Weeknotes in Wales — Sept. 1st, 2023

What are Weeknotes:

Weeknotes are a summary of the week, popularised a few years ago amongst a group of public servants in the UK. It was a way of being more transparent about the work that was happening and helping share lessons and surface common challenges. Weeknotes are usually unpolished and filled with half-thought-out ideas, they invite conversation and engagement.

I have dabbled with weeknotes on and off and wanted to try giving it another go here.

Off to Wales:

This week I was fortunate to spend in Cardiff, Wales bridging two weekends of hiking in the lovely Welsh countryside. I have always been drawn to Wales, the people, the culture, and of course the landscape (reminds me a lot of the East Coast of Canada) but this was the first time I had a chance to really engage with the public sector innovation community here. I started with a combination of both reaching out through my network for contacts in Wales and also a bit of my own research.

The Spark Innovation Hub:

Much to my surprise and joy, I discovered most of the interesting people and groups I was reaching out to all existed in the same place, the University of Cardiff’s Spark Centre for Innovation which is serving to incubate lots of different groups from startups to research hubs. This space serves to bring researchers and practitioners to the same place.

Despite there being so many cool people in the same space, I was surprised there wasn’t greater awareness and connectivity between the groups. This seemed like a lost opportunity for collaboration. Side note: the food in the Spark Cafe was amazing.

This speaks to a common pattern you see with the development of innovation in communities. It often starts with a small hub of like-minded people and similar initiatives. These hubs and labs incubate the movement for innovation. Over time as groups become more established they move out of the hub to be closer to the communities they directly serve. It will be interesting to see what happens with Spark in 5 to 10 years from now.

The Power of Hackathons — Paul Stepczak

I have always been a fan of hackathons, since my early days in the civictech movement in Canada. The idea of bringing a group of diverse people together to put their collective heads on a common problem and see where we could take it in a single block of time (with lots of pizza). Paul and his team have turned it into a real art form, working with communities in Wales to tackle complex social problems. Paul talked about it as a way to help communities get unstuck, foster new connections and relationships, and provide new paths forward. I love this work. My question for Paul is what is the long-term play? What happens after the hackathon? How do you sustain and scale the impacts of the hackathon? There is no doubt in my mind that Hackathons can be an incredibly powerful tool, particularly in the hands of a social artist and powerful facilitator like Paul. I wish him and his team the best in their work.

Bridging the policy gap — Dan Roberts

I had a chance to connect with Dan Roberts who is the policy lead for Cwmpass. I was impressed right away by his deep knowledge of the policy process. We therefore jumped quickly into a conundrum that I have been wrestling with around policy making and that is the gap between development and implementation. I actually think we already have most of the policies we need to tackle the great challenges of our time, it is on the implementation side where we fall down. Dan said they were having the same challenge in Wales. He did point to some places that were giving him hope, where implementation was happening. So what is enabling this? The key is to have a champion on the ground who knows how to leverage policies to enable delivery where they are needed most. Hard to bottle this. It requires a blend of deep on-the-ground knowledge, trust of the community, and connection to and understanding of the policy leavers to enable delivery. I do think though that we can do a better job of building tools for the implementers, to help them understand how to leverage policies to have the impact they seek.

What is after training? — Owen Wilce

Thanks for a warm introduction from Alexis Palá, I had the chance to meet with Owen Wilce from Monmouthshire and learn about the Infuse program. This is an initiative in partnership with Nesta that aims to bring social innovation methods and frameworks into the Welsh government.

With the program wrapping up in the fall, my biggest curiosity is what they plan to do with their alumni community. It is one thing to teach people ideas and methods, it is completely another to support them in implementing them. This next step is where many programs fail to have the impact they hope for. Creating change in a system, especially as calcified as government, takes time (sometimes a generation), persistence, and a certain level of strategy. How can Wales build this into the next phase of the Infuse community, especially with little to no budget?

From public service to politics — Carolina Pozo

Not all my meetings were with people in Wales. I was very excited for the chance to touch base with Carolina. I recently came across an article she wrote for Apolitical a couple of years ago on lessons learned from starting up an Innovation Lab in Ecuador (it is really good, I recommend you read it) and reached out for a follow-up conversation. I discovered that she was part of a group of people who all started labs in South America around the same time with support from Beth Noveck and GovLabs. I wanted to know what had happened. I have noticed a lot of labs that had been started in Canada were no longer active and I wanted to know if a similar pattern could be seen with these labs in South America. The short answer is yes but the more interesting thing is what happened to that network of lab creators. It turns out they have kept up with each other and are now going into politics. They made this pivot because they found that their labs were often stymied by the political layer. So the next logical step is to work to fix that layer.

Ultimately fixing government will involve collaboration between both the apolitical (public service) and political parts of government. This is why Apolitical set up the Apolitical Foundation a few years ago to help support the next generation of politicians.

Thank you Cwmpas!

Finally, I want to give a special shout-out to the Cwmpas team who hosted me at Spark! Especially Marc who introduced me to his team. Paul who inspired me with his passion and ideas and finally Ben who was an incredible host, seeing his warm smile was a great way to start my day. They made me feel welcome and at home, I hope you enjoyed the timbits! You are welcome to visit us at Apolitical any time you come to London!