Above photo by Glissette Santana.

Natacha St. Louis decided to leave her job working for a small city in South Florida after attending last year’s Miami GovJam, a two-day session for government and local workers to come together and find solutions to real-world problems.

With its emphasis on service design, a methodology used to improve interactions between customers and companies, GovJam opened a “whole new world” for St. Louis. GovJam embraces creative ideas and the idea of collaboration between co-workers, something that she believed was missing when she returned to her job.  

Now, St. Louis works for Broward County as a small business development specialist where, she believes, creative thinking, determination and teamwork are enabling her to make a difference in the workplace.

That’s exactly why GovJam exists, said Ezequiel Williams, chief insights officer for Contexto, a company that consults businesses on how to revitalize their products through social science and host of Miami GovJam last week.

“The point of the jam is to learn the process that you take back to your work or your passion project or your startup or whatever it is that you’re doing, and apply it to that,” Williams said.

To warm up,  GovJammers played a “Toxic Swamp” game that encourages collaboration.  Credit: Glissette Santana.

GovJam, sponsored by Knight Foundation and held at Miami Beach City Hall June 1-2, is part of an international initiative, Global GovJam, which hosted its first meeting in Leeds, England, in 2012.

This year there were GovJams in 32 countries. In Miami, which hosted an event for the second year, about 25 participants from the public and private sectors divided into five groups to make prototypes to solve common government issues. The two-day session addressed topics such as transportation and customer service.

Chris Torres, a zoning plans processor for the city of Miami, attended GovJam for the first time this year and said he enjoyed meeting new people and learning different service design skills.

His group developed a prototype for an app to streamline communication between city employees and the public, specifically in transportation. Other prototypes included a “checklist” app to save customers time when applying for a business license. One group even made a prototype of a kiosk that provides 24-hour staffing and information about the area where the kiosk is located.

“Government is scary,” Torres said. “… We’re trying to focus on the customer service aspect of government [but] also remember that government employees are customers are well.”

Williams said you have to experience GovJam to understand it fully.

“It’s like riding a bike,” Williams said. “You can only explain how to ride the bike so much to somebody, before you have to get on the bike and ride it to understand the joys of riding a bike … What we hope is that the conversations or the inspirations that emerge out of this event live on.”

Glissette Santana is an editorial intern at Knight Foundation. Email her at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter @glissettetweets.

 Credit: Glissette Santana.