In this episode, Olivia sits down with Anthea Foyer and Denis Carr, two local government pros based in Canada to discuss an unexpected topic: How to become a chief unplanner.
Although local governments are notorious for planning, is there merit to learning how to effectively unplan? Listen in for tips on how the most innovative changes can come from taking away from processes versus adding more to them.
More info:
Featured government: City of Toronto, Canada
Episode guests:
Denis Carr, Supervisor Open Data
Anthea Foyer, Sector Development Officer, IDM Office
Visit govlaunch.com for more stories and examples of local government innovation.
Lindsay: (00:05)
Welcome to the Govlaunch podcast. Govlaunch is the Wiki for local government innovation and on this podcast, we're sharing the stories of local government innovators and their efforts to build smarter governments. I'm Lindsay Pica-Alfano, co-founder of Govlaunch and your host. Today, Olivia sits down with Anthea foyer and Denis Carr to local government pros based in Canada to discuss an unexpected topic: how to become a chief unplanner. Although local governments are notorious for planning, is there merit to learning how to effectively unplan? I'll turn out to Olivia to unpack this concept and learn about why local government practitioners should unplan some of their work.
Olivia: (00:54)
Hi, I'm Olivia from Govlaunch and I'm here with Anthea foyer and Denis Carr from the city of Toronto in Canada. Tell me a little bit about yourselves.
Anthea: (01:04)
My name is Anthea Foyer. I currently work for the city of Toronto. I'm the sector development officer for the interactive digital media department, which is a brand new department in the film and entertainment industry. And prior to this, I've worked in smart cities. I've worked in arts and culture and technology for most of my career.
Denis: (01:22)
Hi, I'm Denis Carr. I'm the supervisor for the city of Toronto’s open data program. And so there's kind of two sides to that. There is the day-to-day publishing of operational service, uh, the different types of information that a city collects and publishing that on a free access, a non-exclusive rights, open data catalog that anybody can use that data to build cool things with. And the second part of that is reinvisioning what an open data program is. I mean, government's constantly changing, our interaction with the public and technology ever evolving. So trying to think of how we fit in that new space.
Olivia: (02:02)
Some exciting stuff you're both working on. So today we're going to talk about becoming a chief planner. Anthea, You recently wrote an article on this for Govlaunch. Can you describe a little bit more about what an unplanner is and why cities need more of them? This is an intriguing topic.
Anthea: (02:23)
So I started out as kind of a joke saying that I wanted to become the chief unplanner for the city. After working in municipal governments for a while, I just got very frustrated with a lot of the bureaucracy. I don't come from a municipal background. I come from arts and culture and entertainment, which move very quickly. And then I got into the city and was a bit surprised at a lot of the additional work that I found there. Um, and I think that what happens often is cities will end up building on instead of taking away. So for example, there's some, some funny examples where the city of Victoria in Canada, you can't have two bagpipers on the same streets. Um, in the city of Mississauga, you're not allowed to cry in public parks.
Anthea: (03:07)
Every city has these strange, strange bylaws added on when something happens. And then, so there's a reaction and then you add this on. And so those happened with sort of the by-laws. Internally that will happen as well. People will just kind of keep adding on to things as opposed to sort of taking away from projects. And so you end up with these weird, um, kind of Frankenstein projects where, um, nobody wants to, to remove parts because it's not the fun part to do. It's not the sexy part to do. It's not a shiny new thing. It's going back and looking at the old processes. Um, and I think anyone that works in municipal government has worked on these kinds of things. So the idea with being a chief on planner. Originally I was thinking of it as like one role in the city. And then I started realizing it's probably something we can all do in whatever job we have, which is to just kind of look at the systems and processes that we even work with on a very, um, specific scale to our departments and figure out how we can kind of relook at them and realign them so that we can get rid of some of the detritus that slows us down.
Olivia: (04:11)
The no crying in public parks just doesn't seem very pandemic friendly, super off.
Denis: (04:20)
How are you supposed to have a pipe band if you're only allowed one Piper in Victoria? I guess there's no bands.
Olivia: (04:29)
Oh, we could do a whole episode on weird bylaws and municipalities I think. There's a whole list. What a really helpful starting point and telling us a little bit about what a chief unplanner is. I think it's a great concept personally, especially as we consider the state of municipal government systems and all of these outdated bylaws that you've mentioned as well. Denis, can you explain to us how this ties into current municipal structures?
Denis: (04:55)
It's interesting. Cause that's, you know, trying to say that there might be a solid definition of what is a municipal structure. It's interesting though, because I think the idea of a blueprint for what is the most effective engaging participatory, municipal government is constantly being rewritten. And that is one of the benefits of positions that you can have within the city to help implement those changes in that evolution. I mean, government will always be in a state of change and growth, whether that be slower, fast, and particular pieces, this, there are services that governments offer like, you know, public works and water in particular types of services. But we're also finding there's an evolution on what the services that a government should offer. So we see new ones arising too, like, and especially in the digital sphere. What's different too, is the nature of how maybe, um, collaboration between different groups within government.
Denis: (05:57)
So we're seeing a huge increase in that, on things that maybe used to be maybe an isolated service that one division or one department within a government would like a transportation department would offer, um, seeing the natural connections, or maybe they're not always natural, but like opportunities for collaboration and transformation between multiple groups within a city. I think the other big piece around municipal structures that we see is a larger inclusion of embedding the public into the governance of the city. So there are ways through a city council or a deputation type process that people can engage with government, but we're presently looking at new advanced ways of either co-collaborating alongside the public or facilitating public engagement. I think that that's really an interesting space to explore that helps us look at how we operate as a city in a different way.
Anthea: (06:52)
And if I could just build on that a little bit as well, there's also the public expectations now that, um, again, particularly with digital, we're so used to being able to interact on a continual basis. We have so many ways that we are just in the public in terms of interacting digitally with other other humans, whether it's work or, or friends or family. And I think that as we have new people moving into the municipal governments as well, they're bringing in the expectations as well that these systems will be in place and all of the collaboration, communication, um, the more agility, uh, of changing systems. And so I think that these kinds of things are, are combining and, and really creating some interesting spaces in governments.
Olivia: (07:37)
Now that we set the stage. What are some tools that you think folks can start using to unplan? Can anyone start on planning? Can anyone do it in a local government?
Anthea: (07:47)
I think everyone can unplan. I mean, I think we can all probably list a bunch of things that frustrate us, which is sometimes a good place to start. think some sort of human centered design and kind of systems thinking if those are possibilities within your workplace or things you might want to look more into, they're kind of great places to start with in terms of just really trying to figure out what you're actually trying to do and who it's for. And while those seem like very basic questions, I think sometimes we, we forget to ask those questions in government projects. And I think just going back to those basics can be really important.
Denis: (08:24)
I think at that point too, the, the idea of a huge push towards service design or human centered design methodologies within government really allows for, in some cases, maybe the first times of looking at processes within the city with multiple collaborators, from cradle to grave, you know, there's a full process and lots of times we see ourselves, you know, embedded in one part of what is a large process and maybe not what's upstream or downstream for you. So being able to have that viewpoint of seeing all of the pieces at once and using kind of design artifacts, like experience maps, to be able to showcase that in an effective way that the different stakeholders or collaborators in a process, um, I think that's been very beneficial to helping identify what are areas that can be proactively changed.
Olivia: (09:17)
So you've mentioned a lot of really notable elements in local government innovation, thinking about systems, thinking about human centered design as well. It'd be really great if you could share some concrete examples of unplanning and practice and how these all tie together.
Anthea: (09:32)
Sure. One example would be workshops that I call, um, tip to tail workshops, which is really just bringing everybody into the process. So at the city of Mississauga, we were working on implementing a laptop lending program through our libraries. As with every city, there's a big digital divide. And we were really excited about this project because we thought it was really important and is really important, particularly during the pandemic. Um, but it really brought together very diverse parts of the city and it brought some of the ways of working really into a bit of a clash. So for example, this idea of really trusting the public with these expensive computers and the security and all of those things, which is what, you know, I mean, IT is great at that.
Anthea: (10:20)
And there's lots of times where we need their eye on, on what is secure and, uh, what is safe and what follows, you know, freedom of information laws, and all of those things, all very good things. But was a bit of a clash to this idea of people in the community really need these computers, so their kids can go to school, so they can work from home. And there was also a data sticks that go along with it as well for people that can't afford data. So we, we kept kind of struggling on these points and we couldn't quite push through. We developed a workshop where we had, um, everybody from the person in the library who would sign out the laptops, um, and then all the way through the whole process. So people from IT, people from the library, people from, um, our procurement people from our legal team, uh, people from our clerks, uh, like everybody in the same space and we worked through the whole process so that everybody could see what the need was. My preference would have been to also have members of the public there as well, so that, so that the full team could really see, um, both the need and the expectations of the public that were working there.
Anthea: (11:23)
But it was really helpful for everyone to kind of understand the role of everyone else and the goals of everyone else on the team. So that these kinds of traditional ways of working, uh, there was a lot of like, but this is how we always do it. And this could allow everyone to see how the whole process would work. And it was, it was fairly successful for us to be able to actually bring everyone together and to get everyone to again, think about like, what are the goals and who is this for? And like, if someone was sticking, is it something that is, um, something that we have to do or something we're just used to doing? Uh, so it was a really good process for us to go through.
Olivia: (12:00)
And just as a follow-up in that project that you were working on, uh, obviously you were the chief unplanner or in that process, really breaking down silos and bringing folks together. What were some of the barriers that you encountered when you put on this chief unplanner hat in that process?
Anthea: (12:16)
Honestly, I think the biggest struggle was just getting people out of their usual ways of doing things. Um, I think that there's a lot of uncomfortableness with getting people to, to work a little differently and to take some risks. So Ottawa has done this for a while. They actually hand out hundreds of computers at a time and they're fine. Um, humans are more trustworthy than I think we give them credit for sometimes, which is wonderful. So I think that there was kind of pushing through those too, just very, um, uh, the thing that, you know, really got stuck on both, this is how it's done and, um, this is how we've always done it, and we need to let go and, and risk a little bit and try a little bit. It wasn't easy and it did require finding some champions at high levels that just kind of pushed it through at certain points, um, and really kind of trying to figure out when to kind of manage the relationships and when to just find people that could help us just get to the next stage. So it was quite a long process, but I think we all learned a lot.
Denis: (13:19)
One example, that, that comes to mind for me. It was my first job within the city was working in user experience. So the city had just created a 311 system. So this is a one stop kind of access. One phone call, one online service to engage with the city, you know, multiple departments. So you don't have to remember like what the phone number was for a particular group. And part of that job was looking at processes that they were offering over the phone. So for instance, if your garbage wasn't picked up, um, you can call into this number and say, Hey, you know, you missed the garbage pickup and they'd walk you through like a series of questions and then send out a service request to have the garbage picked up. So part of our job was to re envision that but how would it work on online? And initially I think the thoughts were, Hey, there's an established process here. You know, there's like, step one, step two, step three, you ask question one, then you ask question two.
Denis: (14:13)
Ta-da, you reached the end and we can trigger an online service request version of it. But what we quickly found out was, yeah, they didn't really translate the same way. Um, when you're on the phone with somebody, you can have a conversation. The person can ask clarifying questions. Online, it isn't exactly the same. So when we presented the same questions online? Uh, people thought the form was a trap. I mean, they thought it was a trick. They thought it was created to, uh, invalidate their service request. Um, and to their credit. I mean, the way the questions were positioned, it, it certainly did feel like that, you know, so they would, you know, have a question like, uh, did your garbage contain household hazardous waste?
Denis: (14:56)
And one thing that we did to help showcase the change, um, or, you know, to create a positive move forward was we started videotaping, you know, regular people of all ages and demographics trying to do this process. Classic user experience testing. I would showcase a video of a gentleman filling out this form and saying, and then I'm asking him the question, what did you think would happen if you put it contained household hazardous waste? And he said, well, then the city would send a different truck. And I thought, wow, this is like, so the individual is so positively, like solutions oriented that they thought on our side. But the reality is he'd send that, you know, submission through and it would be like canceled. It would be invalidated because you're not allowed to put a household hazardous waste in your garbage.
Denis: (15:39)
One key piece was showcasing real people trying to do a process. Has really demonstrated like huge effect because sometimes we assume a process is easy or we assume that the steps are straightforward or the information is presented at a particular way, but we found that showcasing those videos to our senior executives or our champions enabled us to really convince people or change their mind around re-inventing or blowing up the process and rebuilding it in a different way.
Anthea: (16:12)
And to build on that a little as well. I think there's also some phrases you can start to look for. So when you start to say, well, and then the public will, why would they do that? They may do that. They may not do that. We have no idea. I mean, there's so many projects where they're so internally built that it's based on, well, my daughter said this, or, you know, this is how we've always done it, or this is how it's supposed to work. The city of Mississauga has been going through quite a massive website, uh, overhaul. And I know the team that worked on that, they, they were quite surprised they've done a ton of, of, um, user, working with the public on, on really designing it so that it's the best use for them. So really human centered design for that. And they found that, you know, a lot of language that we use is not what the public uses. A lot of the tabs we had made no sense at all to the people that were using it. And they've been shocked through the whole process, just learning and learning and learning what the actual, um, understanding and use of these tools is.
Olivia: (17:17)
And just to build on that, we had a quick chat Anthea a little bit earlier on, around the bias that some people have for adding rather than subtracting when problem solving, which I think that directly ties into what you just shared. Can you elaborate a little bit more?
Anthea: (17:32)
Sure. I was actually reading recently an article in scientific America, which was pretty fantastic. And it was talking about how they've realized that humans have these cognitive biases towards addition rather than subtraction. They did a series of tests withLego and other things to see how people would solve problems with these, these Lego pieces. And they found that almost every time people would add, uh, extra pieces to solve the problem rather than taking anything away. And then they started adding in some extra layers around, um, you know, cost and they said, oh, well, it will cost you for every piece you add. And when they started adding in that other option of, of that, you could take things away. Then people started to build differently, but almost every time they, they automatically added. Um, and one of the other examples they cited was around a children's bikes and how, uh, they used to add training wheels. And that was just the standard you add training wheels. But then when they started thinking about what the goal of a training bike was, it was really around kids gaining balance and gaining use to the, the balance and the movement of the bike.
Anthea: (18:38)
And so now mostly when you see small children, they have these bikes with no, um, uh, pedals on them at all, and they zip around that way. And that's their training to the next level of bike, but it took probably hundreds of years of people only maybe a hundred years of people on bikes with training wheels to kind of rethink that process because it just, wasn't the natural one to think, well, what can we take away? And that's probably another great question to, to start with, especially if it's a legacy project or system that's already in place is, you know, what can we remove from this?
Anthea: (19:09)
And what, what bylaws can we take away? What people can we remove from this process as someone else in the city already doing this, and can we just work with them? And it can be minor as well. They don't all need to be massive changes. Small changes can make a huge, a huge difference.
Olivia: (19:25)
What are some of the barriers for folks actually self appoint themselves as chief unplanners?
Denis: (19:30)
It's always very important to have an executive champion. I mean, somebody that can create a wedge for you within the organization or help push your initiative or idea forward or open doors for you to be able to proclaim the benefits that will be achieved if you take a particular direction. I mean, not enough can be said about that and not having an executive champion, um, is difficult, but it's not impossible without one. I think some of the difficulties you can have to, you know, acquainting yourself as chief planner, uh, or a chief planner I should say is it's critically time. More and more, um, effort is being put on cutting out redundancy and being able to be as effective as possible. I think some of the things we've noted around unplanning is you start to, especially with the subtractive versus additive, this piece is, as you can start to whittle away, make processes more efficient, it does alleviate time. And hopefully you can utilize that time to, you know, build further efficiencies on top of it, do more unplanning activities. So if there is a mandate or possibility to see what comes out positive from an unplanning exercise and then continually build upon those efficiencies to have more time and do more unplanning, um, I think that that's a huge win, but, you know, oftentimes that's not the specific goal. And so that in itself could be a bit of a barrier.
Anthea: (20:57)
I would agree. And I think as well, I think when you're doing these kinds of processes, they often feel time consuming upfront. And I think changing that idea of when and how you're spending time is really, really difficult. We're sort of used to saying, okay, here's the idea, here's the project plan and we're just going to go. And when you say, well, we're going to take some time, we're going to ask some annoying questions. We're going to maybe bring the public in. And, and they're going to tell us something that was not part of the original plan. It does feel a little clunkier, especially when you're not used to that process. Um, and so I think that it's something I'm continually learning how to do, which is how to, um, kind of negotiate that extra time.
Anthea: (21:39)
So that later on you can remove these barriers. And particularly it might not actually even be the project itself, it's it's systems around the project that you're changing. And often I find that a lot of the things that are inefficient are actually not really named. It's not about really spending any more money. It's not necessarily, I mean, sometimes it is, but not necessarily about spending more money or someone's specific job. It's actually often the stuff that we kind of do thoughtlessly that can take up so much time and we don't even realize how much time it's taking up. I think that those can be frustrating to explain to people when you're trying to kind of create those processes. Um, I mean, I think there's ways to do it in very small ways with your own work and with the hope of doing it in bigger ways as you can kind of prove it, but that can also take time as well, which can be a bit exhausting.
Olivia: (22:33)
Shifting gears a bit. What are the outcomes you've seen materialize when an unplanning approach has been adopted in the various municipalities you've worked with?
Denis: (22:42)
I think one of the really big benefits that we saw with the open data program in the city of Toronto was by taking an approach of being very transparent in the processes that we had, particularly in the development of our four year strategic plan around open data and ensuring that that was something that was co-developed alongside the public, we started to see it happen in the, like I think Anthea talks about the tip to tail workshops. We also did something quite similar and having the public involved in that at the same time that we brought in city staff, one of the things we did was ensure that nobody wore name tags to identify who you were. And so we started to realize at the end of sessions, people couldn't identify who was a member of the public, or who was a member of the city, and started to realize they were asking for the same things, you know, they were promoting for the same amount of changes.
Denis: (23:35)
And it started to really turn things around for our program, um, to be much more collaborative and positive and supportive of the public to the, to the fact that, you know, we put public advisory groups together to help us, you know, govern and shape what our strategic plan ended up. And by the time that we did got the stage of, uh, council approval, uh, there were members of the public that stayed to do a deputation for 12 hours because they were waiting for the agenda item to come up, um, just to advocate on our behalf. And that made a really big difference. Uh, one in just, you know, highlighting that the program wasn't something that we were just trying to do ourselves within the city, but, um, make positive change alongside members of the community. So the real tangential benefit, I think that we had from like having an effective strategy one for our program within the city, but also that journey started and will continue alongside the public in a really positive fashion. And, um, that's something you can't really buy, you have to, you have to invest the time into fostering and creating that environment.
Anthea: (24:46)
Yeah. I've seen that as well. It's kind of amazing to watch and especially for teams that aren't usually public facing, um, having members from IT that are usually their service groups or other, other groups within the city actually work with the public was you can just watch them sort of transform on the spot. And it's kind of incredible to watch because one person I spoke to had said they had never actually met an end user of one of their products and it was such a shock to them to actually be able to kind of comprehend that the public was their end user. Uh, so that was kind of an amazing thing to see. Um, and then I think the other thing is just even internally like this, the, it really creates a different sense of collaboration. Um, when you have again, different groups that are in a room talking through a process that they, they would never, they would usually hand it off to another group, but being in the same room and realizing how much expertise is within the city how many great conversations they can have now, they've sort of met colleagues from other departments that they can continue to work with.
Anthea: (25:52)
I mean, just really that kind of human to humanness in all of the situations and that kind of understanding the expertise of the staff, understanding the expertise of the public, um, really you can watch people kind of change and it doesn't take that long for them to kind of start to, to get that, that concept that you know, where, um, that the government and the public can work much more closely together in these ways. And then internally we can create different kinds of systems where, where it's a little less hierarchical and more expertise based. It's pretty wonderful to see. I mean, that's the environment I want to work in. So being able to create the environment you want to work in is also kind of a bonus as well.
Olivia: (26:33)
Sounds like a big part of the planning process is actually democratizing the inner workings of a city, which is pretty exciting and just really always bringing in the public that you're looking to serve the center of everything that you do. So really exciting stuff. What final advice would you give to other local government practitioners that are looking to do some unplanning for the very first time?
Anthea: (26:55)
That's a very good question. Honestly I'd say just start anywhere. It's one of those things do what you can with what you've got, you know, like, just start, I think that, um, sometimes the other thing that we might do in government is sort of over-plan a little sometimes. And so maybe just, you know, just find something small, um, whatever project you're working on now, see, you know, start to ask those questions and start to see where you can, um, start to unplan. What's there start to find the other people in your organization that think the same as you, cause that's also, uh, helps to be able to kind of band together and work together on these things. And just keep in mind what you're trying to do in the end.
Olivia: (27:38)
It sounds like unplanning is also a little bit about fighting your natural urges as a public servant.
Denis: (27:48)
I mean certainly what Anthea's saying is around, you know, if you have a passion for something or you've identified, you know, Hey, there's an improvement that can be me in this piece. There are going to be other people who share that same view and you finding each other is really great. And it will help catalyze moving things forward. When we talk about the tools that are required or like, um, how to look at processes or the service design piece, I think, you know, something I've noticed is really helpful is looking at, you know, T-shaped teams or T-shaped individuals on your team. So you might have a core skillset, but identifying people who are, you know, or have a very level of interest on something. So you could be like, uh, a technical program or a systems development specialist where you're also really interested maybe in design thinking or UX or like policy for in some cases, and that really helps cohesion with the team, but it also helps with empathy of understanding the other pieces of the process maybe that you're not involved with and like, you know, the challenges, the pain points.
Denis: (28:49)
So the opportunities there, um, particularly when it's a process where one group is handing off the step to the next group, if you have a vested interest in the success of the first step before it comes over to you and you understand it and you invest some time thinking about it and how you can improve, you know, that's good for you. That's good for them. And that's good for the process in general. Um, another thing that we've noticed is where you can, you know, as much as possible, you want to involve the people who will be affected by the change in the process. You know, not just in a consultation at the beginning of the, Hey, you know, we're thinking about what it is you do, why don't you tell us what all the problems are, and we will work towards a solution, but build them into like, alright, well, here are the first ideas for a prototype.
Denis: (29:33)
Here's the process, but we're just handing each other a piece of paper, like get them involved as much as possible because they really need to embrace and own it if it's going to be successful. And, um, another example that we've seen as part of that is whenever you do think you have like the proof of concept of a new process technology or anything in place, run it in parallel alongside the existing process, with the same people with the frontline don't just flip the switch, run it in parallel. Um, so they can see it and feel how it's like different and improved versus, you know, the way they used to do it. Um, we found that those are really beneficial in trying to make a change a success.
Anthea: (30:14)
And if I could just add, cause I heard it in your voice, and I know it's something I follow a lot, which is just also be very curious, just be very curious about how everything works and how everyone works and what they're doing and why they're doing it, and it can lead you down some very interesting paths.
Olivia: (30:31)
That's a great note to remind us all to be a little bit curious in our roles as local government practitioners. We're looking forward to seeing more cities with lots of chief unplanners in the future. Very exciting. Thanks for joining us Anthea and Denis.
Anthea: (30:45)
Thank you very much.
Denis: (30:46)
Thank you.
Lindsay: (30:51)
The function of unplanner enables local governments to engage with residents in a more meaningful way. It also allows internal silo busting by questioning existing processes and challenging them. Local government practitioners can often reduce the volume of inefficient minor tasks that are tied to achieving certain outcomes. I have no doubt, we'll see more cities uncovering their own chief unplanners in the future.
I'm Lindsay Pica-Alfano, and this podcast was produced by Govlaunch the Wiki for local government innovation. You can subscribe to hear more stories like this, wherever you get your podcasts. If you're a local government innovator, we hope you'll help us on our mission to build the largest free resource for local governments globally. You can join to search and contribute to the wiki at govlaunch.com. Thanks for tuning in. We hope to see you next time on the Govlaunch podcast.