Culture of Innovation

When it comes to changing the culture at federal agencies to support more innovation, it appears as though federal managers could learn a lot from the example being set at the Veterans Affairs Department.

At an event on Tuesday evening at the Partnership for Public Service, VA Chief Information Officer Roger Baker and VA Chief Technology Officer Peter Levin said that three changes must take place at an agency to make innovation possible: cultural change, which is the hardest; infrastructural change, which is the easiest; and process change. But Levin said even the cultural change turned out to be easier than expected, in part because employees responded in such large numbers to innovation initiatives and contests. In the two idea contests VA has run thus far, more than 50,000 VA employees have submitted more than 10,000 new ideas, he said.

"We're not really doing this for the ideas; they're great and they'll make a difference," Levin said. "But we want employees to feel empowered."

The other half of the equation has been revving up employees' courage to innovate, even if the possibility for failure exists, Baker said. As a result, the IT department has developed a "red flag process," in which managers alert their supervisors via e-mail if they have problems with a project that they can't solve, he said. "In the environment we're creating, failure in a transparent mode is still failure, but it's not a negative thing," Baker said. "If you're not failing, you're not trying. We're holding people accountable for it. If your project is failing and I don't have an e-mail that says 'red flag,' there's a problem."

Still, Baker and Levin advised that innovation must have the support of management to be successful. In moving to make the culture change, they recommended that federal workers choose the right boss, take risks and fail fast. "I think everything we're doing is something every other federal agency could do if they set their minds to do those things," Baker said. "Good employees, good ideas, good political appointees -- a lot of it is setting the mindset that we're going to go do this and spend four years pursuing it, and if we don't succeed at least we tried."