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Civic Punks: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Derek Alton
This is my experiment in creating interesting podcasts about public sector innovation.Disclaimer: All opinions on this channel are my own opinions or the personal opinions of those who I interview.
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The most recent episodes — sign up to get AI-powered summaries of each one.
- 3 days ago34 min
Charles Landry: The Visionary Behind the Creative Bureaucracy Festival | Live from Berlin
What happens when you bring together thousands of people who believe bureaucracy can be a force for good? That's the idea behind the Creative Bureaucracy Festival, and Charles Landry is the visionary who helped bring it to life. In this special live episode of Civic Punks, recorded on the festival floor in Berlin, I sit down with Charles to reflect on his legacy, what inspired the festival, and where he hopes it goes next. And because we're recording live, things get a little unpredictable! We're gate-crashed by Johanna Sieben, who directed the festival for many years, and Lene Krogh Jeppesen, who's been attending since the very beginning. Together, we reflect on the festival, the community that's grown around it, and what the future might hold. It's a fun, spontaneous conversation about creativity, bureaucracy, and the people trying to make government better. Recorded live at the Creative Bureaucracy Festival in Berlin, Germany.
- 1 weeks ago29 min
Britain's Big Experiment in Reinventing Government with Catherine Day
What does it take to reinvent a country? The world is changing rapidly. Technology is transforming how we live and work, old institutions are struggling to keep up, and countries like the UK are facing some pretty fundamental questions about who they are and where they're heading. But what if the challenge goes deeper than simply coming up with a compelling vision for the future? What if we need to rethink how we govern and organize our countries altogether? That's the question at the heart of my conversation with Catherine Day, co-founder and lead of the UK's National Strategy Project. Catherine and her team are attempting something remarkably ambitious: helping the UK develop a shared vision for its future, grounded in public participation, and creating the structures and processes needed to actually make it happen. It's an experiment in how a country can think, decide, and act together in the 21st century. I sat down with Catherine at her home in the English countryside to explore what inspired her to take on this challenge, what's wrong with the way we currently make decisions about our collective future, and how the National Strategy Project hopes to do things differently. We also get into the practical side of turning such an ambitious idea into reality. It's one of the most fascinating experiments in reimagining government that I've come across on my travels, and I think there are lessons here for countries far beyond the UK. Learn more about the National Strategy Project: https://nationalstrategy.uk/ Explore more conversations about the future of government: https://civicpunks.com/
- Oct 9, 202656 min
The Anti-Cambridge Analytica
How does a massive, complex institution like the NHS respond to a crisis? It turns out that some of the most important work happens outside the formal structures—in informal networks, personal relationships, and even WhatsApp groups. In this episode, I sit down with Diarmaid Crean, who served as a senior technology leader in the UK's National Health Service (NHS) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Coming from the private sector, Diarmaid brought an outsider's perspective to government and some refreshing ideas about leadership, innovation, and how change actually happens inside large institutions. We talk about his experience helping lead the NHS through one of the most challenging periods in its history, but spend much of our conversation unpacking something that became a particular fascination of his: the hidden networks that helped people move quickly, share information, solve problems, and work across organizational boundaries when it mattered most. It's a fascinating conversation about the power of relationships, the limits of formal hierarchies, and what it really takes to make innovation happen in large, messy, complex systems. And it raises a bigger question: If these informal networks are so important to making government work, why do we pay so little attention to them? Also check out Diarmaid's article on murmurations: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nhs-doesnt-need-another-centrally-architected-masterplan-crean-aglfe/
- Sep 24, 202630 min
Finding Your People: Henry Grunzweig on the State Capacity Ecosystem
Who’s working to make government better, and how do we help them find each other? In this episode of Civic Punks, I sit down with Henry Grunzweig to explore the State Capacity Ecosystem, a project mapping the people and organizations working to improve government’s ability to deliver across the US. We start with Henry’s own story: what drew him into this work and what inspired him to begin mapping the wider ecosystem. From there, we dig into how he’s making sense of the field, what he’s learning along the way, and what others can take from his approach. For me, this connects to a question at the heart of Civic Punks: how do we help people who care about making government better find each other, learn together, and build on each other’s work? If you’re trying to understand this space—or figure out where you fit within it—this conversation is a good place to start. Explore the project: https://statecapacityecosystem.com/
- Sep 4, 202653 min
You Might Get Fired - A Conversation with Iain Montgomery
What does it actually take to innovate inside institutions that aren’t always designed for experimentation? Iain Montgomery has become one of the voices I keep coming back to when I’m thinking about innovation, government, and what it means to genuinely challenge the status quo. After following and referencing his work for a while, I finally got to meet him at FWD50—and we sat down for this conversation. We talk about what brought Iain into innovation work, what keeps him grounded and inspired, and some of the ways we get innovation very right…and very wrong. We also dig into his work on Challenger Cities: looking at cities that are willing to think differently, challenge assumptions, and ask better questions about what actually helps a place flourish. And, in classic Iain fashion, there are a few lines in here that will rattle around in your head for the next week. Including, of course, why doing this work properly might occasionally mean you get fired, and that's a good thing. If you care about making government better, experimenting with new ways of working, or just thinking differently about how cities and institutions change, there’s a lot in this one. Make sure to check out his podcast on Challenger Cities: https://challengercities.substack.com/podcast
- Aug 28, 202636 min
Why Is Government So Bad at Working With Startups with Kateryna Frolova
I recorded this conversation with Kateryna Frolova, Head of the Global Government Technology Centre Kyiv, on my first morning in Ukraine, after a night of Russian bombing. We were both running on a little less sleep than we would have liked. But the conversation we had gets at a problem that reaches far beyond Ukraine. Governments everywhere love talking about supporting startups, entrepreneurs and small and medium-sized businesses. Actually working with them to solve public problems is much harder. Procurement gets in the way. Government and startups operate at different speeds. Smaller companies struggle to navigate the system. Governments struggle to identify, test and adopt new solutions. Everyone agrees collaboration would be useful, yet making it happen remains remarkably difficult. This is exactly the problem Kateryna and her team are working on in Kyiv. We talk about how government can build better relationships with entrepreneurs, how to create the conditions for collaboration rather than simply talking about it, and why this matters increasingly as countries think about technological and economic sovereignty. Kateryna’s own story is also part of a much bigger Ukrainian story. Like many young Ukrainians I met, she had built a promising international career before returning home out of a sense of responsibility to her country. She went on to work inside the Ukrainian government before moving into her current role helping government innovate from the edge of the system. There is a lot here for governments well beyond Ukraine. If we can figure out how governments can genuinely work with startups, SMEs and entrepreneurs around shared public problems, we may unlock an enormous source of innovation that today remains largely untapped. I hope you enjoy the conversation.
- Aug 20, 202637 min
Ukraine’s AI Playbook: Sovereignty, Agents and the Future of Government
Ukraine has become one of the most interesting governments in the world to watch when it comes to AI. In this episode of Civic Punks, I sit down with Roman Kyslyi, Chief AI Officer at Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation, to dig into where Ukraine is going next. We get deep into AI sovereignty, a topic Roman has been thinking about for years. What does it actually mean for a country to be sovereign in the age of AI? And how does that equation change as we move from chatbots toward AI agents that can actually take action on our behalf? We also unpack what Ukraine is building with Diia.AI, why Ukraine has emerged as a frontrunner in agentic government, and Roman’s bigger vision for how AI could reshape the relationship between citizens and the state. It’s a fascinating conversation about sovereignty, infrastructure, agents, and what the next generation of digital government might actually look like. Roman also runs a Ukrainian podcast all about AI. Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/@aihouse_ukraine If you enjoy the conversation, share it with someone who should hear it, and make sure to like, follow, and subscribe for more Civic Punks.
- Aug 13, 202617 min
Why Kyiv Works: A Debrief with Denys Nazarenko
Last week, I shared my conversation with Victoria Itskovych, CIO for the City of Kyiv, about how Kyiv has continued to build and adapt under some pretty extraordinary circumstances. Six Weeks Under Siege Denys Nazarenko helped make that conversation happen. He’s a senior advisor to Victoria, and after we finished the interview, Denys and I wandered down to a nearby park to debrief. What followed was a more informal conversation about some of the things sitting underneath Kyiv’s story: the relationship between the city and Ukraine’s national government, what good collaboration between different levels of government can actually look like, and why Kyiv has been able to make some of this work. I’d recommend listening to the conversation with Victoria first. But if that one leaves you wanting to dig a little deeper, think of this as the after-hours addendum. What changes when national and local governments see each other as partners rather than obstacles?
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About Civic Punks
This is my experiment in creating interesting podcasts about public sector innovation.Disclaimer: All opinions on this channel are my own opinions or the personal opinions of those who I interview.
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