The Engaging Bureaucracy: Recipes to Improve Lives

Talk 1: An Unexpected Lever to Reduce Political Corruption

When trying to solve deep-rooted systemic challenges, would you ever think to focus on making business licenses more transparent? If not, you should think again – open-source platform Visor Urbano is doing just that!

A cooperation project between Bloomberg Philanthropies and the State of Jalisco, Mexico, the platform has so far been replicated across 25 cities. It aims to help governments to digitise and manage licensing procedures while reducing the digital divide, political corruption, and promoting regional socio-economic development.

In this session, the Visor Urbano team joins us all the way from Guadalajara to share their journey to speeding up long, complex, and extensive bureaucratic procedures, while combating high level of corruption and favoritism – surely not an easy ride! Key achievements include reducing bribery requests from municipal agents by at least 74%, and reducing the time required to permits from an average of one month to just a few days.

Speakers:

David Bates, Visor Urbano
Daniela Ramírez Cano, Visor Urbano
Christian Correa Castañeda, Visor Urbano

Talk 2: Student Life and a Good Place to Live? The Two Can Go Together!

How do you manage the balancing act between competing interests when it comes to updating student housing to meet the demands of modern living? Twelve student unions in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia offer around 40,000 places in halls of residence at 37 universities across 43 study locations – a vast task. It involves the state, the student unions, and local municipalities in working through what should be modernised, how, and in what order.

In the session, two advisors from PD will share how they moderated this collaborative process to ensure that the students in North Rhine-Westphalia will live even better in the future.

Speakers: 

Chiara Derenbach, PD
Ramona Klukasa. PD

Talk 3: Inspiring Citizens to Live Sustainably: How Malaysians Do It

How do you go about changing the habits of a nation? This session presents Zero Waste Malaysia’s journey to doing just that.

With the ongoing issue of plastic pollution and landfill overloading in Malaysia, a community of over 40,000 members inspired the creation of a new resource: a MY Zero Waste Life handbook. The beginner-friendly handbook offers a simple guide to living a sustainable lifestyle, with simple-to-read visuals and a strong storytelling approach. In this session, the Zero Waste Malaysia team will share their journey towards creating this resource, who it is made for, and how it has been used so far – wrapping up with their hopes for Malaysia becoming a greener nation.

Speakers:

Khor Sue Yee, Zero Waste Malaysia
Ho Kae Jing, Zero Waste Malaysia
Tasha Theresa Sabapathy, Zero Waste Malaysia 

Talk 4: Why I Love Bureaucracy

Say the word ‘bureaucracy‘ to yourself and what comes into your mind: impassable red tape, excessive paperwork and frustratingly slow procedures? Yet this is far from the full picture. In its origins the idea of bureaucracy was invented on good principles – a theory of management, based on transparency and equal treatment of all even if it does not always feel like that in practice. When functioning well, bureaucracies can operate seamlessly – a flow of processes that enable resources to be used effectively, decisions to be taken effortlessly, and citizens to feel seen and empowered. We take the enabling structures, often invisible, as a given in well-functioning private sector organisations; public sector structures and organising methods when working at their best reveal that beautiful potential too.

For this talk we’re joined by Dr. Sharone April, a trained organisational sociologist and leader of the inter-ministerial task force for digital transformation in local government at Israel’s Ministry of Interior. She explains why she loves bureaucracy through the lens of several uplifting examples. And you should come to love bureaucracy, too!

Speaker: Sharone April, Ministry of Interior, Israel