Local government is starting to get serious about innovation

Nesta, together with the Local Government Association, is supporting innovators in local government across England and Wales through its Creative Councils programme. Nesta’s Philip Colligan closes the first Creative Councils’ /archive/mentor-dealing-with-hostile-blogs-13-12-2006 series which has explored how local authorities can develop and implement radical innovations.

With so much doom and gloom in the air this party conference season, it can seem Pollyannaish to be upbeat about the future for local public services.  Even more so when it comes to councils, long parodied as home to armies of petty bureaucrats. 

So for a self-declared optimist like me it was more than a little encouraging that September’s Economist was waxing lyrical about councils as Britain’s Local Labs and Political Petri Dishes. 

While it’s disappointing that the Economist didn’t manage to get beyond the M25 in their examples, the analysis stacks up. 

In the face of the most challenging financial settlement in living memory and against a backdrop of unprecedented increases in demand across a whole range of services, local government is starting to get serious about innovation.

Over the past couple of years Nesta has been working with councils across the country that are radically re-thinking the role of local government, their culture, their ways of working and how they transform services to meet some of the biggest challenges facing the communities they serve. 

As you’ll have seen in this /archive/mentor-dealing-with-hostile-blogs-13-12-2006 series, right now we are working with the LGA to support six Creative Councils that are pursuing strategies from energy self-sufficiency to mobilising community resources to support older people to live great lives.  And they’ve all been /archive/mentor-dealing-with-hostile-blogs-13-12-2006ging for the LGC about their experiences.

None of those six are in London.  All are setting a pace that is markedly different from that being achieved by Whitehall departments. 

Of course, the Creative Councils programme isn’t the only place that innovation is happening.  Everywhere you look councils are getting on the front foot with strategies to reinvent the role of local government, strike a new deal with citizens and forge the next generation of services.  

They’re part of a growing movement of innovators in municipal and city governments across the world.  It’s high time that national governments took notice.

In Lille last month I took part in a two day workshop for French municipal government organised by the 27th Region – an innovation lab created by the 26 Regions of municipal government.  It focused particularly on the role of design in creating the next generation of public services, but what was most striking was the vision that led to the world’s first mutual local government innovation lab.  Let’s not wait for central government – let’s do it ourselves, with citizens.  

In the US, Bloomberg Philanthropies has launched the Mayors Challenge to find and support radical innovations led by city government, further cementing Mayor Bloomberg’s reputation as one of the world’s leading advocates for innovation in local government.  In November, I’ll be joining the 20 finalists in New York for an intensive ideas camp that is at least partly inspired by the work that’s been happening in the UK’s Creative Councils.

Despite all the differences in our models of public services and politics, what seems to be uniting local governments across the globe is a new found confidence that they can lead the radical changes that are needed, indeed they have to.