Innovation in the Public Sector

Our programme ‘Co-design for Sustainable, Resilient and Inclusive Public Spaces and Services’ (CIPSS) is running in three countries: North Macedonia, Turkey and Indonesia. Mid-term seminars for the Turkish and North Macedonian participants were already held, in January 2023. At the end of February it was the time to organize the mid-term workshop for the Indonesian teams.

“This year we decided to combine the mid-term workshop with the Alumni meeting and invited previous teams’ representors to Bali to present the current state of their change projects and share their experiences from the programme with the current participants”, says programme coordinator Johanna Alkan Olson from the Centre for Environmental and Climate Science at Lund University. The programme and mentor coordinators (Johanna Alkan Olson and Ilhami Alkan Olson) were not able to join live in the previous meetings because of Covid-19, but this year, for the first time, they were also present in the workshop.

Invited Guest Speaker

Dr. Nyoman Gede Matu Putra, Head of the Architecture Department at the University of Warmadewa, Bali presented the impact of tourism on the local identity and how the university and municipalities in the region cooperate to support the local identity against the erosion the mass tourism may create.

Visits to the Swedish Embassy and SDG Academy in Jakarta

To make the most of the travel, the programme and mentor coordinators, together with the country mentors (Dr. Sylvia Yazid and Dr. Unang Mulkhan) paid visit to the Swedish Embassy in Jakarta to inform about the programme and explore the possibility to link the results of the programme and the Alumni to the Embassy’s activities.

“In the meeting the Ambassador Marina Berg informed us about their activities. We think that the talk about how the Business Sweden Indonesia and the programme activities can be linked to each other was particularly interesting”, says Ilhami Alkan Olson, mentor coordinator from the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law.

The team also visited the UNDP supported ‘SDG Academy’ in Jakarta to discuss the possible cooperation between their Alumni activities and CIPSS programme.

Positive Outcomes of the Seminar

“We think that our visit to Indonesia has been productive in a number of ways, above all exploring the different possibilities to link the programme and the programme Alumni to the different Swedish initiatives in Indonesia”, says Johanna Alkan Olson.

In the workshop the representors of five Alumni teams were present: Medan, Malang, Jambi, Pekalongan and Yogyakarta.

“Meeting with the Alumni was also inspiring. We got to see how the former participants continue to work with their change projects and develop their activities to strengthen their municipalities”, Ilhami Alkan Olson fills in.

There were interesting ideas and suggestions during and after the workshop. Bandoro Budi Nugroho from Yogyakarta Municipality (2nd batch) for instance said after the group’s visit to two villages in Bali that their change projects should maybe include not only formal rules and regulations, but also traditional/cultural rules and regulations on spatial planning to create more inclusive, sustainable, and creative planning.

 “The seminar has been proven a good opportunity to build up network, exchange experiences, develop new ideas and possibly new projects between different municipalities. We were also very happy to see that former participants and their municipalities have been continuing to work with their ‘change projects’ in many ways and taken steps to make their cities more sustainable, resilient, human rights based and equal”, says mentor Ilhami Alkan Olsson.

The workshop ended with a speech by Johanna Alkan Olsson where she outlined the coming steps for the participants.

Keep an eye out for further information on the blog!