A Sexy Page-Turner about Bureaucracy: How Governments Can Go Big & Save the Day

While “bureaucrat” is sort of a bad word, public servants are the force that run governments – often extremely well. This talk looks at the often-overlooked narrative of government effectiveness, especially when citizens need it most: in times of crisis. By exploring how governments showed up and saved the day during some of the most complex crises of our time, this talk looks at the themes and patterns underlying these successful government interventions and how these lessons might equip future public officials for the crises to come.

Anyone who’s worked in or with governments – either within public service or as citizens seeking government services – has stories to share. Following this session’s context-setting talk, the 30-minute interactive workshop will invite participants to crowdsource their best & worst of government-in-a-crisis story and work together to identify themes and trends from those stories. Finally, we’ll discuss how we might apply what we’ve learned to future events and share reflections both on this session and potential next steps.