AMCTO Members' Affinity Partner Webinar - Inside Public Sector Innovation: How Local Governments Put Ideas into Action

Thursday, August 13, 2026, 1:00pm - 2:00pm
Type
Webinar
Location
Zoom
Member Price
FREE
Registration is now CLOSED

Brought to you by McGill-Queen’s University Press

Faced with increasing demands from residents and amid growing legal and resource constraints, municipalities are experimenting to find new ways of making things work. This webinar will delve into the expertise and experience of local administrators in Canada who have successfully moved innovation from conception to reality.

Based on the new book, Inside Public-Sector Innovation, the webinar will feature success stories from Emma McGarry Ware, Simona Dinu, and Chris Walker, with analysis and commentary from Zachary Spicer, Joseph Lyons, and Tyler Romualdi. Discussion of the book's major findings will be followed by a Q&A.

Inside Public-Sector Innovation is a practitioner-oriented guide highlighting multiple innovations from rural, urban, and suburban governments of various sizes. Chapters cover challenges across policy domains, including diversity and inclusion, public health, environmental sustainability, and service delivery inefficiencies. Altogether, the case studies in the book enhance our understanding of what local public-sector innovation entails and how enterprising public servants can put it to immediate use.

Speakers
Emma McGarry-Ware

Emma McGarry Ware

Manager, Innovation
Regional Municipality of Durham
Simona Dinu

Simona Dinu

Director, Service Excellence
Hamilton Public Library
Chris Walker

Chris Walker

Chief Information Officer
Town of Ajax

Zachary Spicer

Associate Professor
School of Public Policy & Administration, York University
Joseph Lyons

Joseph Lyons

Assistant Professor of Political Science and Director
Local Government Program, University of Western Ontario
Tyler Romualdi

Tyler Romualdi

Skelton-Clark Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Political Science, Queen's University