As part of Entrepreneurs’ Week 2017, IPAA SA hosted a forum to showcase examples of intrapreneurship in the South Australian public sector, and to explore emerging trends and challenges for achieving change, improving coordination and facilitating innovation.

Attendees gained insight into the role of intrapreneurs in pushing government forward, and were inspired by and learned from some successful SA-based initiatives.

The forum featured thinking from leading practitioners in innovation. Speakers included:

• Suzie Sosa, Co-Founder and CEO of Verb
• Dr Gemma Carey, NHMRC Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer, UNSW Canberra
• Dr Kristin Alford, Director of MOD. at the University of South Australia.
• Tom Moore, Co-Founder and Managing Director, WithYouWithMe
• Elosie Burge, Partner and Design Strategist, Portable
• Erma Ranieri, Commissioner for Public Sector Employment
• Professor John Spoehr, Director of the Australian Industrial Transformation Institute at Flinders University
• Professor Eddie Blass, Founder and CEO of Conesol
• Thomas Sadowski, Director of Conesol
• Cezanne Green, Director, Secondary Learners, Department of Education and Child Development
• Deb O’Riley, Director, Adelaide Botanic High School, Department of Education and Child Development
• Matthew Anderson, Co-Founder, Social Capital
• Kirk Drage, Co- Founder, LeapSheep
• Dr Fiona Buick, Lecturer in Public Sector Management, UNSW Canberra

IPAA SA has placed a donation to the feedback survey’s most popular charity of choice, Cancer Council Australia. Thank you to those who participated. Videos and slides will be available soon.

View the live conversation on social media by visiting the hashtag #Intra2017 #EWeek2017. You can find us on Twitter @IPAASA and Facebook @IPAASouthAustralia.

Climbing out of the political abyss.
Australia is in a political abyss. How do we climb out of it? Do we need a ‘Courage Party’ to address major long term issues, such as refugees, climate change and taxation?

In October of 2016 we heard from Professor Barry Jones as he delivered the annual oration.

Listen to the oration here.

The IPAA 2016 National Conference was a provocative look at political, social, and economic reform in Australia. You can watch every plenary session below.

The Office for the Public Sector, along with IPAA, was delighted to present A Level Playing Field – Gender Equality in Leadership Summit, an inaugural event to empower public sector employees to drive inclusive leadership where men and women are equally represented, valued and rewarded.

The program featured:

• Rabia Siddique – hostage survivor, former war crimes prosecutor, international humanitarian and retired British Army officer
• Christine Nixon – Men, Women and Systems “, what needs to be done to achieve equality.
  For quite some time it has been suggested that if we just “fix the women”, or “if the men just stepped up”, or if the HR, recruitment, reward systems worked fairly then all would be solved.
  The presentation will focus on the key changes that need to be made by Men and Women and to the systems they work within.
• a lively debate between public sector leaders including Chief Executives
• presentation on unconscious bias by Male Champion of Change, Martin Parkinson, Secretary, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet
• hands-on leadership development exercises “Keep your brain on the game” with Anna Lee.

Amanda Blair, Co-Chair of the Premier’s Council for Women was the MC for the day.

The new Gender Equality in Leadership Strategy was launched featuring the gender equality hat-trick: Leadership Accountability, an Empowered Workplace and Sustainable Talent Pipeline.

The Institute of Public Administration and the Equal Opportunity Commission hosted the Forum for South Australian executives, managers and supervisors on the 28th August 2015.

The way we work is changing. In recent years there has been a growing appreciation that organisations must respond to these dynamic shifts that are occurring within our society. Traditional patterns of working that involve ‘fixed pace, fixed time’ work no longer serve the current or future needs of the workplace and our society more generally. In light of this, a more flexible approach to working is required.1

The purpose of this Forum was to consider ways to create a more productive, dynamic and flexible public sector workforce that is able to adapt to the future needs of the State Government and the community.

Equal Opportunity Commissioner Anne Gale hosted the Forum and discussed the outcomes of the Flexible Workplace Futures project. Other speakers included the Department of the Premier and Cabinet’s Chief Executive Kym Winter-Dewhurst, who will shared his views on establishing a modern public sector in the context of flexible work, and Dr Eva Balan-Vnuk of Microsoft, who discussed the concept of technology as an enabler of activity-based working. You would also have heared from the Commissioner for Public Sector Employment, Erma Ranieri, who provided an industrial perspective, and Valuer-General Delfina Lanzilli, who discussed the implementation of flexible work at the State Valuation Office.

The Forum will considered strategies for increasing productivity, achieving workplace diversity and modernising the public sector.