San José . They were the first city in the U.S. to pledge to close the digital divide by establishing the Digital Inclusion Partnership, an ambitious cross-sector fund with the goal of ensuring every single resident has a working device and is connected to reliable internet. Read More.
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Featured government: City of San José, CA
Episode guest: Jordan Sun, CIO
Visit govlaunch.com for more stories and examples of local government innovation.
In this podcast we have a frank discussion with Scott Knebel, City Planner for Derby, Kansas and Assistant City Planner, Everett Haynes, about the roadblocks to innovation in small local governments, something which should resonate with governments of all sizes. Read More.
More info:
Featured government: City of Derby, Kansas
Episode guests:
Scott Knebel, City Planner
Everett Haynes, Assistant City Planner
Visit govlaunch.com for more stories and examples of local government innovation.
In this interview with Clayton Wehner, Marketing Strategy and Innovation for the City of Adelaide, we'll dive more into some recent projects from using Minecraft to engage with the community to working closely with a local startup to co-create an AI chatbot. We also talk about how Adelaide approaches innovation and perhaps more importantly, how they market themselves as innovators and how your city, regardless of size, can too!
More info:
Featured government: Adelaide, South Australia
Episode guests: Clayton Wehner, Marketing Strategy and Innovation
Visit govlaunch.com for more stories and examples of local government innovation.
Rebecca Woodbury, Director of Digital Service & Open Government for the City of San Rafael, CA, and Govlaunch dive into the city's progressive department focused on modernizing local government. Rebecca provides insights into the methodology around product management, making the end-user experience their top priority, and how San Rafael is working towards a more efficient, more digital, delivery of services. Read more.
More info:
Featured government: San Rafael, CA
Episode guests: Rebecca Woodbury, Former Director of Digital Service & Open Government
Visit govlaunch.com for more stories and examples of local government innovation.
In a prior episode, I spoke with Clark County, Nevada about their digital transformation underway. Clark County is home to over 2 million people, so it may be easy for smaller local governments to dismiss their efforts, assuming ample resources and staff have enabled them to be successful.
We now aim to bring hope to the small to medium-sized cities, councils, and towns who have overcome resource constraints to deliver superior digital services to the communities they serve.
Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with the City of Unley in South Australia to talk about their “do more with less” approach. We’ll chat about their work to deliver a new website in addition to other results-packed digital initiatives.
More info:
Featured government: City of Unley, South Australia
Episode guests:
Stephen Yates, Spatial and Business Intelligence Analyst
Alex Keay, Digital Transformation Lead
Visit govlaunch.com for more stories and examples of local government innovation.
Michael Healy joins Olivia from Govlaunch to talk about Christchurch’s innovative SmartView platform, which is a web based app they have developed that pulls together data from a range of public and private organisations and displays it in a way that makes information easy for locals and visitors to access.
More info:
Featured government: Christchurch, NZ
Episode guest: Michael Healy, Smart Cities Programme Manager at Christchurch City Council
Visit govlaunch.com for more stories and examples of local government innovation.
As we work with our community of local governments to build the largest free innovation resource, we love to see projects that inspire innovation in other local governments. Today, I chat with Michael Baskin who leads innovation for Montgomery County, Maryland about how they’re building what he calls a more human government.
Like Govlaunch, Michael is a believer in copying what works from others. In this episode, we’re taking a closer look at some of Montgomery County’s projects that have been inspired by others, proving that some great innovation can happen when leveraging resources already available. The best part? Nobody wasted time reinventing the wheel.
More info:
Featured government: Montgomery County, MD
Episode guests: Michael Baskin, CIO
Visit govlaunch.com for more stories and examples of local government innovation.
Like every other local government, Richmond, Virginia has contracts with loads of vendors. And while we can agree that more than enough due diligence occurs as a part of the procurement process, it’s surprising how little ongoing review or vendor management is done once that contract is signed. As a result, local governments large and small are wasting an enormous amount of money on everything from unused features or duplicate tools to mismanaged licenses.
The City of Richmond’s Citizen Service & Response team aims to change this.
Pete Breil, Director of Citizen Services and Product Manager, Tina Haney join me today to talk about the work underway in Richmond to revolutionize their 311 service, a lot of which was done by the city itself - not the vendor.
So let’s see what the team in Richmond is up to and hopefully learn how your local government can use some of their strategies for more efficient and cost effective vendor engagement.
More info:
Featured government: Richmond, VA
Episode guests: Pete Breil, Director of Citizen Services: Tina Haney, Product Manager
Visit govlaunch.com for more stories and examples of local government innovation.
At Govlaunch, we focus a lot on the culture of innovation and how this concept needs to be embraced by all levels of government and across departments in order to drive any real change. We appreciate the work of public sector innovation teams across the world, but have a hard time understanding how systemic innovation can blossom across an organization if left to a single department.
This interview dives more into a recent post by Saad Bashir on what is holding innovation back in the public sector and how Seattle is approaching internal team building and encouraging innovation from the ground up with results-oriented leadership (and some common sense).
More info:
Featured government: Seattle, WA
Episode guests: Saad Bashir, Chief Technology Officer
Visit govlaunch.com for more stories and examples of local government innovation.
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