Using Data to Shape our Future Cities: Best Practices from Germany As the digital transformation of society changes our cities, an essential issue is that of so-called ‘data sovereignty’. How should the data generated in urban areas be handled? And who should handle it? While the private sector has long been using data to build…
Did you miss any sessions during the festival? No problem. The entire 2021 programme is now available in our Creative Bureaucracy Content Library. Use the search function or browse through the different thematic blocks to find the right video for you. The Creative Bureaucracy Content Library is a platform by and for creative changemakers. Browse through more…
Help us make the 2022 Festival even better by taking a few minutes to complete our questionnaire. We have put together a couple of short surveys and would be very grateful for your feedback. One relates to the festival as a whole, and the other to individual sessions. All reflections and suggestions are very welcome: What did you…
The fourth Creative Bureaucracy Festival comes to an end with new records: 18,000 creative minds and administrative visionaries from 94 countries participated in this year’s Festival. The comprehensive Festival programme included 150 digital sessions and over 400 international speakers. “The Creative Bureaucracy Festival is not only a forum for the best ideas for bureaucracy, but…
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…
“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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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,…
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” 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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
