Bonnie Shaw: Preparing Councils for the Future as MAV’s Chief Innovator in Residence
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Image provided by Bonnie Shaw
By Daniel Simons
With humanity facing an increasingly vast array of converging challenges, local governments worldwide are racing to reimagine their place in society.
Through research, co-design, and creativity, councils everywhere are dreaming up new policies and projects to help equip their citizens to meet the future head-on.
In an era where rapid change is the only constant, the role of local councils has expanded dramatically.
No longer just service providers, they are becoming key innovators in building resilient, responsive, and thriving communities. With local councils offering more than 100 services, the opportunities for innovation are virtually limitless.
Across the globe, councils are pioneering new ways of delivering services and future-proofing their residents and workers.
Singapore uses the Ask Jamie virtual assistant to answer public queries, councils across NSW are using AI tools to speed up planning approvals, The Canterbury-Bankstown Council is using AI and machine learning to identify risks and early indicators of road wear and tear.
On the less tech, more creative side, councils are embracing social innovations like Repair Cafes, Citizen Assemblies, community-led placemaking, and Better Blocks to build community engagement and foster resilience.
With so much happening across the world, there is no need for councils to go through the painstaking process of starting new initiatives from scratch. Why innovate in isolation when you can find strength and speed by replicating good ideas, and be galvanised by the sense of shared purpose that comes with collaboration?
Bonnie Shaw is the Chief Innovator in Residence at the MAV, where she is dedicated to equipping councils with the tools, resources, and networks necessary to thrive in a complex and uncertain future.
The Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV) represents the interests of Victoria’s 79 local governments. MAVlab – its recently launched innovation arm – focuses on tackling public sector challenges with creative solutions.
Embracing the motto ‘Innovatio pro bono publico’ – innovation for the public good – MAVlab supports and champions local government to successfully navigate the increasingly complex landscape of rapidly evolving technologies, social changes, shifting economies and environmental pressures that local government and communities are facing.
Shaw is a global expert in public sector innovation, known for her work in smart cities and data-driven design.
Her career spans prestigious institutions like NASA, the Obama White House, the Foundation for Young Australians and the City of Melbourne, where she helped launch Australia’s first smart cities office and oversaw Melbourne Knowledge Week.
She also co-founded Place Intelligence, a GeoAI startup that uses big data to inform urban planning, held fellowships at MIT and the Institute for Contemporary Arts in London, and is a Global AI Visionary Award winner.
Shaw’s commitment to resilience extends beyond her role at MAVlab. As a certified Human Potential Coach and co-founder of SHTF SHFT, she also creates data-driven strategies and tools designed to improve human performance and stress management, helping both individuals and organisations ‘scaffold thoughtful and resilient responses to a rapidly changing, volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world.’
Local Peoples sat down with Bonnie Shaw to discuss her extraordinary career, the vision behind MAVlab, and how local government can no longer be thought of as a ‘spectator sport.’
Image provided by MAVlab
Can you tell us a bit about your professional background and how you came to be the ‘Chief Innovator in Residence ’ at the MAV?
I started off training as a landscape architect and urban designer. I actually wanted to design playgrounds and theme parks and zoos. I ended up working in community co-design in very participatory types of design processes in the community and through that, I developed and borrowed a few techniques around engaging people in the design process.
Then my housemates and I built an online game called ‘Snap-Shot-City’ that became something of a viral hit. It was a simultaneous worldwide photographic treasure hunt.
This was before the iPhone and social media, but after Google Maps was launched. We basically created a scavenger hunt of challenges for people, things like shouting from rooftops or being kind to strangers, and then we asked the participants to take photographs, tell a story about the place where the photos were taken, and then upload them onto our map. It became this beautiful, global, collaborative, storytelling project.
From that, I ended up travelling all around the world to speak at conferences and I ran gaming festivals in Amsterdam, New York, and London. It was awesome. The game was really a catalyst for my shift from designing in the built world in collaboration with community to shifting over into doing a lot of digital engagement work.
My business at the time in DC, was doing work with NASA, and I was running a lot of engagement around engaging women in technology careers. Through that I was invited to participate in a whole range of activities and programs with the Obama White House.
I was actually invited to help lead the first hackathon that was ever run at the White House, which was focused around engaging more women in politics.
It was a pretty special time.
On return to Australia, I worked with the Foundation for Young Australians leading programs around youth engagement and social change.
When the City of Melbourne established Australia’s first Smart Cities Team, I joined as the Practice Lead to focus on supporting the city and community to understand, harness and adapt to some of the significant changes brought by emerging technologies.
In that role I was responsible for the startup policy for the city, its smart city strategy, urban data and urban technologies, the innovation district, and a bunch of programs around engagement like Melbourne Knowledge Week, the week-long innovation festival of the city.
Most recently, I have been leading a data analytics startup, working with a range of public sector and commercial clients like Nike and the Asian Development Bank.
I joined the MAV in February of this year – it’s been so great to return to the public sector – it’s like coming home.
Image provided by MAVlab
What is MAVlab and what does it mean to be a ‘Chief Innovator in Residence?
As the Chief Innovator in Residence, a big part of my initial focus has been around trying to understand the need and appropriateness for an innovation function with The Municipal Association of Victoria.
MAV serves 79 municipalities, providing advocacy, policy support, insurance, and procurement services.
Our mission is to support councils and help strengthen the local government sector in Victoria, which we believe is crucial for a robust democracy, especially in the face of enormous challenges facing our communities.
A lot of the challenges on the horizon are novel and complex. We need new ways of thinking about them and we need to be able to respond appropriately, quickly and efficiently.
We did a lot of research to scan what was happening in Australia and across the world in this space and decided that a lab was the right kind of format, and then we launched that in July.
Image provided by MAVlab
How would you describe the main function and focus of MAVlab?
We are focused on understanding shared problems, shared challenges, and shared opportunities that will have application beyond a single municipality. We also want to focus on solutions or interventions that will have outsized impact, where the collective power of multiple councils can make a broader contribution to an outcome. We’re also looking to bake-in capability building into everything we do.
The first thing we did after launching was open up nominations for council workers and innovators to join the MAVlab Innovation Associates Network and that’s already grown to close to 100 members.
We’ve got members of the network working across a broad variety of council functions. We have a strong belief that innovation can and should come from anywhere – not just specific “innovation” roles.
Our aim is to connect people who are thinking a little differently about how to solve these complex challenges. What I’m really excited about is surfacing these great people and projects and practices and giving them a platform.
There is a lot of work in local government when it comes to starting new things. It’s very hard, so if you can identify high-impact new ways of doing things that are already proven and working in a particular context, it makes things a lot easier, faster and cheaper to replicate.
MAVlab is ‘building an innovation practice and collaborative ways of working at scale to support our network of 79 Victorian local governments.’ How do you do that? How do you decide which projects to focus on, and are there any you are running at the moment?
We are building an evidence-based practice – we’re in the process of compiling research and data through a range of engagement programs to understand the significant challenges that can have an outsized impact.
One of our first projects is a partnership with the City of Greater Dandenong where we are looking at the intersection of artificial intelligence and statutory planning. We’re building a broad engagement program for this work – talking to councils about their needs. We’re also bringing in an advisory group of leading experts in planning, artificial intelligence and automation, ethics, regulation, and policy to explore needs and opportunities.
Is your main focus on AI and big data?
Some people have been making that assumption, but no. We will be exploring AI and data, but we’ll also be doing some significant work on the impacts of climate change and the need for adaptation. We’re also looking at how we can increase public participation and foster new types of relationships to help address our collective challenges.
Image provided by MAVlab
The MAVlab innovation talks series kicked off in August. Can you tell us about the first event and your plans for future sessions?
The first talk we held was run in partnership with the Naomi Milgrom Foundation and the Living Cities Forum and was around the theme of ‘connected places’. We had Nathalie de Vries from the architecture practice MVRDV in conversation with Jocelyn Chiew, the director of City Design at the City of Melbourne. It was a fantastic chat about the role of public design and architecture in activating cities and citizens and how provocative design can build community cohesion and support participation in the public realm.
Our future talks will focus on community health & wellbeing, climate futures, future gen, connected places, tomorrow’s infrastructure, local leadership and emerging tech and data practices.
Why is local government so important and how can we make it work better?
Local government is the most porous and adaptable level of government that the community can engage with.
Democracy is not a spectator sport. I think there has been a shift over the past couple of decades in how we see our relationship with government. It has become more transactional, more about what we expect the government to do for us.
We forget that the people in those roles are just people like us who have decided to step up and serve. I think we all need to understand how council works so we can help make it work for all of us. For anyone who is interested in getting involved, MAV recently launched a Stand For Council campaign.
As for the Lab, we’re here to support the work of the MAV, which operates in service of Victorian councils. That language of ‘being in service’ is really important to me because I really believe in public service and I know it is really important to other people I come across in local government – and other levels of government.
That philosophy or mentality of service and contribution and participation is going to be very important when it comes to getting us through some of the big challenges that lie ahead.
I’d really encourage anyone who is working in council in Victoria to learn more about what we are doing and get involved.
For everyone else, find ways to make a contribution to your local council, give feedback on policies and plans, and share your thoughts on projects. I recently gave feedback on a plan for a park in Merri-bek and they included almost all of the items that were suggested by the community.
When councils ask for feedback, they really mean it. They want to hear from the people who live and work in the area. I’d encourage all people to find ways to participate in your community beyond your own little bubble.
You’d be surprised how good it feels.
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