The Climate Leverage Hiding in Local Government Budgets

On this episode of the Climate Confident podcast, I had the pleasure of speaking with Carina Gormley from the Centre for Public Impact. We delved into the challenges local governments face when implementing climate action plans, particularly the "intention gap" where well-crafted plans struggle to translate into tangible actions due to systemic barriers.

Carina shed light on the complexities within government structures, highlighting how departmental silos can hinder collaboration and impede progress on climate initiatives. We discussed the importance of adopting a systemic approach to climate action, emphasising the need for cross-departmental cooperation and a holistic view that integrates urban planning, public health, and social equity.

We also explored how governments can leverage procurement as a powerful tool to advance climate goals, utilising their buying power to influence market practices and support sustainable solutions. Carina shared insights on the role of technology and AI in aiding decision-makers, especially in processing vast amounts of data to inform policy and action.

Moreover, we touched on the critical role of community engagement and the necessity of reimagining cultural values to effectively address climate change. Carina emphasised that while technology and policy are vital, it's ultimately the people and communities that drive meaningful change.

This conversation offers valuable insights into the intricacies of government operations and the pathways to more effective climate action at the local level. I hope you find it as enlightening as I did.

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Transcript

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Carina Gormley: 0:03

Governments as spenders have this dramatic capacity to support climate action, and they also function as signalers to non public entities. If government is willing to spend on something, investors who are pondering whether or not something is worth putting resources into. You can say, well, if government's interested, there's a stronger chance that this will take.

Tom Raftery: 0:30

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the Climate Confident podcast, the number one podcast showcasing best practices in climate emission reductions and removals. And I'm your host, Tom Raftery. Don't forget to click follow on this podcast in your podcast app of choice to be sure you don't miss any episodes. Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode 187 of the Climate Confident podcast. My name is Tom Raftery. And before we kick off today's show, I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to all of our amazing supporters. Your support has been instrumental in keeping this podcast going. And I'm really grateful for each and every one of you. If you're not already supporter, I'd like to encourage you to consider joining our community of like-minded individuals who are passionate about climate. Supporting the podcast is easy and affordable with options starting as low as just three years or dollars a month. That's less than the cost of a cup of coffee and your support will make a huge difference in helping me keep the show going strong. To become a supporter. Simply click on the support link in the show notes of this, or any episode or visit. Tiny url.com/climate pod. Now in today's episode, I'm talking to Carina Gormley from the Center for Public Impact and in upcoming episodes. I'll be talking to Michael Barnard. We'd be talking about CCUS. Jim Sullivan will be talking about Climate Week. Tyler Burns would be talking about battery storage and professor Valerie Thomas from Georgia tech. So those are in the weeks to come. But as I said, my guest on today's podcast is Carina. Gormley. Carina welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Carina Gormley: 2:13

Thank you so much for having me, Tom. Hi, I'm Carina. I work at the Center for Public Impact, a nonprofit that focuses on engaging and collaborating with government so that they feel the support to engage in continuous learning and experimentation around complex challenges. And I do that within the space of our global climate change initiative. So focusing specifically on climate action.

Tom Raftery: 2:39

Okay. And who are your, do we call them customers?

Carina Gormley: 2:45

Of course, we tend to work primarily in partnership with philanthropic organizations. Of course, it can be often difficult for local governments in particular, who we spend most of our time working with and ideally serving in this role to pay for our services and philanthropic entities like Bloomberg Philanthropies and several others can play a really important role in bridging that gap when it comes to ensuring that governments also see the value in some of the things that we are working on and building towards. Because also, that's not typically part of what governments are doing. Governments are very accustomed to paying for emergency services and these very discreet things that the taxpayer is comfortable with paying for. And governments are always thinking from the perspective of the taxpayer, so they don't want to take that many risks with how they spend and allocate their funds. And we recognize that so often what's really matters is a lot of this upstream investment in terms of working collaboratively, thinking differently about culture, but sometimes it can be hard to do that type of thing. So philanthropy can play a really important role here in providing local governments with the opportunity to see a different way of working and then also garner potentially the support after a little bit of evidence and proof of concept to say, Hey, I think we can invest in this way of working in the future. We also work with the broader ecosystem. So not just necessarily with local governments all the time. There are a lot of different stakeholders who engage directly with local governments or who provide the types of tools and resources that can help support local governments to do their work better. For example, google. org is a partner that we've worked with on several different initiatives and a lot of the work that google. org is doing with other partners and collaborators that are more in the climate tech space can help provide the resources that support decision makers, particularly those in government who are trying to determine what their net zero plans look like, or have the resources to plan for disaster or different types of hazards affecting the community. So. We think about it more from an ecosystem perspective, which I think is a lot of the way that we work generally.

Tom Raftery: 5:05

And what kind of problems are you solving?

Carina Gormley: 5:09

So the one our team is a very interested in is this one of intention gap. Actually, Italy has just published a report on this that's really wonderful. I would recommend it. It's looking at how many cities have created these climate action plans. And they're wonderful well researched, well planned documents of how they're going to go about reaching net zero or improving sustainability in the city, but then often the tools and resources and systems available to cities can make it very difficult to actually do those things. Of course, usually the climate action plan that's drafted for a city is written, researched and published by one department within the city. That doesn't necessarily mean that everybody in the city has had eyes on it or input, or even is cognizant of the fact that a climate action plan has been put into place or that what their role will be once that climate action plan has been published. So once that climate action plan has been published, especially with turnovers, people are coming in, maybe not recognizing that they have this role to play to support reaching net zero as described in the climate action plan. It can make it hard to actually mobilize that climate action plan towards reaching that goal. And that's just talking about the collaboration element of it internally. But of course, there are other challenges around existing tech readiness, regulatory elements, which are sometimes within the control of local governments, but certainly not always. Of course, local governments are also looking at state level and federal level regulations and abiding by those and funding, right? Of course, we saw that a lot of high, capital intensive projects that were set into different goals of local governments and governments broadly were very negatively impacted by supply chain issues during covid. So I think those are the types of technical challenges that can occur around funding, around resources. And then there are also some really important organizational challenges around how you have these really, really large entities, like governments, even at the local level separated into several different departments who already have their hands full with all of the stuff that they're used to working on, then trying to work cross collaboratively, which is usually something that governments have not been designed to do because they're operating rightfully so in a system of checks and balances where everybody is kind of siloed into their own department, working on their own piece of the puzzle. So even introducing a cross collaborative way of working, which is critical for complex issues like climate change, is a whole other hurdle before you even get to the actual activities.

Tom Raftery: 8:10

In the intro call we had, you talked about a systemic approach to climate action. Could you break down what this looks like in practice for our listeners? You know, how do you ensure that various aspects like urbanism, public health, social equity work together effectively?

Carina Gormley: 8:29

Absolutely. So it's one of those things that we hear more and more from people on the ground, people going to climate conferences. They're talking about systems change as being this really fundamental thing that we all need to work on in order to reach our goals of a more sustainable future of reaching net zero. And what that really means is rather than looking at discrete tasks, we need to think about the interactions and of the system as a whole, specifically the way that urbanism might impact public health and not treat and think of those things as separate, isolated entities or problems. They are all connected as part of this large, messy, or some people might call wicked problem that needs to be addressed in a way that means that all the actors are together working towards a solution. I think that's something that again is really difficult oftentimes for local governments to do because they're not accustomed to necessarily consulting with say the public health department on a urban street plan, right? But it's 1 of those things that is really important, particularly as we learn how urban street planning has a real impact on public health, potentially for community members. In many ways local governments operate almost as if they are several different organizations under the same umbrella. So when they're doing, sometimes they have interpersonal relationships with people in different departments, but sometimes they've never talked to anybody in a different department before. And it feels almost like doing external outreach to talk to somebody in a different department. And that is one of the things that can make it hard to necessarily have that quick check in call of like, Hey, we're doing this thing. Like, what's your input? the kind of speed that you need in order to get things to not only happen with intention, but also happen at the pace that's necessary to both meet public needs and then also address global challenges in a timely matter and doing so at scale.

Tom Raftery: 11:16

mm,

Carina Gormley: 11:17

At the same time, local governments have tremendous power in their role to prove what's possible with things like systems change. Because they're small enough entities engaging in a small enough sphere of influence, right, the community, that they can liaise with community members with relative ease, identifying what are the real priorities here and ensuring that they're addressing problems that community members are feeling deeply. And then they can create bold, creative solutions and actually scale those within the context of the small, microcosm of a community that they are helping govern and facilitate in terms of what new actions can look like in the future. So when it comes to systems change, we all struggle to do it because we haven't been necessarily trained to think from the perspective of, Oh, how is this one activity actually related to every single other problem? Not just the problem that I think I'm solving. But the different downstream and upstream challenges that are tied to this, and then what does it mean for me to solve it from that perspective. We're not very good at doing that. Local governments and governments broadly are really for good reason, not well positioned to do that, and yet they are responsible for addressing some of the most complex challenges facing the public. And as stewards of the public good, they need to be thinking about housing. They need to be thinking about public health. They need to be thinking about ensuring that our infrastructure is sufficient to support all of us. And of course, about threats and opportunities like climate change, right? How do we solve a challenge that's affecting health, that's affecting infrastructure, that's affecting mobility, that's, you know, affecting even like truly everything, right? Hospital. We can go on and on. I think that's kind of the point is that all of these things are tied to not everything happening in the private sector as well as the public sector. So the public sector in addressing climate change has to really think differently about how it approaches this challenge in order to do so in a really effective way, and that's hard, and that takes a totally different paradigm. It requires thinking differently about the problem in front of you, and that requires training and having exposure to new ways of working. So incredible power for local governments to be able to learn and see the benefits of it at a local level, right? Because it's not necessarily as monumental a task to do it at a city level compared to doing it at a state or federal level. Right? So they have that power. And then the other thing that's really beneficial from a local government perspective is that other cities look to each other as examples. So when one city does something really effectively, what an incredible way to scale, right? A city says, Hey, that's a great idea. Let's try it out. Clearly they did it and they can come to their city commissioner or their council or their mayor's office and say, look, this worked pretty well for them. There's a plan. There's evidence. Maybe we can give this a try. And then philanthropy or other entities can come in and potentially help co fund that. Or, you know, city commissioners can take it out of their budget if they're really ready and excited about this particular thing. But that also means that the resources to help a way of working in our idea move into not only just the city level, but on a regional level or national or global level is much easier because it's more happening as a, as a movement of people replicating each other's ideas. When we're thinking about systems change, the other piece is that we're not just focusing on getting to net zero as an activity as this goal that we're all moving towards because net zero or not net zero, what it means to get to net zero is not just that we have removed carbon from our way of living. It's that we have fundamentally changed our way of living so that we can achieve this net zero goal. Right? And of course, technology is going to make our current high carbon lifestyles for those of us who are privileged enough to have had a high carbon lifestyle over the last several decades, There are ways of making this more efficient through technology, but certainly we're going to fundamentally reconceptualize what a life well lived looks like, what luxury looks like, what the day to day activities that bring us joy look like, so that it can be in line with the type of future that we need so that we can all thrive on this planet. And that's a really big task. And that's fundamentally about culture. And that's fundamentally about imagining the kind of future that we need in order to be able to meet these goals. So I think that's also part of why systems change is so important. It's because it's not just thinking about how we can all seamlessly work together on activities with a better understanding of how all of these problems are interlinked. It's also about working in collaboration with all of the affiliated stakeholders to collectively imagine a new, a new way of living, a new way of working that everybody can get behind and making that the reality. Because otherwise, we're just adding band aids to what's still fundamentally a challenge of culture that is going to hamstring us from getting to where we need to go. So systems change, which is, again, a process of thinking first about culture and thinking about values and then moving up from there and saying, how does this impact the types of patterns that we have? And then, like, you know, really taking from Donna Lamedo and all of the folks who do amazing research on systems change, how does that then lead to a new way of acting and the events and the outcomes that we see? So I think that's all why that that is why systems change is so very important, particularly when we're talking about complex issues like climate change, because we can't just address it in discrete actions, we need to think about holistically how every action is actually touching upon all the others. And the way that we do that, right, is yes, technology has a really important world role to play and supporting in this and we can talk more about the role that technology has, but ultimately it's people, right? We are, we are only as good as our people and we're only as good as the systems that we have to support our people in doing the work that they do day to day. And that comes from reimagining how people are interacting with one another, reimagining the types of questions that they're asking of one another in order to get work to be what it needs to be. And that's something that can be accomplished through having more of a systems change mindset. And through thinking about how can we focus on learning and growing and changing so that that system becomes this pliable thing that we really need it to be so that even in a context where you want regulations that are firm and are not going to change and be volatile. The playground of public service remains playful and remains movable and dynamic. And I think cities are doing an amazing job of, of getting there and chief innovation officers in a lot of cities in particular are leading the charge towards a much more playful way of thinking about how to provide public service and how to address complex challenges of all types, including climate action and climate change.

Tom Raftery: 20:06

It's gotta be challenging though, I mean, if you're having cities doing things piecemeal, is that not a lot less effective than something being mandated or rolled out from a state or federal level?

Carina Gormley: 20:21

So. I have two answers to this question. The first is that absolutely cities also need to be thinking not just about the boundary of the city that they're in. They also need to be thinking about the regional context, right. Especially in places where you have a lot of commuters or you have infrastructure that is not just existing within the city, but exists beyond it as part of a broader network. So that's another piece that, especially for governments who are not necessarily even used to collaborating internally at this really high rate or pace that helps address all of these complex challenges. If they also then need to collaborate externally with municipalities near them. That can be a whole other challenge. Now, a lot of cities are doing this really effectively and they're part of regional partnerships that are thinking and meeting and planning strategically. That's of course happening. But it's hard. It's hard for all of us to do that in a way that's sufficiently routine so as to ensure that a lot of the issues that should be addressed at the regional level are being addressed at the regional level. It's a lot of matter of investment of time and how do you make sure that the investment of resources and time is happening up front on some of these planning elements so that execution and deployment of a solution is swift and intentional. And of course, I would be remiss not to say that even before that, you need to be engaging communities to really understand what their needs are and a lot of cities are really good at this and a lot of cities can continue to use that work again, because it's not part of the muscle memory of a lot of city governments to do a lot of the active outreach. so much. They're, of course, facilitating and stewarding the needs of the community. And I think when we talk about political will, it's really important to recognize that political will is coming from governance, not being a matter of the government determining the needs of the people. It's government governing the community by listening to what the community wants and saying, okay, I guess there's interest in making that the future of our community. We'll go ahead and set forth the resources, the programs, the infrastructural changes and the regulations to match the direction that people want to move in right. Governments and governors, leaders in government, either from great humility or fear, potentially of political pushback

Tom Raftery: 23:05

Mm hmm.

Carina Gormley: 23:07

aren't going to just unilaterally decide what's best for the community, which is, I think, the role of government in many ways is to not unilaterally decide, but at the

Tom Raftery: 23:16

I'll challenge you on that one.

Carina Gormley: 23:18

Oh, go for it.

Tom Raftery: 23:19

Kathy Hochul.

Carina Gormley: 23:22

Oh yes, of course. I mean, here's the thing right? I'm saying this more from the perspective of How a government or a government leader might look at their role. Now, what we need, often, is for someone in the position of government to recognize the power that they have. And to say, hey, I can see between the lines, and I can engage the right people, and I can continue to incorporate what I'm hearing. But also do so with an understanding that my responsibility is to steward for the public good, and that I have my own perspective here to provide to support real action. So I think that means, right, it's, it's this element of also how you're stewarding power and governments have a lot of power and sometimes it's challenging to know what to do with all of that power. But I think what we've also learned is that when governments invest in learning, learning with community, learning by trying a lot of things out, understanding that things will fail, and then just continuing to experiment, so as to find something that really works, and do so with enough speed. To identify what works well and scale that solution for everybody. That's not typically how governments work, but can ultimately really well serve the public need because it's getting at something that's tailored. And then, of course, other local governments can help address their own capacity issues by diving in and saying, Oh, look, that's a really good idea. Like, maybe we should consider something like that, see if our community would be interested, pilot it, test it, see if it works. Then that's, that's another way of getting at these complex challenges and doing so in a way that honors the role of government, which is to govern the community as the community sees fit, to represent the community as the community wishes to be represented. So, I think that's a lot of it.

Tom Raftery: 25:31

Public procurement has to be a weapon or a tool that cities and governments can use as well when fighting climate. Can you explain, for example, for people listening how governments could leverage their buying power to make a real impact on climate goals? And do you have any lessons learned from cities you've worked with? Yes, absolutely.

Carina Gormley: 25:55

Governments are often incredible stakeholders within the economy. They have, often a lot of resources. Now, of course, they're stewarding those resources very tightly, oftentimes. And local governments don't necessarily have big budgets. So that's an important thing to caveat. But when we're looking at governments broadly, they have a lot of resources to spend on whatever it is they need to spend, right? They can throw millions and billions of dollars at various solutions of a range of types, right? So governments as spenders have this dramatic capacity to support climate action, and they also function as signalers to non public entities. If government is willing to spend on something investors who are pondering whether or not something is worth putting resources into. You can say, well, if government's interested, there's a stronger chance that this will take. So it can mean that really important solutions get the resources that they need to scale at the speed that we need those resources at. Procurement is something that happens where governments right are spending money for developing their own infrastructure, their own office buildings, their own services, and there's a lot of that government needs to spend on not only for the broader public, but for for itself, right? There are a lot of services that governments need to contract and there are a lot of assets that government need built. So they have an incredible power too not to stand up whole economies of environmentally friendly and low carbon resources. So I think that's something that is really important to look at closely is, does the city actually think about its procurement as a tool for getting to climate action and for supporting its local economy to have the space and also the incentive to be more eco friendly, right? That can be really difficult sometimes. Also because procurement rules and regulations can be, you know, hard to change. Like it's good that regulations aren't that easy to change, but it can be difficult in moments when you're trying to move the needle quickly. I think that gets back to this political will issue, or challenge, which is that when regulation should remain pretty stable. We don't want our regulations changing on us all the time. And in some ways, that means that regulation is never quite as bold as we want it to be. But that's usually because it's following the lead of what it sees as being possible, feasible, and of interest from the community, right? They're not going to a government that's doing its job is not going to make an unreasonable regulatory request of its community, unless it's feeling really, really bold. But generally, a government is going to say, Okay, what's possible? What's feasible? We're going to require that everybody do this. So before we make that requirement, we really need to make sure that this is something that can be done, right? That this is something that fits within the bounds of what's possible. And sometimes governments do struggle to collaborate within their own circles, but then also sometimes with the people who are affected by regulation. So that can be a challenge, too, is how do you make sure that you're engaging business leaders and business owners when you're making a regulation that can affect a business, right? So that you can write that in a smart way. That doesn't necessarily happen all the time or to the extent that it needs to, because you're trying to serve very diverse needs all of the time when you're in a government role, and it can be easy to miss a couple, and there are obvious capacity constraints. Governments are responsible for doing oh so much, and often don't have the staffing or necessarily all of the resources they need to do that effectively. So it's something that is an incredible power that can be leveraged in amazing ways too with the support of the private sector and the public sector thinking of more ways to collaborate proactively so that regulations can be real tools for, for good. When it comes to procurement, cities often have a, they might have a procurement office that is responsible for all of the city's procurement efforts. But very quickly, when you start looking at procurement, you realize that it's one of these fascinatingly complex coordinations that involve a lot of training and understanding. And it's interesting because procurement doesn't actually have to be that complex, but it seems like very few people feel like they actually understand it. And it's challenging when every single person in City Hall is likely to touch some procurement at some point because they are going to need pens. They are going to need cleaning services. They might need something more intensive, like a new building. And that means that they're going to need to go through the procurement office to procure those services or those materials. And it already feels so complex in terms of the rules that they need to follow and the pathways. And It often feels like a really long process because you're trying to find the perfect person and do it on a bunch of criteria that the procurement office is largely responsible for in many contexts. I can't speak for all, but in many contexts, this is, this can be how it works. And the city then, in trying to become more eco friendly, that just tacks on this whole other layer of complexity, so it can be really hard to get people excited about green procurement in the city context, because already this process feels long and arduous and complicated and deeply painful for everybody involved because it's trying to decide who, who's going to be the right partner for the procurement of pens, right? So it can feel like a multi month process to figure out who's going to be the pen purveyor is painful for everyone. And I think this is where it really, really matters to do a lot of that internal communication because so often changing the way that we procure involves having people feel like they understand you know, okay, we're doing eco friendly procurement now, what does that mean around how I write up what I need, right? Can I make a little rule that says, hey, I want these to be green? And a lot of the time, because procurement is already so complex and hard to know, people don't know that they can say that, right? Or they don't, they might not be able to in regulatory terms, right? But what does it mean to have people understand the state of procurement in their particular city, the rules and resources that they have available to them to support greener procurement? That is all about having conversations and all about making sure that information is getting from procurement and from the people who are involved in greener procurement out to everybody who's just asking for a set of pens so that they know what's going on and that we can all in a coordinated manner work together to ensure that when governments are spending money on things that they can support their local communities who are community members and small local businesses or large businesses who are really doing their part to make sure that the way that they're providing services is in line with the kind of future that we need.

Tom Raftery: 34:18

Nice. You mentioned technology and you also mentioned how procurement can be a tool, but can technology work as a tool as well? And obviously it can, but if I'm digging into that, I'm just wondering about the the ability of, for example, AI to help. AI is obviously this tool that has really within technology come to the fore in the last, I mean, it's been around for a long time, but it's really come to the fore in the last 18 months. So does AI have a role to play in this space as well?

Carina Gormley: 34:50

Yes, technology has a really important role to play in massively improving efficiency. And I think that's true for our infrastructure, right? Like, we look at the way that insulation improves buildings and the impact that that's having on how our homes are constructed. And I think that's a really lovely combination of technology and regulation working together to create far greater efficiency and improvements for our more sustainable future. But there's also efficiency of information. And particularly as we get back to this point on political will and what leaders feel like they need in order to make the kinds of bold calls that can sometimes be hard for everybody to feel like they can get behind or feel like they can understand or that they're, they're ready to make the sacrifice for having the right evidence can sometimes be really critical so that decision makers feel confident enough to make the bold call or that call that can feel bold right in the context of the community in which they're, they're living, working and supporting. And AI has this, you know, or AI enabled tools have this fantastic capacity to dramatically reduce the processing time involved in In synthesizing massive amounts of information. So there's obviously a lot of information available and governments themselves coordinate the creation of a lot of information, right? We've got governments with government satellites that are collecting and producing tremendous amounts of imagery. We've got census data that right, fallible as it is, is collecting a lot of information about communities and people and economies. We've got just a tremendous wealth of knowledge and insight in the form of data. So I might caveat that data is not the same as knowledge and insight per se. But when decision makers need support in identifying, for example, where are the greatest risks when a hurricane rolls through, who do we need to equip first so that there are the least harms. We can, we can mitigate some of the harms that may come from this. AI has this amazing capacity to look at all kinds of levels of vulnerability, right? And tools like, there are a couple of amazing AI tools out there. The new school has helped produce one that's really fantastic that are looking at multiple hazards at the same time, right? Taking all of this information and allowing people and users to see, okay, here are our hotspots for risk. This is where we should plan first to make sure that if there is a hazard, that these folks are protected because they're the ones that are most in danger of getting hurt, right, in some way or another. Then it gives people the opportunity, potentially, if, if you're working with, folks like The New School who are doing some amazing work on this front, gives you the opportunity to actually look at the layers, investigate yourself. Reestablish what the priorities might be so that you can really make sure that you're making the decision that that's right from your also understanding of where the risks really are, right? If you, if you know, Hey, we actually really need to think more about socioeconomic risk here. You can focus on that specifically and say, Hey, where are the biggest socioeconomic risks? Like, let's look at that layer of data. Let's compile it with a few others that are really important to us. So it gives the capacity to make decisions based on holistic information and then to also curate more specifically. Of course, I would be remiss for not mentioning that AI is very carbon intensive and that's a big challenge too. And a lot of data centers are trying to go renewable, which is hopefully going to really mitigate some of the harms and that AI is only as good as its data and the lack of biases in said data, right? Also that AI isn't a replacement for understanding community needs and getting real information about people and their stories on the ground. But sometimes being able to have these implements that help look at risk can help provide the sort of support for decision makers to say, okay, here's this other view of all of this information that's really labor intensive to analyze. And now that's been done for me. So I can take a look. I can make decisions. And now I can invest the time in going and talking to my community members and saying, Hey, what's really happening? What do you all need? Here's what we're seeing from X, Y, Z data. Does that reflect your really like lived experience in existence? And how can we work together to create a solution that works? So in many ways, AI yes, can support with confidence. It can also give people back time, right? Time that they would have spent manually doing some of that processing to be able to do what humans are really fantastic at, which is engaging with other people and designing innovative, creative solutions to support and communal living, right? And resiliency and mitigating. the impacts of a high carbon lifestyle through bold new approaches. So I think to me, in short, AI's real tool here is one of collating, processing, and making sense of tremendous amounts of very useful data that are often very hard to access. Nice. Nice. And what kind

Tom Raftery: 40:54

of KPIs do you have for measuring success and helping governments, you know, with their journey of continuous improvement? That's a really good question, I think that there

Carina Gormley: 41:08

are a couple of ways that one can look at continuous improvement and thinking about impact through that lens. The first right is oriented on process because it is about outcome. But it's certainly also about process at some point. And sometimes it's like, hey, how it can also involve a lot of internal surveys, right? How is the government working internally? Surveys can help reveal, like, do people talk about feel like they're talking to people in other departments more? Do they have examples of how they've collaborated with other departments more frequently? That kind of information can feel silly to, to look at, but can also give incredible insight, right? Because what if some departments are having an amazing time and really finding it easy to collaborate with other departments and can provide various examples of how those collaborations have led to other outcomes that wouldn't have happened previously? That sort of information is very rich, right? Because then that can become an example for departments that maybe are struggling to do that more or just if anything invites questions of okay so why is this working so well over here and maybe not quite as well on this side of city hall right? Does that make sense is that part of forum or are there other things that we can do to increase the cohesiveness of the way that we're all working together? And I caution this a little bit because we collect a lot of information from our communities, and it's really, really important to establish two way streets and not make it an extractive experience of engagement or feedback seeking or metric seeking. But there is a lot of interesting, or there are a lot of interesting ways that people in local government or people in support of local government can stand up ways to get community feedback. There are some really cool applications that allow you to say where there are problems still right infrastructurally and that information where I can go to city hall and then that can become really helpful quantitative information around how quick are we to respond? What kinds of comments are we getting in terms of the speed at which we respond? How much activity is there on these platforms that are used to increase collaboration between public sector and communities and constituents. So those are some of the ways that we can look at the way that government is interacting with itself to support improved systems and the way that government is working with constituents to improve support of public services. So I think those are two, but obviously the conversation around impact and metrics is incredibly, incredibly dense and complex and exciting because there's just an incredible wealth of opportunities there. But I think one of the, the short answer of it is that it's very important for governments to think about making sense of the information that they have already and to take a little bit of time to do that. And yes, to think about KPIs and metrics, but also always question what the role of those metrics really are. And sometimes there's some very valid ones around budget and allocation and having some proof that things are working in some ways, but I think the willingness to look at also the story that's being told and to think about the relationship between activities and outcomes and focus again upstream on the theory of change and having metrics that reflect those is important, too, especially at a time when there's a lot of information and often a lot of fatigue around either having information collected from you, or them needing to act on that information. Sometimes, that can be the root of mistrust, is when people feel like they're getting information collected from them. And then have no idea what happened with that information, never saw a response. So, as governments think about the point of the information that they're collecting, I think it's really important to be intentional and say, Hey, how can we make sure that if we're asking for information That is really, really clear these are going to be the outcomes. This is part of a collaborative journey that we're going on to make our community a better place, right? Because information shouldn't just be for the sake of information. It should be for the sake of improving the lives of people. Sure. Left

Tom Raftery: 46:11

field question. If you could have any celebrity or fictional character working with you to help governments make the, their relationship with their citizens better, improve their net zero goals, etc. Who would that be? That is a very good

Carina Gormley: 46:34

question. Well, I will say, I've always been rather fond of Calvin and Hobbes since childhood, and I do think that they engage in some really relevant inquiry that brings things into plain speech and gets really deep and profound about what it means to live in community and live in society. And I think their honesty and their willingness to dive into deep questions would be of extreme relevance here.

Tom Raftery: 47:10

Nice, nice, nice. I have a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon book on the bookshelf in the other room there. So, uh, big fan, big fan.

Carina Gormley: 47:19

They're great, aren't they?

Tom Raftery: 47:20

They are phenomenal, phenomenal. We're coming towards the end of the podcast now, Carina. Is there any question I haven't asked that you wish I had or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to be aware of?

Carina Gormley: 47:34

Well, I think it's really important to reiterate that there are so many cities that are doing incredible work and city governments who are doing absolutely fantastic work and within city governments, right? They are not these singular entities. There are a wealth of public servants who are working within city contexts who are probably make making less money than they could applying their skills in other sectors, but who are doing it because they believe in the importance of providing services to the public who are really just people trying to do their jobs as effectively as possible. And that's something that I know, especially in an age where we are all looking at our phones and often feeling a little stuck to them and often a little bit more isolated than maybe we'd like to be. City Hall is usually not that far away and it's an incredible place to engage. And people who are in City Hall are just doing their jobs and trying to do it well, and often I have found, at least in personal experience, even as a young person, just, I remember feeling so much eagerness to just collaborate, right? I'd come in and say, Hey, like, what are you guys thinking on this? And the reception of, Oh, let me tell you what we're doing. Like, do you want to get involved? Like, let's talk about this. What is your perspective? I was quickly brought in to just become a partner to city, to, to folks in city hall who were thinking about this on the day to day and who crave and love just engagement. So. For folks who are not in City Hall, who are curious, definitely don't be shy, because the folks who are in City Hall are really excited to represent folks and their needs, and to do, to hear new insights and new ideas, and just also get a pulse on what communities want. So I would highly recommend to be engaged and that also can help sometimes in explaining why things are happening the way they are is getting to sort of peek behind the curtain and realize, yeah, these are just a bunch of real people going to their jobs every day and doing the best that they can. And the way that we can support them is by being human with them and working collaboratively towards solutions that benefit all of us.

Tom Raftery: 50:18

Fantastic. Carina, if people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we discussed on the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?

Carina Gormley: 50:27

If you can go to the Center for Public Impact's webpage, that would be fantastic, and within that, if you go to Climate Change Initiative, you should be able to find all of the members of our team. You are also welcome to connect with me at Carina Gormley on LinkedIn. I would love to hear from you.

Tom Raftery: 50:46

Super. And I'll drop those links in the show notes so everyone has access to them. Carina, that's been fantastic. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Carina Gormley: 50:54

Thank you so much, Tom. This has been such a joy.

Tom Raftery: 50:58

Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about the Climate Confident podcast, feel free to drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com or message me on LinkedIn or Twitter. If you like the show, please don't forget to click follow on it in your podcast application of choice to get new episodes as soon as they're published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks. Catch you all next time.