CivTech works as challenge 'scaffolding' to generate greater interest in innovators outside of large corps who dominate the public bidding process. Public sector challenge funds are a well-trodden path, like SBIR in the US and SBRI in UK and Australia. However, these operate in linear, single challenge calls. CivTech set out to prove that running concurrent challenges from across the public sector – health, cyber, transport and environment – develops a more compelling bedrock for change. The cross-pollination of innovation, not just between the 8-11 companies working on their respective challenges but also between challenge sponsors, builds a critical mass and act as a beacon for other change programmes. CivTech has sought to further capitalise on this cross-pollination by developing an intrapreneurship programme for challenge sponsors, sharing the learning the companies receive and building workshops that allow them to bring an entrepreneurial mindset back to their organisations.

CivTech 3.0, launches on 9 October 2018 and will be opened by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Economy and Fair Work. It brings together eleven challenges from: Scottish Natural Heritage, NHS NSS, SG Digital, SG Digital Planning, Scottish Housing Regulator, Scottish Anti-Illicit Trade Group, Young Scot, Glasgow City Council and Stirling Council. The challenges range from asking how young people can start the conversation about mental health to how can we use tech to enhance engagement with the outdoor environment.

In July 2018, 15 months after leaving CivTech, the beta cohort of companies had won contracts worth £1.3m, investment of £1.5m and created 30 full-time employee positions created (excluding founders). In the 3 months since leaving CivTech 2.0, companies have won £135k contracts and created 8 full-time employee positions.

CivTech has now set up an Academy to share our learning internationally, with two deep dives by Victoria State and Polish Governments completed.

Challenge sponsors bring domain expertise, resources and data. The role of citizens in co-production is paramount. Products/services are designed with, not just for them. CivTech has collaborated with 20 different sponsors on 24 challenges – from local government, central government and public bodies. For CivTech 3.0 in 2018 there is a citizen challenge led by young people, and a challenge sponsored by Scotland’s youth engagement organisation YoungScot with co-production with young people.

A challenge example that demonstrates the collaboration: the Scottish EPA submitted a challenge around improving flood-warning capabilities in rural communities. One trader responded with his 3D printed sensor and LED receiver, which was shortlisted through to the accelerator. The Innovation Centre for Sensors provided academic support. The Flood Forum provided extensive community engagement. The whole process delivered a community focussed product far cheaper than conventional systems.

As a pan-public sector tech Accelerator, CivTech is pioneering a fresh approach that has created new pathways for tech SMEs and startups to compete for public sector contracts. To date, 16 out of 18 of our challenge sponsors have continued a contractual relationship with companies post-accelerator, recognising the value of the approach. Companies have won over £2.0m in contracts outwith the programme, creating over 40 FTE jobs with a local economic impact of over £2m/year. Stirling Council made a cost-avoidance of over £1.5m through their challenge.
CivTech 3.0 saw 129 applications from across the UK. 3 successful companies on the accelerator will relocate from London and Bristol. This shows the attraction to move city to be part of a ground-breaking programme. All these figures bode well for future cohorts as we are asked, by both the business community and political community, to scale in location and number of challenges.

As is normal for start-up culture, our initial expectation was that 50% of these projects would fail. Between January to June 2016 we held 146 meetings (twice a week with procurement) across the Scottish public sector to garner interest and collect challenges. We tested the concept with over 200 businesses and went back and forward refining the process before we launched. Finally, after four false starts and ten months passing, we managed to secure premises within the tech incubator CodeBase in Edinburgh.

From our pilot cohort, 8 /9 businesses are still operational. The founder of the 'failure' retrained as a coder and worked for a company in the 2.0 cohort, recycling his knowledge. A challenge failed on 2.0 and we worked with the challenge sponsor to ensure a successful IP transfer. As a result we altered the legals for 3.0 to take this eventuality into account.

All learnings are captured and transfered through regular retrospectives.

Strong leadership from the Director Generals. Acceptance that with innovation comes failure.

Get a mixture of people around the table - public / entrepreneurial / third sectors / academia.

Allow procurement rules (as opposed to laws) to be more flexible.

Push on citizen engagement and interaction.

Immerse public servants in entrepreneurial environments, not just send them on training courses.

Ringfence a small budget and give operational freedom to experiment

Celebrate success

Increasingly we are being asked by governments and public sector organisations both within the UK and around the world about implementing either identical or similar programmes. As a result, we have set up the The CivTech Academy - a structured, comprehensive programme by which the overall methodology and ethos of the CivTech Programme can be passed on to partner organisations. The methodology includes the infrastructure, systems and operating principles that need to be put into place, and the knowledge and knowhow required to successfully operate them.

We are regularly visited by foreign governments. Over the summer we had deep immersions by the Victorian State Government, Australia and the Polish Government’s GovTech team.

On the 1st October 2018 CivVic Labs (civvic.org.au) was launched in Melbourne. The preceding year’s collaboration prompted the Premier of Victoria to write to the First Minister of Scotland “inspired” by CivTech. The letter is attached.

1. Have a compelling mission that people can get behind.
2. Team culture - Underpinning our team is an entrepreneurial culture - the persistence to move forward, resilience to take the flak and urgency to get results.
3. Start today to get lessons tomorrow even if things aren’t perfectly in place.
4. Prepare for failure - it will come - just capture the lessons learnt and act on them.
5. Challenge sponsors need to be sufficiently seeking, curious and daring to try new ways of procurement and delivery and crucially, prepared to spend time to articulate the problem, not predict the solution.
6. Run in cohorts with set fast-moving timescales. This enables comparable shared concurrent learnings, and if a challenge drops or a company fails, there are still sufficient numbers to make it a success - particularly important when trialling new processes, lest a linear single ‘failure’ kybosh appetite and revert the organisation to back to conventional ways.
7. The value of a cohort is multiplied by utilising a colocation collaboration space - this enables the cross-pollination of tech, skills and expertise, not just amongst the companies but also amongst the challenge sponsors.
8. You aren’t going to create public entrepreneurs simply by following an innovative process – but you might just tilt public servants towards that mindset by immersing them in an entrepreneurial environment over six months.
9. Understand the law before you obey the rule/perceived wisdom. The law is often flexible, but we put around it rules that make the execution inflexible and the guidance bears no resemblance to the legislation.
10. Bring together public, private, third sectors, academia, investors and citizen groups where everyone plays a part in a curated manner. Blending these sectors within a studio creates an energy around the delivery of product that is rarely seen in policy making.
11. Put evaluation methodologies in at the start.

“I am so inspired by what I have seen at CivTech. It is truly transformative. It has changed the mindset within procurement and I want to evangelise for this kind of work across the Scottish Government and our agencies. It is a game changer and is disrupting public sector ways of working in the way digital is disrupting the private sector. It is transformative to the point where I want us to revisit our systems to make sure this kind of project can flourish."
Derek Mackay MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Economy and Fair Work,

“I was really inspired when I heard about CivTech, because I saw your agenda doing two things. One is driving innovation within, not just through, the public sector - being daring, being willing to take risks, being willing to invest in your explorative capacity. And the second is really using the power of the digital revolution to improve public services."
Professor Mariana Muzzacato, Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose