CITY OF CALGARY 2016 INNOVATION MANAGEMENT AWARD

BEST ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY

IDEASCALE

Calgary is a city in the Canadian province of Alberta with a metropolitan population of 1,214,839, making it the largest city in Alberta, and the third-largest municipality in Canada. Their citizens trend younger with an average age of 36 years and represent a diverse cross-section of cultures with 28% visible minorities, and growing. Since redefining itself after the energy sector slump in the 1980s, Calgary has diversified its industries to include financial services, film and television, and others and continues to find new ways to reinvent itself and create value.

myCityInnovation is an internal program which is part of the broader City of Calgary innovation program ‘Civic Innovation YYC.’ myCityInnovation initially invited the City’s 12,000 “wired” employees to share, collaborate, and test new ideas for improving City services.

The main goals of myCityInnovation included

• Increasing openness and transparency • Broad reach (at least 10% of the wired workforce) • Gather new ideas (at least 120 new ideas) • Clear line of sight from where ideas come from to how they are actioned • Ability to keep people involved throughout (goal of at least 360 comments and 2,400 votes) • Connect people across the organization – help to overcome communication and working

silos • Create a repository of institutional learning

The program was developed out of best practices from the City of Calgary’s Cut Red Tape program and supported the use of design thinking and innovative civic processes. The myCityInnovation program also has a Civic Innovation Lab and promises to incubate innovative ideas that align with current City of Calgary Council priorities.

The internal launch of myCityInovation to employees occurred in May 2016. To launch, the Civic Innovation YYC team launched a multi-channel campaign to inform employees and get them engaged in the IdeaScale community. The channels included:

• Events • Meetings • Blogs • Newsletters • Social Media • Print • Video • Website • Emails from Leadership

2IdeaScale Case Studies

City of CalgaryTesting New Ideas to Improve City Services

Here is a sample piece of communication from an internal article:

Introducing myCityInnovation

A place for employees to share new ideas.

Innovation is all about the exploration of new and creative ideas. But to thrive and grow, ideas need to be connected with other ideas and resources! That’s why The City of Calgary is introducing myCityInnovation, an online platform for employees to share, collaborate and test ideas for improving civic services and our organization.

As City employees, nobody knows our operations better than you – and this is your chance to make a difference! You have great ideas to improve our organization and we want to hear them. Get started today by typing myCityInnovation into your web browser to access the online platform.

Ideas submitted through myCityInnovation will be evaluated and assessed for their feasibility and cost, and the ones with the most potential will be selected for testing and prototyping in the Innovation Lab located in the Municipal Building. Together, we’re turning ideas into action….

These messages were sent out on a regular basis as a combination of bi-monthly videos, monthly meetings with their Internal Advisory Team, ad hoc meetings with the management teams of each City business unit, quarterly emails from the General Manager championing the Civic Innovation YYC program, and more.

Once an idea entered the system, moderators (who had received a moderation guide with standardized responses) asked members for more information, Moderators, advisors, and leadership were also invited to comment and share information, such as when an idea is currently being explored or is already underway. Ideas are moved on a ‘semi-regular’ basis from Ideate to Assessment phases, with the intent of establishing a predictable rhythm for the community.

After their initial launch, the City of Calgary reported • Hundreds of new ideas for city improvements • that they more than doubled their goal for number of users (21% adoption in the pilot program) • Nearly triple the number of anticipated ideas • High levels of engagement that exceeded all targets (Target # of Comments: 360, Actual: 1280. Target

# of Votes: 2,400, Actual: 12,076) • Staff participation in all open house events across multiple City facilities

“The level of participation has been very high and has exceeded our expectation, first with general ideation and later with the introduction of topic-focused campaigns,” said Chad Oberg, Business Technology Analyst at the City of Calgary, “The quality of ideas and discussion has also been excellent, and in general there is a lot of excitement and optimism regarding the program and the site. Phrase and sentiment analysis were conducted on the idea data and both showed a high level of optimism and ‘possibility.”

The public launch of Civic Innovation YYC is due to take place in Q1 2017.