One Size Doesn’t Fit All: How Government Approaches Innovation
Source: GovTech |Zack Quaintance | July/August 2021
State and local government innovation offices are neither ubiquitous nor standardized. GT talked to veterans of four such agencies to get insight on best practices, lessons learned and what’s ahead.
As recently as a decade ago, it would have been rare — if not entirely unheard of — to find a state or local government in the U.S. that had a robust office dedicated solely to innovation work. While such innovation offices are a bit more common now, they’re still far from wholly standard, and as a result there is quite a bit of variance between those that do exist.
In fact, nearly all of the government innovation offices in the country have a singular identity, with unique qualities that range from how each one was founded, to the way the offices choose their projects, to where they are housed within city hall or within the state government infrastructure. Part of this is inherent to the work; there is no standardized blueprint for discovering new ways to solve old challenges.
As such, Government Technology recently set out to speak with the leaders of several of these government innovation programs, aiming to get a read on where they’ve been, where they are now and where they are headed in the years to come. What emerged was a mosaic of interesting ideas, of ways to function and deep commitments to finding new ways to serve stakeholders and communities.
What It Takes to Innovate: Best practices offered by veterans of government innovation.
1. How you build is just as important as what you build.
2. Identify stakeholders in advance.
3. Build trust with staff who may fear new practices might cost them their job.
4. Don’t be afraid to start small. Not every project needs to be gigantic, sweeping and grandiose.
5. Benchmark where your jurisdiction stands compared to others and set clear goals.
6. Innovation spawns more innovation, so communicating about innovation activities is a must.
7. Executive sponsorship is critical to sustained support.
8. Commit to transparent review of successes and failures.