There's More Innovation at City Hall Than You Might Think

Seven projects, countless collaborators, and a behind-the-scenes look at rethinking how one of Canada's largest municipal governments works.

Explore the 2019 Civic Innovation Office Grant Outcomes Report

When I joined the City of Toronto to lead its Civic Innovation Office in 2017, I was coming from a career in technology, startups, and private-sector innovation. I had spent years helping organizations explore new ideas, solve tough problems, and bring them to life. Municipal government was new territory for me, and I was curious to see how that experience would translate to the public sector. (More on that to come in a future post!)

Supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies, our office had an ambitious mandate: explore new ways to tackle complex challenges that impact Toronto residents in a meaningful and measurable way.

The work took us into some interesting corners of City Hall.

We partnered with the City's procurement team to experiment with a new way of inviting local startups and businesses to solve civic challenges. We worked with City staff to better understand residents' experiences with community grant programs. We explored how digital translation tools could help people navigate public services, and introduced new skills and approaches to teams across the organization.

Seven initiatives, each with its own challenges, discoveries, and people who helped move the work forward.

Behind every project was a team willing to try something different.

One of the most rewarding parts of the experience was working with people across the City who brought deep knowledge of their services, a willingness to experiment, and ideas of their own. Combining that expertise with new approaches and perspectives opened up some interesting possibilities that I hadn't considered before, but made me a better service designer, systems thinker, and leader.

In 2019, we brought these experiences together in our Grant Outcomes Report, sharing the stories, lessons, and contributions behind a select set of initiatives undertaken by the Civic Innovation Office.

It's a look inside an organization that serves millions of people, where even seemingly small changes can involve navigating complex systems, longstanding processes, and competing priorities.

And it's a reminder of just how much can happen when people from different parts of an organization come together around a problem worth solving.

City of Toronto Civic Innovation Office, Grant Outcomes Report, 2019. Prepared as part of the Bloomberg Philanthropies Innovation Teams program.