By Elizabeth Long
The Government Transformation 2016 conference, hosted by the group Public Sector Partners, recently took place in Sacramento. This conference centered around how California government can focus on civic engagement, specifically improving the services the government offers, as well as improving how it interacts with those who need these services. As an Executive Consultant for KAI Partners, Inc.—a company that works directly with government agencies to support this kind of work—I attended the conference and would like to share some highlights from my experience.
Over 1,000 attendees participated in the conference, as well as many amazing keynote speakers and event sponsors. The conference theme was ‘Enable, Evolve, Engage’ and this theme helped shaped the session offerings of the day.
The conference focused on four areas:
- Civic Engagement – Customer Service, Innovation in Action, and Effective Metrics
- Organization Performance Management – Cultural Change, Administrative Innovation, Personnel Development, and Mission Definition
- Leadership Development – Developing Innovative Leadership, Improving Team Dynamics, Mentoring, Communication, Innovation Education, Planning, and Active Listening
- Using Data Apps to Get the Big Picture Analytics and Big Data, Collaboration, Leveraging Metadata, Information Sharing, and Electronic Document Processing
The conference was not only a great learning experience, it also provided the opportunity to meet some amazingly talented people. I was particularly inspired by a session facilitated by Bruce Winner, Custom Training Manager at Los Rios Community College District. His session focused on a behavioral approach to getting people to change behavior without restraining their freedom of choice or changing financial incentives. This indirect approach to influence behavior change is called “nudge.”
The “nudge” approach—being able to identify behaviors, and having the tools/knowledge of how to influence those behaviors indirectly—will be invaluable to me not only in helping to develop my recommendations to clients, but also in my daily interactions.
This was just one of many sessions I found informative and useful to my day-to-day work. All in all, I found this conference to be valuable time spent. This is an annual event, so if you have the opportunity to participate in the future, I encourage you to do so. For more information about the conference, visit: http://www.pspinfo.us/psp-events/gt2016
About the Author: Elizabeth Long is a professional Organization Development Consultant and Curriculum Developer/Trainer. She received her Certification in Organizational Change Management from Prosci and is certified in e-learning development from Langevine Learning Center. Elizabeth has worked in many industries: High tech, healthcare, and state and local government. Currently, Elizabeth works as an Executive Consultant with KAI Partners, Inc. as a contractor working in a variety of California State Departments. Elizabeth has lived in Sacramento for the past 17 years and appreciates the history of Sacramento as well as its convenience to many well-known destinations like San Francisco, Tahoe, and Reno.