
PRACTICE MAKES POLICY
This year's Policy Community Conference explored the idea of Practice:
- What are the practices, the skills and mindsets, that support great policy work?
- How do we use these practices to creatively resolve increasingly complex policy challenges?
- What new questions can we ask to transform our practice?
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ABOUT
Why gather?
Intentional in design
Thought for the conference experience we wanted to give
The 2019 Conference offered a variety of immersive learning and development experiences, including field trips, case studies and a Policy Park with reflective practice training, unstructured time and photo exhibit.
We slowed things down and provided a change of pace with fewer plenaries and sessions of varying lengths to allow time for reflection and dynamic discussions.
We also worked to connect the Conference to activities both before and after the event as part of the regular heart-beat of your Community vs being a stand alone event.
Choosing your own adventure

Skills and Mindsets
How we do it: practice A, B...


AGENDA
Registration
Conference Opening
Teaching
Watch the recording
Shifting perspectives: Implementing an Inuit Nunangat policy
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Health Break
Concurrent Sessions

Creating Great Choices (Also available via webcast)
Watch the recording

How Might we Transform Dialogue Through Generative Listening?

How Can We Make Sense of Qualitative Data? Some Insight through Public Engagement

How might we develop policy grounded in human centred design: Case study and practical tools from a Social Lab aimed at new approaches to Economic Immigration in New Brunswick.

The Park

Where is here? The Art of Place Field Trip
Lunch Break
Concurrent Sessions

Language: Revitalizing the language of policy (Also available via webcast)
Watch the recording
Words make (and break) conversations
Conversations nourish (and starve) language
Language creates (and destroys) identity
As a community of practitioners we both think a lot and think a little about the words we use and their impact. But we rarely discuss what language we need when multiple world views mingle, how we want to understand our better selves and what we might be missing in our current interpretation of the world. So how are we doing? Where is the practice of choosing, using and renewing our words taking us? What worlds is it making? What impact does it have on the inner life of policy practitioners? How does it shape our organizational cultures? Where are we stuck and why? Why does this matter? Where are the new possibilities? Why does this matter? Who can help us think about this - help us become wiser?

*12:30 Start
Integrative Thinking Challenge 1

Barn-raising: How to frame problems people can solve

How do we create better outcomes for people? The only framework you need

The Park
Health break
The Clerk in Conversation (Also available via webcast)
Watch the recording
End of Day (Also available via webcast)
Giving and Receiving Advice: Politics and Policy
Registration
Welcome to Day 2 (Also available via webcast)
Watch the recording
Margins are the Majority
Watch the recording
Health Break
Concurrent Sessions

Policy Innovation (Also available via webcast)
Watch the recording

Integrative Thinking Challenge 2

Through the Looking Glass: What Might We Learn From Experiments with Policy in an Innovation Space?

Can you think like a futurist?

The Park

Where is here? The Art of Place Field Trip
Lunch Break
Concurrent Sessions

Digital, ethics and inclusion: why policy practitioners should care? (Also available via webcast)
Watch the recording

*12:30 Start
Integrative Thinking Challenge 3

Storytelling: How might we drive engagement with research and policy?

Who and what do you need to make experiments happen?

The Park
Health break
Remarks (Also available via webcast)
Watch the recording
Trust and Legitimacy
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Reflections
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Policy Community Champions closing remarks
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FEATURED SPEAKERS

Neil Bouwer
Vice President, Canada School of Public Service
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Nadia Duguay
CKX Philanthropy Fellow
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Georgette LeBlanc
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Natan Obed
President, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami
Natan Obed is the President of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the national organization representing Inuit in Canada. He is originally from Nain, Nunatsiavut, and currently lives in Ottawa. For 10 years, he lived in Iqaluit, Nunavut and worked as the director of social and cultural development for Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. (NTI), which represents the rights of Nunavut Inuit. He has devoted his entire professional career to working with Inuit representational organizations to improve the wellbeing of Inuit in Canada.
Photo credit: Hebron JackieDives
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Natan Obed is the President of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the national organization representing Inuit in Canada. He is originally from Nain, Nunatsiavut, and currently lives in Ottawa. For 10 years,...
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Will Prosper
Co-Founder of Montréal-Nord Républik and the Hoodstock Social Forum
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Jennifer Riel
Adjunct Professor, Rotman School of Management
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Malcolm Saulis
Indigenous Elder (Spirit name: Nil na abis)
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Nadine Smith
Global Communications Director, Centre for Public Impact
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Michael Wernick
Clerk of the Privy Council
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Rachel Wernick
Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Employment and Social Development Canada
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PANELISTS

Nitika Agarwal
Nitika Agarwal is a policy maker turned entrepreneur. Previously a senior advisor in UK government, she has led European negotiations on economic and financial policy, including serving as Chief of Staff of the U.K. Ambassador to the EU. She is now Chief Operating Officer at Apolitical - the free peer to peer learning platform for public servants in 140 countries. Apolitical has been named one of the world's most innovative companies for social good.
Talk to me about:
- Entrepreneurship and innovation in policymaking
- Creating vibrant communities of policy makers which bust traditional siloes
- Government partnering with smaller NGOs and startups
- Building an ambitious, mission driven tech company
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Nitika Agarwal is a policy maker turned entrepreneur. Previously a senior advisor in UK government, she has led European negotiations on economic and financial policy, including serving as Chief of...
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Brent Barron
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Rodney Ghali
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Meghan Hellstern
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Leanne Labelle
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Kaili Levesque
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Isabelle Mondou
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Anna Wong
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CONFERENCE-IN-A-BOX
Bringing together colleagues to learn, question and explore
For participants who couldn’t participate in person, or wanted to use exercises with their teams outside the conference, we created a treasure chest of resources, called Conference-in-a-box. In addition to webcasting, some of our content collaborators designed activity kits for groups that they could run on their own, outside of the conference itself. The Conference in a Box, including activity kits and archived webcast videos, remains available year-round.
PHOTO MOMENTS
Here are the winners of our Policy Perspectives contest!
It is important to us that policy practitioners from all across the Community have a chance to participate in the conference. The Policy Perspectives Photo contest invited entries from public servants.
Policy Moments
“Our lives are measured in moments,” say Chip and Dan Heath in their book, The Power of Moments. Moments can make us feel engaged, joyful, and motivated or they can be sorrowful and difficult. They can mark transitions, good or bad, or happen spontaneously. They are also everyday. Some moments are strengthened because they are shared, others are powerful because they come from within ourselves.
So, what makes a policy moment? Who are the people, what are places, issues and different perspectives that shape our understanding of policy moments?
Here are the views and descriptions that were shared. While you’re browsing, consider your perspective and the relationship between objects in the photograph. Is there a particular way of thinking reflected (real or constructed)? How is that point of view influenced by beliefs or lived experiences? Who is in the frame and who is missing? What is the essence of the moment you want to share? What new questions or insights can you bring on the policy practitioners and challenges that are shaping our world?
Aalya Dhananiessa
Transport Canada
This moment captures my visit to Pier 21, which to me, represents the importance of open immigration policy leading to the Immigration and Refugee Pro...
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Abe Greenspoon
Canada School of Public Service
Roborace is the world's first driverless electric racing car. It represents the policy challenges on the horizon for governments to regulate the use o...
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Ahmed Tareq Rashid
Employment and Social Development Canada
I captured this photo in the Senegalese capital Dakar in February 2016, during a workshop on situational analysis of ma...
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Fatima Mawani
Department of National Defence
The Directorate, Gender, Diversity and Inclusion (DGDI) is holding a Visioning workshop, as part of taking a strategic approach to supporting the inte...
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Kayle Hatt
Treasury Board Secretariat
I've submitted a photo of my daughter Delta. When she was born a little more than a year ago, I discovered that the Province of Ontario and the Govern...
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Lucie Seguin
Public Services and Procurement Canada
Developing good policy options = always keeping Parliament + Canadians it represents in perspective

Michelle Fairbrother
Environment and Climate Change Canada
On my first taxi ride as a government employee, my coworker requested our route take us over the Alexandra Bridge to better see the view of the Parlia...
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Pam Turner
Public Health Agency of Canada
Using policy powers for good (and not evil)! This is the little superhero in my life. When he came along, the importance of creating a world that is p...
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Patrick Seguin
Employment and Social Development Canada
My perspective on policy is similar to my perspective on art: each beholder experiences a different view. My experience...
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Sebastian Muermann
Global Affairs Canada
Many people take pictures in parks. While on a holiday, what I believed to be a spontaneous picture of my environs proved to be much more than a light...
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Vanessa Perrin
Western Economic Diversification Canada
I've captured the perspective we take on policy development and analysis at Western Economic Diversification. We at WD are Ottawa's "Window to the Wes...
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