I’m excited to be leading the Public Sector Innovation Summit at the Kenya Innovation Week for the second year running. This year, I am bringing together public and private sector actors who have successfully collaborated to innovate in the public sector.

My summit will explore critical elements of national deployments, the role of behavioural science for public sector innovation, sourcing and scaling innovations in the public sector and citizen engagement.

It’s been said that many times we have the right ideas, but lack follow through; that in Kenya we lack the discipline to execute, and inability to take responsibility. Is this really true? We will unpack this and look at the markers for well built, sustainable public sector innovation.

Register for the innovation week beginning Monday here and join me at the Public Sector Innovation Summit on Thursday from 9am at the Edge Conference Centre.

The public sector refers to various government agencies, departments, and organisations that provide services to the public. These include local, regional, and national government agencies, as well as non-profit organisations and businesses that contract with the government to provide goods or services.

The public sector is responsible for a wide range of activities, from providing basic services like education and infrastructure to more complex functions like national defence and environmental protection. In general, the public sector is charged with ensuring that all citizens have access to essential services and that everyone enjoys a good quality of life.

Today, citizens are more informed and have come to expect more from their governments. Technology has transformed the way citizens interact with their governments and leads to more sophisticated demands. These increased expectations combined with new challenges due to complex issues and fiscal pressures require more innovative, coordinated approaches in the public sector.

Innovation in the public sector refers to significant improvements to public administration and/or services. It can be defined as the implementation by a public sector organisation of new or significantly improved process, methods or services aimed at improving a public sector unit’s operations or outcomes.

However, knowledge and application of public sector innovation and its results, costs, and enabling environment, is still fragmented. Public sector innovation is only occasionally institutionalised in government budgets, roles and processes, and the full range of tools available to policy makers for accelerating innovation is applied inconsistently.

As regions and continents move towards coordinated approaches to economic growth, especially in the face of global challenges such as climate change, economic inequality and the digital transformation of industries, it is imperative that the pan-commonwealth ecosystem learn from each other, build on each other’s successes and build together for long term sustainability.

This summit seeks to surface tried and tested concepts for public service delivery. Local and national governments along with their private sector collaborators will share the secret sauce to their success and the methodologies for large scale sustainable delivery.