Canadian Government Executive - Volume 23 - Issue 02

20 / Canadian Government Executive // February 2017 Roberto Andrade Chris Chopik Macy Siu I magine a Canadian government that shares best practices in service delivery. In November 2016, the In- novation Lab team at Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) created the first Service Research Confer- ence (SRC) organized by the Canadian government. The event marked the begin- ning of a new approach to engaging and providing citizen-centric services to the Canadian public. Organizers discovered a completely unmet needs: to place to share openly new research findings and a mech- anism to facilitate trans-departmental re- search innovation. Dr. Urvashi Dhawan-Biswal, the Director of Innovation Lab and Service Research at ESDC, was the conference organizer. She said that “we initially conceived of SRC as a vehicle for inter-departmental sharing of experience in Spring of 2015. We anticipat- ed a modest first event with 100 attendees and 10-12 presentations. When we put the call out, we received unprecedented inter- est with 240 registrants and 30 papers pre- sented. It was like speed dating!” The conference gave attendees an op- portunity to understand “who is doing what”, offering them a new tool for “hori- zon thinking,” according to Dhawan-Bisw- al. The post-conference feedback has been overwhelmingly positive and has already given birth to the next Service Research Conference which is being planned for May 2018. The conference and its purpose are di- rectly aligned with the UN Public Service Forum’s call for a “global transformation of public administrators” to develop “a culture of innovation, supported by lead- ership of all levels.” Given the launch of both Canada’s Innovation Agenda and the ESDC’s Service Strategy in 2016, the A turning point for service delivery in the public sector Conference represents a first step toward a national yet collaborative approach to achieve public service excellence. Conference organizers consider the event an effective means to strengthen government connection with academic researchers, for joint collaboration and for partnership development. The confer- ence team organized a collaboration with OCADUniversity’s Strategic Foresight and Innovation program, which in turn pro- vided a team of MDes (Master of Design) students to facilitate a workshop during the conference. The event had for objec- tive to break down silos and facilitating inter-departmental knowledge-sharing, along with academics and private sector participants, through participatory en- gagement. The student team designed a participatory session to creatively capture in-situ practical knowledge and insight reflection during the research conference. The World Café workshop method was adapted for the workshop because it offered an opportunity for attendees to generate new living networks of collab- orative dialogue. It enabled participants to participate in focused conversations of their own interest. The workshop pre- sented three strategic questions central to improving public sector service delivery: 1. What evidence base is your organiza- tion using to design and improve ser- vice delivery? 2. How might we leverage partnerships between public, academic, and private sector in order to improve service de- livery for Canadians? 3. What are the limits or risks with digital service delivery? The World Café (WC) method is focused on “powerful questions” shared by all Service Delivery the SERVICE RESEARCH CONFERENCE 2016