“Just about everybody agrees with the importance of an entity or network that drives and disseminates innovation within public administrations. But there are many ways in which such an initiative can be developed and made to work. The people managing the Innovation networks have to make choices about the role of the network, it’s ambitions and how to measure them, it’s position… And should being a part of a network come with obligations, how do you maintain a healthy diversity, how do you avoid it becoming a ‘talking shop’? These and many other questions have no simple, definitive answer, but depend on strategy and surroundings (and maybe even chance). In this session, practitioners from several innovation networks from different levels of government in Belgium and the Netherlands will talk to each other to learn why their networks have developed differently, discuss their different approaches and share their most insightful lessons learned. Are you interested in taking part in this CBF Academy workshop? Sign up via the following link: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=pjgDDGGV6E641k6Jy9UgoAm2WWn1k8tCtEixwZwNvvFUNFRWRkpZRU1QN1FSUzFFM0dQOVFVWFhHMy4u “
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Do’s and don’ts of public sector innovation networks – Offstage Session
After his Ph.D. in Sociology, Martin Ruebens started in 1990 as a civil servant in the Flemish Public Administration. He is an experienced senior civil servant with several leading positions in government administration. He started recently in 2020 as projectleader Public Sector Innovation in the Flemish public administration.
This project is focused on promoting innovative policy practices within and outside government by creating a platform to detect, to make more visible, to share knowledge and experiences and to provide support in the development of policy innovation within the Flemish government and local authorities. Previously, he became in 2010 secretary-general of the Flemish Departement of Chancellery and Public Governance. He transformed this departement from a traditional hierarchical organisation towards a networkorganisation based on self-management, purpose-driven and human-centric. Skilled in coaching, government, leadership, and policy analysis. Now focused on public sector innovation, striving towards a heartwarming government supporting a heartwarming society.
The main task of my job is to make time and space for innovation, so that we can come up with new and creative solutions for the urban challenges we face. This should result in more ideas, experiments, implementations and social impact. What do I do for that? I support concrete innovation projects and I help look for the preconditions for achieving even more innovations.
In addition, I am strengthening cooperation with higher education institutions. What can the more than 80,000 students and researchers mean for our city? What do we do for them? And what can we set up together?
Bussemaker is currently community manager with I-Partnerschap and before that was the program manager of the Dutch Government’s Innovation Community. He has a passion for bringing people together in the Digital Age. He has initiated and helped run a number of (international) communities focused on linking Information Technology, Innovation and Impact.
He does (pro deo) work for number of organizations including: the ‘Institute for Accountability in the Digital Age’; iPoort, an association to discuss digitization with members of the Dutch parliament; Digital Africa; WCIT2010 (Amsterdam) and WCF 2104 (Xian). He is founding member of ITU’s ‘AI for Good Global Summit with over 35 UN Agencies involved, He is a regular speaker and chair and has spoken in Australia, China, Europe, New Zealand, South-Korea and the United States. He has an MSc from Delft University.
Laurien is all about networking and community building. She has a passion for getting people to connect and for building bridges and networks between people and their organizations beyond a specific role and expertise. Working for the Belgian federal government since 2009 and as a Community Manager and Project Manager Innovation for Nido, the Innovation Lab for the Belgian public sector within the FPS Policy and Support, Laurien has been at the hearth of the Network Innovation among others since the beginning of 2021.