Canada
Don Iveson
933,000 (2019)
Susan Coward, Troy Shewchuk, Daryl Croft, Niki Anderson
Improve internal government operations
Service current obligations
Improve resident outcomes
Dedicated funding
Focus on measurement
Dedicated innovation team
a nascent culture of innovation within the municipal administration influenced by the growth of the innovation community around the city
The City of Edmonton has created a human-centered framework for using social innovation to improve urban wellness. Social innovation is about creating and testing solutions to difficult problems and bringing a diverse group of voices together. The City begins with ethnographic research to understand the issues of homelessness and poverty from the perspective of marginalized people. They then brainstorm with the community, fine-tune ideas and form prototype teams with community members and leaders to test concepts based on the feedback of people directly experiencing these challenges. Promising solutions are developed through new and enhanced partnerships.
Along with 50% of cities surveyed, Edmonton does not have an explicit innovation strategy. Similar to 24% of cities surveyed, Edmonton approaches innovation capacity in specific policy areas/domains.
Urban Wellness: Edmonton is using a social innovation approach to answer questions such as "How do we best meet the needs of people who are highly marginalized?", "How do we support thriving communities?", "How do we plan wellness services that consider the cumulative effects on neighborhoods and community?"
Internal service delivery: The City is also using human-centered design in their operational services to understand what customers are trying to accomplish, the pain-points of their experience, and redesign the internal service delivery.
Although Edmonton does not have a formal innovation team, the city has policy-specific and business area specific innovation leads who lead project teams in specific areas of business focusing on long-term re-thinking.
Edmonton’s innovation work is sprinkled throughout the municipality. Although Edmonton does not have a formal innovation team, the city has innovation leads focusing on long-term rethinking of specific policy and business areas.
Taking risks or testing new ideas
Data-driven analytics/public data management
Engaging residents in new ways
Developing new solutions based on digital technologies
Organizational change within the municipality
Human-centered design
Rethinking your city’s approach to financing partnerships
Like 81% of cities surveyed, Edmonton has dedicated funding to support innovation capacity.
Similar to 61% of participating cities in the 2020 survey, Edmonton's funding for innovation capacity is also directed towards training staff and building capacity*. The innovation team in urban wellness hosts and supports ecosystem-building activities including developing the capacity of community-based innovation coaches, funding workshops with social innovation and systemic design practitioners in the community (e.g., equity-centered community design).
*"Training staff and building capacity" is not an option in the 2018 survey, while "Launching or sustaining a project" is not an option in the 2020 survey.
Edmonton has developed partnerships to promote innovation capacity with other public agencies, private firms, not-for-profit organizations, and city residents/resident associations.
To improve data use, the city has also developed data partnerships with private philanthropy, not-for-profit agencies, academia and think tanks, to collect and analyze data, as well as with other cities.