NSW Premier Mike Baird has launched the Premier’s Innovation Initiative, which turns to the wider community to target priority issues and uncover the best creative ideas.
The government will use a competitive selection process to pick out inventive solutions from private and non-government organisations.
The Initiative will focus on 4 priority areas:
- Congestion: reducing traffic in hot spots across Sydney’s roads.
- Social Housing Assets: using innovative solutions to help solve the social housing issues
- Open Data: fast-tracking the release of data sets to maximize value for the community.
- Open Ideas: allowing the public to nominate areas where policy challenges exist, and suggest possible solutions.
The Premier said the initiative is an opportunity for government to engage with businesses and the community to help deliver better services to people of NSW.
He cited the London Ventures program in the UK as an example of how successful this approach could be in NSW.
“We have already seen it work in places like the UK, where the London Ventures program delivered eight projects that have improved public services”, Mr Baird said.
“Currently, government services are delivered by public sector employees, through competitive tendering and via unsolicited proposals – the Innovation Initiative will provide a fourth channel through which we can uncover some of the exciting ideas and technology out there.”
Expressions of interest will open from September.
