Eliza Erickson has a formula for making innovation happen in the notoriously bureaucratic public sector.
“[Innovation] focuses much more on these small, incremental tweaks that I think result in really big impact for both internal and external users.”
Eliza Erickson, the office of governor Josh Shapiro
Erickson, who works for Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as director of permit, license and certification innovation, has led both city- and state-level initiatives to embed innovation into everyday processes. She has developed a simple mantra:
People, place and process improvements make innovation possible.
“You need to have people who know how to think innovatively about ideas. You need to have places that facilitate innovation,” Erickson said about the method she developed alongside former Director of Innovation at the City of Philadelphia, Andrew Buss, “and you need to have processes that allow you to … implement, scale, evaluate and then replicate those new innovations.”
Erickson pointed to a flower reuse program in the City of Philadelphia as one example when she joined the Innovation Leaders Speaker Series hosted by Technical.ly and Temple University Entrepreneurship Academy Director Geoff DiMasi,.
Instead of throwing away hundreds of flowers after they bloomed, a pilot by the Philadelphia Parks and Recreation Department reused tulip bulbs to be planted the following season. It was a small process change that reduced waste without requiring new technology or major funding.
Many of the projects Erickson works on — including what she’s doing now through the commonwealth Permit Accelerator program — focus less on visible pilots and more on the internal systems that slow government work down.
For example, the Department of Labor and Industry’s Office of Unemployment Compensation (UC) Tax Services joined the accelerator to improve how clearance certificates, or documents confirming a company is up to date on its financial obligations to the commonwealth, are issued to closing businesses.
The process relied on long email chains, spreadsheets and multiple office handoffs, each requiring manual review. Today, it runs through a new workflow inside the UC Management System, giving staff one searchable place to manage the entire request.
Processing time went down, the review process became more consistent and certificates go out more quickly, according to Erickson.
“[Innovation] focuses much more on these small, incremental tweaks that I think result in really big impact for both internal and external users,” Erickson said, “but more often than not, are not like bright, shiny, new things.”
People: An innovation mindset
Innovation depends as much on people as it does on policy or technology, Erickson believes.
“Create a culture where people from all different departments are coming together and are thinking freely and creatively,” she said.
Building that mindset means giving employees space to try new approaches, collaborate across teams and rethink routines that may have existed for decades.
The goal, she said, is to make problem-solving part of everyday work rather than something reserved for special projects.
Place: Where creativity happens
It’s easier to generate new ideas when the environment encourages conversation, experimentation and collaboration instead of formality, Erickson said.
During her nearly nine years with the City of Philadelphia, that idea led to the creation of the Innovation Lab inside the Municipal Services Building. The workspace is designed to help small groups gather, move furniture around, sketch ideas and work through problems together.
At the time, even having movable tables and flexible meeting space was unusual in government offices, according to Erickson, but the goal was to make the room feel different enough that people approached their work differently, too.
Process: Tracking and evaluating progress
Good ideas alone aren’t enough, Erickson said. Without a process to collect, test and evaluate them, most innovation efforts stall out before they make a real impact.
That’s why much of the work in the state accelerator focuses on building systems that make improvement repeatable, from documenting workflows to measuring how long routine tasks actually take.
By mapping out what exists and how each step works, teams can identify bottlenecks, test changes and scale what works instead of starting over each time.
“The goal was learning for the sake of learning,” Erickson said, “and create a community of interested and invested employees across city government who wanted to learn these skills and really wanted to, then, do something with them.”
