What If Government Loved You? with Thea Snow

The Local Government Everyone Is Asking About

What does it look like when a city council takes both AI and community engagement seriously — without making either feel like a corporate strategy exercise? In this episode, I talk with Jared Griffith, a senior leader at Hutt City Council in Greater Wellington, New Zealand. This conversation follows a chat Jared and I had when I was in Wellington a few months ago, where I became really intrigued by two things Hutt City Council is working on. First, they’ve launched a new community engagement strategy grounded much more deeply in local Indigenous ways of knowing and doing. We talk about what that changes, how it shifts the relationship between council and community, and what it means to engage people with more care and depth. Second, we get into AI. Hutt City Council has become something of a reference point for other municipalities trying to adopt AI well. And, unsurprisingly, the secret is not really the technology. It is people. This is a conversation about trust, culture, public service, and what it takes to change how local government works in practice. And yes, I push Jared a bit too.

Europe Tour Begins: Kyiv, AI, and the Future of Government

Leg two of the Civic Punks World Tour is here. I’m heading to Europe — with stops in Kyiv, London, Berlin, Tallinn, Helsinki, Copenhagen, and Tbilisi — to look for the people, places, and ideas shaping the future of government. The heart of the trip is Kyiv. Ukraine feels like one of the most important places in the world to understand democracy, resilience, digital government, trust, and public service under pressure. I’m also heading to the Creative Bureaucracy Festival in Berlin and the UN Public Service Forum in Tbilisi. And this episode includes a very lovely Civic Punks first: the project’s first sponsor, Olivia Dorey and The Grace Project, which is exploring how agentic AI can support carers, government, and better public services. Who should I meet while I’m on the road? And what should I be paying attention to?

AI, Sovereignty, and the Future of Public Service

Governments around the world are trying to make sense of AI in real time. Some are experimenting, some are regulating, some are cautiously poking it with a stick from a safe distance. In this episode, our global government innovation panel compares what we are seeing across different countries and systems. We talk about how AI is changing public sector innovation, why digital sovereignty is becoming such a big deal, and what all of this means for the people who actually make government work. Because the future of government is not just about better tools. It is also about power, trust, capability, and the role of public service itself. Panelists Angela Galeano [https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelagaleano/] * Futuro Publico [https://futuropublico.org/] * Demos Helsinki [https://demoshelsinki.fi/] Brian Whittaker [https://www.linkedin.com/in/bwhtt/] * Humans of the Public Service [https://www.humansofpublicservice.org/] Luke Cavanaugh  [https://www.linkedin.com/in/luke-cavanaugh-208806181/] * Interweave [https://interweavegov.substack.com/] * Tony Blair Institute [https://institute.global/tags/ukraine] Links and things mentioned * Innovate US [https://innovate-us.org/] - Is providing AI Training for the government * Diella [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diella_(AI_system)] - Albania's AI Minister, who is actually an AI * Latam-GPT [https://www.latamgpt.org/en] — a Latin American initiative to develop a language model built in the region * Visio [https://www.clever.cloud/product/visio/] - Government of France's sovereign alternative to Microsoft Teams * Making AI Work for the Public: An ALT Perspective [https://www.newamerica.org/insights/making-ai-work-for-the-public/] by New America * Taking the Pulse of Public Benefits AI: Top 3 Reflections from PBIF’s Summer Open Call [https://www.centerforcivicfutures.org/resources/taking-the-pulse-of-public-benefits-ai-top-3-reflections-from-pbifs-summer-open-call] by Center for Civic Futures * The Phoenix Project [https://itrevolution.com/product/the-phoenix-project/]by Gene Kim, George Spafford, and Kevin Behr * DOGE done better [https://demos.co.uk/research/doge-done-better-the-case-for-progressive-efficiency-and-a-streamlined-state/] by Geoff Mulgan * G7 GovAI Grand Challenge [https://www.canada.ca/en/government/system/digital-government/digital-government-innovations/responsible-use-ai/ai-grand-challenge.html]

Where Civic Punks Goes From Here

Civic Punks is starting to come into focus. In this short solo update, I’m back at Queen’s Park — where I filmed the original launch video — to share where the project is going next. Over the last few months, I’ve been travelling across East Asia and the Pacific, meeting people, recording conversations, going to events, and trying to understand what the future of government looks like from the ground. Somewhere along the way, the shape of Civic Punks started to get clearer. The core is still the same: exploring the future of government through the people trying to make it better. But the strategy is getting sharper. The podcast will go deeper with people and their stories. YouTube will focus on ideas, tensions, and field observations. Instagram will become more of a notebook from the road. The newsletter will connect the dots. And LinkedIn will become more of a conversation space. The goal is simple: more signal, less noise — and more content that feels human, useful, and actually worth spending time with. I’ve linked the draft content strategy in the show notes. It is still very much a working draft, and I’d love your thoughts. What would you actually listen to? Who should Civic Punks be paying attention to? Where does this community need more signal? Draft strategy: https://www.notion.so/Content-Strategy-v-3-35295f99cead8016a37ae0e41f53e5a3 [https://www.notion.so/Content-Strategy-v-3-35295f99cead8016a37ae0e41f53e5a3] Weekly Synthesis: https://civicpunks.substack.com/ [https://civicpunks.substack.com/] Behind the Scenes: https://www.instagram.com/civicpunks/ [https://www.instagram.com/civicpunks/] Big Ideas: https://www.youtube.com/@CivicPunks [https://www.youtube.com/@CivicPunks] Website: https://civicpunks.com/ [https://civicpunks.com/]

Reclaiming Imagination in Government with Sir Geoff Mulgan

In this episode of the Future Government series, I sit down with Sir Geoff Mulgan, one of the people whose work has deeply shaped the field of public sector innovation — and, personally, someone I remember studying back in grad school. So this was a bit of a special one. We talk about why governments need to get much better at using intelligence, how history can help us make sense of the moment we are living through, and why imagination may be one of the most underrated capacities in public life. A big theme running through the conversation is the need to reclaim imagination — not as fantasy or naïve optimism, but as a practical tool for building better futures. More positive futures. Maybe even, dare we say it, slightly utopian ones. Geoff also shares advice for the next generation of public servants and reflects on what it will take to build governments that are more capable, thoughtful, and alive to possibility. For anyone working to make government better, this is a conversation worth spending time with.