Ideas lab bought Play-Doh, duct tape, dog toys, but few results
City defends program focusing on new ideas after critic questions its results
Nearly a year after a city initiative was launched with an $11,600 event, a critic is questioning what the Civic Innovation YYC program has accomplished — and why staff spent $889 on lab coats, duct tape and art supplies for the project’s kickoff.
City staff are defending the program as something municipalities “across the country are trying to copy,” and say receipts from the launch party for $57 of pink duct tape, $570 of lab coats and $262 on various art supplies including dog toys, Play-Doh and paint, are reasonable for an event 145 people attended.
“If the arts and crafts would have led to something, I wouldn’t be offended by spending a couple hundred dollars on it, but it just seems very frivolous,” said Amber Ruddy, director of provincial affairs for Alberta at the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
“It feels like fun and games …. It’s a lot of buzz words and not a lot of delivery.”
Part online platform where citizens and staff can submit their great ideas related to municipal issues, and part physical brainstorming in a colourful room on the main floor of City Hall, the city says Civic Innovation YYC is about making local government “more open, transparent and innovative.”
After attending the program’s public kickoff at the University of Calgary in February, Ruddy, who also sits on Civic Innovation YYC’s business advisory panel and has visited City Hall’s brainstorming lab, submitted a request through the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIP) for relevant receipts.
She was surprised to see a nearly $12,000 launch-event price tag, and even more dismayed by the fact she feels the program hasn’t produced any tangible benefit or actual results in the months since the kickoff.
“Everything is stuck at the idea and discussion stage. We’ve submitted a number of ideas with the hopes the Civic Innovation lab could act on them to reduce red tape for business owners,” Ruddy said.
The city said the online portal, which launched internally in May 2016 and to the public in February 2017, has 4,500 users and more than 650 posted ideas. Approximately 30 per cent of the ideas are from the public and 70 per cent are from city staff.
It’s not known how many of those ideas have been accomplished, said Lisa J. Sierra, corporate program lead of Civic Innovation YYC.
“We don’t have numbers yet because some of them are in transition and some are going to the next business planning cycle, which will dictate whether some of them go to that next level,” said Sierra, noting it’s also difficult to tell how much money the program has saved.
“This program is fairly new … and one of the things that we have on the plate for the coming year is, how do we measure this?”
Sierra said several ideas submitted online in response to a “challenge” asking users how to improve voter experience in the 2017 municipal election were acted upon.
“There was a cluster of 45 ideas,” Sierra said.
“We brought people into the lab to have some brainstorms and conversations around how can we get more people out,” said Heather Chapple, who works with the Civic Innovation YYC program as a leader.
“We saw some of it in the election in terms of the ‘I Voted’ stickers, the voting bus.”
Ward 8 Coun. Evan Woolley championed such initiatives through a notice of motion asking for increased election day accessibility that was approved by council in Nov. 2016, and Chapple said the ideas were a group effort.
“We’re a catalyst. We’re a collector. You hope that you keep planting seeds of things and then they get picked up in all kinds of different ways,” she said.
As for the $12,000 launch party, receipts show $5,984 was spent on catering (approximately $41 per person, not including tax or tip), another $1,302 for “catering and venue gratuity and GST,” $198 for event promotion, $800 for tables and linens, and $1,250 for celebrity host Andrew Phung.
Sierra said the team snagged the space at the University of Calgary for free and the materials purchased for the launch are still being used.
“We made centrepieces from the dollar store for $1.25. Everything that we use in the lab, we always reduce, reuse, recycle,” she said.
“The costs were reasonable for what came out of it.”
Sierra said the lab coats have been worn by staff multiple times since and the Play-Doh is used often in the lab.
“It’s learning through play …. Sometimes there are people that it helps with their ability to engage and so we use all kinds of tools to do that,” she said.
When staff and citizens come into the lab, they’re taught about human-centred design, a concept that often uses play.
“This is a set of principles and processes that are used by Fortune 500 companies all over the world,” said Chapple.
“Exercises like the Play-Doh exercises are part of those processes. We’re actually pretty leading edge … in terms of municipalities across the country.”
In fact, Calgary has been chosen to host the Municipal Innovators Conference next fall, the first time the annual event has come to Western Canada.