Virtual Event
The Big Ideas in Government for 2025
Exclusively for public servants and policymakers
Thursday, Jan 9, 2025
Time is displayed in your local time zone
Speakers
What to Do Next
- Catch up via the 5-minute highlights video above, or dive into the full recording
- Sign up to our next event, [How to Set and Achieve Your Goals this Year](https://apolitical.co/events/how-to-set-and-achieve-your-goals-in-2025)
- Continue the conversation in the Life in Government Community
Join the Life in Government Community
The Life in Government community is a collaborative space designed for Apolitical members to connect with peers in the global public service and ask and answer questions on life in government.
Event Description
If 2024 was the year of elections, what is 2025? Some say it’s the year governments go from just talking about AI, to actually using it. Others say it’s when governments have to fundamentally rethink who they are, what they do and how they recruit employees and manage their workforce. No matter what it turns out to be, 2025 will be the year in which governments lean into bold ideas to produce lasting change.
But what are those big ideas? In the first event of 2025, Apolitical invited big thinkers in the world of government to explore the transformative ideas set to define the work done by public servants, from cutting-edge technology to new policy approaches and beyond.
This is the event you need to prepare, inform and motivate yourself for what’s to come in 2025. Get ready for big ideas and big conversations.
Interested in how Apolitical can support you and your organisation? Learn about collaborating with us.
Speakers
Penny Abeywardena
Former Commissioner for International Affairs, City of New York
United States
Taki Sarantakis
President, Canada School of Public Service
Canada
Rainer Kattel
Author, How to Make an Entrepreneurial State: Why Innovation Needs Bureaucracy | Professor of Innovation and Public Governance, UCL
United Kingdom
Penny Abeywardena, Founder of Soft Power Strategies, Fellow-in-Residence at NYU McSilver Institute and leadership strategies contributor at Forbes. Her work is focused on identifying strategies of influence and persuasion when there is little or no perceived power. She writes on issues ranging from AI to food security and climate change. Penny recently held senior advisor roles with LUISS Guido Carli University and Charities Aid Foundation. From 2014 to 2022 Penny was the Commissioner for International Affairs for the City of New York where she led the agency serving the largest diplomatic corps in the world.
Taki Sarantakis, President of the Canada School of Public Service since July 2018, having previously served as Associate Secretary of the Treasury Board at the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. Mr. Sarantakis spent most of his career at Infrastructure Canada, including as Assistant Deputy Minister of Policy and Communications. In 2011 Mr. Sarantakis was awarded Canada's Public Service Award of Excellence in Public Policy, and in 2013 he was a recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.
Rainer Kattel, Professor and Deputy Director at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, UCL, has published extensively on innovation policy, its governance and specific management issues. His research interests include also public sector innovation, digital transformation in the public sector and financialization. His recent books include The Elgar Handbook of Alternative Theories of Economic Development (edited with Erik Reinert and Jayati Gosh; Elgar, 2016) and How do build an Entrepreneurial State. Why Innovation needs Bureaucracy (with Wolfgang Drechsler and Erkki Karo; Yale, 2022). In 2013, he received Estonia's National Science Award for his work on innovation policy.
