Join us at the Creative Bureaucracy Festival 2021
Register for free!Speakers 2021
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NEWS & UPDATES
Programme Preview: FINANCE AND RESOURCING
12.09.2021
What kind of bureaucratic infrastructure do we need for the 21st century? How can we create an empowering set of practices, resources and structures which together provide the best possible conditions for the imagination at all scales of society? Finance and resourcing don’t sound like especially ‘creative’ topics, but they are often the key to either halting…
Programme Preview: TECHNOLOGY AND DATA
12.09.2021
“Digitalising a broken process gets you a digitised, broken process.” – New America. As governments increasingly automate their work and the digital possibilities around us proliferate, it’s Creative Bureaucrats and their allies who are ensuring we get the ‘digitalisation’ process right. From AI and data ethics through service design standards and digital public space stewardship, they’re…
Programme Preview: Smart City Governance
12.09.2021
Smart City and Governance Digitization is both a challenge and an opportunity for cities around the world. Furthermore, the combination of digitization and urban development is the basis for the emergence of smart cities. But smart cities are much more than just a collection of intelligent electricity systems and autonomously driving cars. A city, at…
“Hauptstadt Machen”
07.09.2021
Working in the public service of the state of Berlin means working for the common good and having a truly creative and meaningful job. Approximately 128,000 people work in Berlin’s public authorities every day to ensure that things are safe, social and fair in the city, that our children are well educated, that streets, parks…
Programme Preview: PARTICIPATION AND ENGAGEMENT
06.09.2021
Civic participation is at the heart of democracy. Yet so often citizens aren’t involved at all in their political system or policymaking processes. Creative Bureaucrats and their allies listen to individuals and their communities and find ways to actively involve them in the decisions that will affect their futures, providing agency and building trust along the…
Programme Preview: EDUCATION and EMPLOYMENT
06.09.2021
Quality education and meaningful employment are two of the most powerful tools for lifting socially excluded individuals into society and for building bonds between citizens. In our new world of digital technologies, climate crises, and different social challenges to the past – What jobs and skills do we need? And what kind of education should we…
Programme preview: EQUALITY AND EQUITY
06.09.2021
Many might consider the world around us to be a neutral canvas. But every design choice, conscious or otherwise, embeds certain perspectives and bias – in our physical and digital infrastructures, products and services, and far beyond. Creative Bureaucrats are striving towards a more equitable world by questioning such assumptions, surfacing unheard voices, and inviting systemic…
Programme Preview: Health and Wellbeing
31.08.2021
What kind of lives are we really aspiring to? Creative Bureaucrats think twice when designing success metrics. They look beyond easy tested-and-tried approaches and seek out the root causes of social challenges, defining problems and implementing solutions with holistic understandings of health and wellbeing that span the physical to the psychological, social and spiritual.
Programme Preview: Climate And Sustainability
31.08.2021
The newly released IPCC report makes the state of the climate crisis unambiguously clear. Tackling this systemic threat to our planet and human rights requires a complete rewiring – not just of individual behaviour but of our underlying economic models, policy commitments, legal and regulatory frameworks, and political leadership. Creative Bureaucrats are leading the way.
Programme Preview: Public Infrastructure and Space
24.08.2021
Public infrastructures and spaces are the foundation of our collective lives. Both in the physical realm and also, crucially, the ever-growing digital sphere. Designing them right is crucial for our health and well-being, as well as to addressing challenges of power balances, sustainability and trust. What set of practices, structures and resources would provide the…
Programme Preview: Organisational Culture and Governance
23.08.2021
We’ve all experienced it: Too much bureaucracy kills creativity and innovation. But structures and processes aren’t stifling by default. Often they’re just not designed right. At Creative Bureaucracy we explore how leading public administrations are designing enabling cultures and governance structures.
Programme Preview: Collaboration and Communication
20.08.2021
Creative Bureaucrats don’t think in silos or subject fields, nor are they limited to working within sectors. They build bridges wherever needed to mobilise different actors behind common missions. Making this work means cutting the jargon: no ‘insider talk’ – rather simple, empathetic straight-talking and an eye for good design that’s accessible for all.
Chancellor Candidates at the Festival!
06.08.2021
This week we have a very special highlight for you. Only a couple of days before the 2021 German federal election, the top candidates of the country’s major parties, Annalena Baerbock (Grüne), Armin Laschet (CDU) and Olaf Scholz (SPD), will present their ideas for creative innovations for the German bureaucracy at the Festival And that’s…
Programme Calendar Now Online!
04.08.2021
Become part of the Creative Bureaucracy Festival 2021 For the fourth time, the Creative Bureaucracy Festival 2021 will gather public sector innovators from all levels and showcase outstanding examples of imaginative bureaucracy from around the world. With 400 speakers and 150 programme items, the programme is packed with highlights. This year, the festival will…
Register Now!
30.07.2021
Here we go! We are calling you and all creative minds to join us at the largest festival for public sector innovation from 13-17 September 2021. Let’s shape and create the future of bureaucracies together. We are looking forward to five vibrant festival days full of ideas and impulses. Free registrations are open now! After…
Audrey Tang Interview
29.07.2021
We had the pleasure of talking to Taiwan’s Digital Minister Audrey Tang and are absolutely delighted that she will be part of the Creative Bureaucracy Festival 2021, discussing the country’s path towards digital democracy and the creative bureaucrats behind it. The full interview will be streamed at the Festival, 13 -17 September. You can register here.…
Livable Cities & Superblocks
23.06.2021
What makes a Livable City? Local solutions for global challenges RISE Cities is a BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt programme created to advance global knowledge of resilient, intelligent, sustainable, and equitable cities by strengthening local ecosystems and fostering citizen-centred solutions. It aims to establish a platform that engages and connects politicians, bureaucrats, scientists, urbanists, architects, the business community,…
Reading Recommendation
20.06.2021
The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths (2018) by Mariana Mazzucato can almost be considered a classic already. She decisively challenges the libertarian idea that innovation is the private sector’s business, and the state’s role is to simply get out of the way. In failing to recognise government’s role in game-changing innovation we weaken the…
“One cannot not communicate”
18.06.2021
“One cannot not communicate” is one of the axioms once put forward by Paul Watzlawick. Some might say there is too little communication between citizens and bureaucracies. However, we believe the more accurate issue here is the lack of effective communication between them. The relationship between these groups, and especially the way they communicate, has…
Reading Recommendation
06.06.2021
Growing Government Innovation Labs: An Insider’s Guide (2017) by the United Nations Development Programme has been published a few years back already and still is a valuable manual on better understanding what makes innovation labs successful (and what doesn’t). It particularly looks at the still young republics of Armenia, Georgia, Macedonia and Moldova and tells the…
From Gentrification to GentLefication
06.06.2021
Inclusion and valuing everyone’s lives equally is the aim for many of us in our cities. However, in many cases this is far from the current reality. Gentrification has an infamous reputation as one of the culprits and dynamics behind this. But have you ever thought of looking at gentrification from another angle? As ‘Thinking…
Procurement is glamorous! | Learning from failure
19.05.2021
Dear Creative Bureaucrat, We have identified a number of must-have topics for the Creative Bureaucracy Festival 2021 – one of them is procurement! It is a hidden engine for innovative change, and can even be glamorous. The topic keeps coming up in conversations and there are a growing number of fascinating initiatives. Public procurement is…
Open Call for Participation | New Content Library | Paperclip Day
07.05.2021
Dear Creative Bureaucrat, so here we are again: At that point in the year when the festival programme is starting to materialise. Isn’t this exciting?! As a festival we consider ourself a platform – for and from creative bureaucrats and their allies. Thus, the co-creative character, i.e. the opportunity for essentially everybody to contribute to…
On Creative Bureaucracy: An Interview with Horizons Publics (in french language)
01.11.2020
Charles Landry interviewed by Stéphanie Chemla on the concept and the potential of Creative Bureaucracy
Why does Creative Bureaucracy matter?
21.08.2020
4 Creative Bureaucrats from 4 different countries share their perspective
A Call to All Innovators in the Public Sector
10.08.2020
Innovation on display: A virtual gallery of great ideas
In a conversation with… Christian Bason.
07.08.2020
For eight years, Christian Bason ran MindLab, the Danish government’s innovation agency. In an interview, the CEO of the Danish Design Centre tells us about his “opportunity to kick ass” as a public sector innovator, the power of design and human-centricity to transform government, and about storytelling as a way to bring meaning to people’s…
Open Call to the Cultural and Creative Industries
10.07.2020
We’re looking for initiatives from the cultural and creative industries that seek to make bureaucracy better.
Global Survey on Creativity in Government 2020
10.04.2020
How creative are government organizations across the world? We’re calling on all government employees to share their experiences and ideas.