[Originally published on the Australian Government Public Sector Innovation Network under a Creative Commons 3.0 BY AU licence]
Are you a public servant who wants to find out the latest about innovation in the public sector? Do you want to see and hear from other areas using new ways of doing things to achieve better results? To link-in with like minded people from other agencies in the Australian Public Service and apply your creativity to common problems?
Then Innovation Week 2012 is for you!
Last year our colleagues at the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry held an inaugural Innovation Week from 2-5 May. It was a great way of inspiring people and sharing lessons about how to do innovation in the public sector.
This year we are looking to build on this great initiative, with a broader APS Innovation Week, to be held from 2 to 8 June 2012.
There is a great deal of planning going on in relation to the events that will be held, and we will start to let you know more about them shortly. At this stage, we can tell you that communities across the public sector are collaborating on a range of seminars, hands-on workshops, developer events, and showcases of emerging technologies and case studies. Whatever your skills or interests or your experience with innovation, there will be something for you.
These events come with support from the leadership of the APS. The Innovation Action Plan, which was signed by the Portfolio Secretaries, stated that “Recognising that long term value is captured through dissemination and diffusion of innovations, the APS and its agencies will institute mechanisms to recognise, celebrate and share innovation efforts. This will be done by … agencies holding innovation themed events to discuss, share and celebrate public sector innovation within their agencies.”
The APS Innovation Week 2012 will be an important means of delivering upon that commitment and for agencies to demonstrate their support for the Action Plan.
We are planning on some big headline events but we encourage you to consider events for your agency. It could be getting your team to talk about new ways you might achieve better outcomes. Or you might want to hold something fun like an innovation trivia event. It could be inviting stakeholders to come and talk about some innovative things they are doing. Whatever it is, these events will be a great opportunity to focus on innovation in the APS and how we can collaborate better to achieve more.
If you are interested in being involved, please get in contact with us and we’ll make sure you are included in the event planning process.
We encourage you to mark the dates, think about what events your agency might be able to hold or be involved in, comment below about what sort of events or activities you would be interested in attending or being involved in, and pass the word – Innovation Week 2012 is coming!