Rethinking and rebuilding through innovation: Day One of Government After Shock is focused on helping different organisations, communities and audiences reflect upon the crisis, share experiences, learn from each other, and work through options and ideas on the future of government through bottom-up, participatory conversations. This bottom up structure of conversations has been developed in recognition that every jurisdiction has been forced to try new things and adapt in this year of crisis and complexity, and thus has learnt new things. How can we share and connect those insights to inform how we rethink and rebuild?

This series of events is taking place in a variety of contexts; some events may be concerned with reflecting upon an organisation’s experience of the crisis and considering the implications of that for its future. Other events will be large open discussions involving people participating from around the world. However, all events will be united by their intention to help answer the three Government After Shock questions:

• What do we need to leave behind? What are the things that no longer fit with the world we are heading into, what are the structures and processes that have revealed themselves to be inadequate, unsuited or inappropriate for the world emerging from the crisis? What did the crisis show was no longer appropriate, or what has emerged from or been exacerbated by the crisis that we need to stop doing?
• What do we want to keep? What do we hold dear or value from before or during the crisis that we want to keep or sustain? What things might we cherish but need to adapt to the changed context?
• What should we do differently? What could we do differently given what has been revealed by the crisis? What should we change, what should we experiment with and what should we attempt now?

Events will be combined with some parallel polling and collective intelligence gathering exercises organised by the OECD’s Observatory of Public Sector Innovation.

We want hosts and participants to learn, make sense of, and explore both what has happened through the trauma of this year, and where to go next. This is an exploration of the potential of government and the public sector in your own subject and work area. These experiences will be captured and inform public sector bodies around the world.

Events will be added here as the details are confirmed: some for local audiences and others for a global audience. If you are interested in hosting an event to help explore the future of government, you can find out more here, including an event guide that provides details about putting together an event and links to a community space for potential event hosts to share ideas and questions