Tanya Ange: Innovative culture ongoing focus for Boulder, Colorado
Innovation has been “structurally incorporated” into the everyday business of the City of Boulder, Colorado because, as Tanya Ange puts it, the corporation is always looking at the best way to embrace the future.
Ange, Boulder deputy city manager, shared her thoughts on this focus with Municipal World CEO Susan Gardner during the Alliance for Innovation’s 2019 Transforming Local Government (TLG) conference, in Reno, Nevada.
The Responsibility of Local Government Stewards
“If we do look ahead at what that future holds, innovation is really a cornerstone for us. We look at ways to really live into, and step into, our innovation value,” said Ange, who is also a member of the Alliance board of directors. “At the end of the day, each of us are stewards of democracy and are responsible for carrying forward and leaving a legacy of public service.”
City staff, Ange said in the video, are focused on using innovative ideas in order to provide better service. With that in mind, she added, the organization is also focused on building the innovation skill set of its employees.
The situation in Boulder, Ange said, is strengthened through a community that believes in its local government. Per capita, she said, Boulder has the highest Masters’ degree attainment rate in the United States. This, she added, speaks not only to education level, but also the involvement of the community in its government.
“With that partnership with our community, and our community being so engaged, we need to be thoughtful about how we roll initiatives out,” she said. “We always, as staff, try to be mindful of the value proposition for the services we deliver. And look at efficiency and effectiveness behind the services.”
Providing Cost Effective Community Services
Efficiency and effectiveness are important conversations, Ange said. However, another topic requiring constant attention is communicating with the community around the cost of city services.
As an example, Ange pointed to a community conversation around library services. Boulder’s main branch is seeing more than one million visitors per year. In addition, its circulation of not only online materials, but also hard books, is increasing. This, she said, is not the norm for libraries across the United States.
“Right now we are having a community dialogue about how much the community wants to pay for the library and how should that be structured as we move forward,” she said. “It’s tied back to the vision of our organization, and that’s Service Excellence for an Inspired Future.” MW
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