Public Sector Podcast

Join Adrian Clutterbuck,Executive Director Strategy and Transformation, Children's Health Queensland Hospital and Health Service as he opens an honest, unpolished account of building an innovation climate at Children's Health Queensland.
At its centre is the Imagination Fund: 303 staff ideas, 20 funded, and a clear lesson that the money was never the point. He shares what worked - an asthma model of care that cut ED returns by 50% on under $30k, and an AI scribe now scaling to 2,000+ clinicians - alongside the harder questions: how you run experiments in systems built for control, who pays for AI at scale, and why leaders need the patience to sit in the messy middle. Permission, it turns out, is scarcer than funding.
Adrian Clutterbuck, Executive Director Strategy and Transformation, Children's Health Queensland Hospital and Health Service
 
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Residents coming to the City of Toronto for one benefit applied for one benefit - re-entering the same details each time, and never learning about the other subsidies they qualified for. This week, Marco Palermo, Director, Human Services Integration & Transformation Social Development, Finance & Administration, City of Toronto describes how Toronto's Human Services Integration Unit flipped it: one universal form, with the system scanning the full program catalogue and proactively recommending what residents are eligible for.
The results: over 33,000 applications since March with virtually no marketing, and 27.8% of residents walked away with more than they came for. This episode unpacks how - starting with two aligned programs, rewriting a 30-year-old policy, and building a foundation that scaled within a month. Sometimes the breakthrough isn't AI. It's being all in on changing the process underneath.
Marco Palermo, Director, Human Services Integration & Transformation Social Development, Finance & Administration, City of Toronto
 
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Digital connectivity in regional Western Australia remains one of the state's toughest challenges. This week, Sarah McCall, Principal Policy Officer, Office of Digital Government, Department of the Premier and Cabinet and Stephanie Milan, Manager, Regional Digital Solutions, Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development explore what it will take to shift the dial - from infrastructure investment to the priorities that deserve funding first. But connectivity alone isn't the answer: affordability, devices, and digital skills are equally decisive barriers to inclusion.
The conversation also looks at designing digital government for the realities of low bandwidth, outages, and offline use, and why local hubs and community partners are critical enablers of access and capability — pointing to a path built on place-based investment and genuine co-design with regional communities.
Sarah McCall, Principal Policy Officer, Office of Digital Government, Department of the Premier and Cabinet and Stephanie Milan, Manager, Regional Digital Solutions, Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development

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AI delivers the most value when it sharpens human judgment - not when it tries to replace it. This week, Kenneth Kicia, Chief Information Officer, Florida Department of Corrections looks at how leaders can position AI as a practical decision-support layer, helping teams move faster and smarter without handing over responsibility.
Kenneth breaks down which decisions benefit most from AI-assisted insight, how executives set clear guardrails for AI-driven recommendations, and what it takes to keep human accountability front and centre when AI informs outcomes. It also covers how to build trust in AI outputs across teams through clarity, consistency, and the right oversight.
Kenneth Kicia, Chief Information Officer, Florida Department of Corrections
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Montgomery County is treating AI as a practical capacity multiplier for local government—helping teams respond faster, reduce admin burden, and improve outcomes in high-volume services like elections, 911, courts, and human services. 

Join Neil Makhija, Commissioner, Montgomery County as he explores how counties can move beyond interest and pilots into resident-centred implementation that delivers more accurate service at scale. Neil focuses on what it takes to operationalise AI responsibly: targeting use cases with immediate public impact, building governance and guardrails that deploy with the system, being transparent about where AI is used while keeping humans accountable, and proactively managing risks like misinformation, bias, and privacy/security. It also highlights the importance of workforce readiness and measuring outcomes so performance improvements are sustainable.
Neil Makhija, Commissioner, Montgomery County
 
 
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