Civic Punks

Tokyo was already special. Getting to spend time with Chika Masuda made it even better.

Chika is Head of Intelligence Research at Japan’s Digital Agency, and one of those rare public servants who seems to connect people, ideas, and institutions with real care. In this conversation, we talk about her journey into government, what she has learned from working inside the system, and why relationships matter so much in this field.

We also get into the influence of Christian Bason — someone who has shaped both of our thinking in different ways — and what it means to build a life around public service, curiosity, and making government a little more human.

What does it look like when a city council takes both AI and community engagement seriously — without making either feel like a corporate strategy exercise?

In this episode, I talk with Jared Griffith, a senior leader at Hutt City Council in Greater Wellington, New Zealand. This conversation follows a chat Jared and I had when I was in Wellington a few months ago, where I became really intrigued by two things Hutt City Council is working on.

First, they’ve launched a new community engagement strategy grounded much more deeply in local Indigenous ways of knowing and doing. We talk about what that changes, how it shifts the relationship between council and community, and what it means to engage people with more care and depth.

Second, we get into AI. Hutt City Council has become something of a reference point for other municipalities trying to adopt AI well. And, unsurprisingly, the secret is not really the technology. It is people.

This is a conversation about trust, culture, public service, and what it takes to change how local government works in practice.

And yes, I push Jared a bit too.

Leg two of the Civic Punks World Tour is here.

I’m heading to Europe — with stops in Kyiv, London, Berlin, Tallinn, Helsinki, Copenhagen, and Tbilisi — to look for the people, places, and ideas shaping the future of government.

The heart of the trip is Kyiv. Ukraine feels like one of the most important places in the world to understand democracy, resilience, digital government, trust, and public service under pressure.

I’m also heading to the Creative Bureaucracy Festival in Berlin and the UN Public Service Forum in Tbilisi.

And this episode includes a very lovely Civic Punks first: the project’s first sponsor, Olivia Dorey and The Grace Project, which is exploring how agentic AI can support carers, government, and better public services.

Who should I meet while I’m on the road? And what should I be paying attention to?

Governments around the world are trying to make sense of AI in real time. Some are experimenting, some are regulating, some are cautiously poking it with a stick from a safe distance.

In this episode, our global government innovation panel compares what we are seeing across different countries and systems. We talk about how AI is changing public sector innovation, why digital sovereignty is becoming such a big deal, and what all of this means for the people who actually make government work.

Because the future of government is not just about better tools. It is also about power, trust, capability, and the role of public service itself.

Panelists
Angela Galeano

Futuro Publico

Demos Helsinki

Brian Whittaker

Humans of the Public Service

Luke Cavanaugh 

Interweave

Tony Blair Institute

Links and things mentioned

Innovate US - Is providing AI Training for the government

Diella - Albania's AI Minister, who is actually an AI

Latam-GPT — a Latin American initiative to develop a language model built in the region

Visio - Government of France's sovereign alternative to Microsoft Teams

Making AI Work for the Public: An ALT Perspective by New America

Taking the Pulse of Public Benefits AI: Top 3 Reflections from PBIF’s Summer Open Call by Center for Civic Futures

The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim, George Spafford, and Kevin Behr

DOGE done better by Geoff Mulgan

G7 GovAI Grand Challenge

Civic Punks is starting to come into focus.

In this short solo update, I’m back at Queen’s Park — where I filmed the original launch video — to share where the project is going next.

Over the last few months, I’ve been travelling across East Asia and the Pacific, meeting people, recording conversations, going to events, and trying to understand what the future of government looks like from the ground. Somewhere along the way, the shape of Civic Punks started to get clearer.

The core is still the same: exploring the future of government through the people trying to make it better. But the strategy is getting sharper. The podcast will go deeper with people and their stories. YouTube will focus on ideas, tensions, and field observations. Instagram will become more of a notebook from the road. The newsletter will connect the dots. And LinkedIn will become more of a conversation space.

The goal is simple: more signal, less noise — and more content that feels human, useful, and actually worth spending time with.

I’ve linked the draft content strategy in the show notes. It is still very much a working draft, and I’d love your thoughts.

What would you actually listen to?
Who should Civic Punks be paying attention to?
Where does this community need more signal?

Draft strategy: https://www.notion.so/Content-Strategy-v-3-35295f99cead8016a37ae0e41f53e5a3

Weekly Synthesis: https://civicpunks.substack.com/
Behind the Scenes: https://www.instagram.com/civicpunks/
Big Ideas: https://www.youtube.com/@CivicPunks

Website: https://civicpunks.com/