Within the Australian Public Service, we're lucky to have a highly active and engaged community of behavioural insights practitioners – The Behavioural Insights Practitioners Network (BIPN). Established over 5 years ago, the network now has practitioners across 22 government agencies. Whether they have a background in psychology, economics, data or public policy (to list a few), our members share one common purpose; in applying evidence from the behavioural sciences to help improve public policy and service delivery.
As behavioural insights practitioners, we're all passionate about making things work for people. Sharing our learnings and collaborating on big, complex issues that go beyond one department's policy area, helps to build capability and solve problems for the benefit of Australians. Here we share our experiences, learnings, and collaborative approaches for an effective professional network.
Here are a few ways BIPN keeps our community of practice active and engaged.
Planning early and rotating meeting hosts
When work gets busy, the 'nice to haves' like professional development and networking are often the first things to go. We try to plan ahead and schedule meetings ahead of time. This gives our rotating hosts the time to prepare an engaging agenda, and our members the right information to manage their busy schedules. While BETA plays a role in coordinating the network, the majority of work is done by our rotating hosts - behavioural insights teams from various departments.
Finding common problems
While BIPN shares a discipline as a network, the content and context of the work our members are involved in can vary depending on the policy area of the department. Identifying the common issues we face in our work so others can take these learnings and share creative solutions has been valuable for our members and created many engaging discussions. Discussion have included finding better ways to communicate research methodologies to diverse audiences, and finding ways to work on complex and cross-cutting issues together.
Getting to know each other informally
Serendipitous connections can be difficult to create in an online world, but the power of randomisation isn't just for randomised controlled trials. We've found that randomising BIPN members for a casual one to one chat every month helps give members the opportunity to talk to people they may otherwise not come across in their work. Members are free to chat about their projects and interests over a real or virtual cuppa.
Going beyond your bubble
BIPN has members from all over the country, from major cities to remote locations. While the pandemic limited meetings to online-only for a few years, it's allowed more people to participate in ways that better suit them. Now we can offer the best of both worlds with hybrid meetings allowing people to join remotely from their desk or in-person in their closest capital city.
These strategies have helped us support the most important role of a network - connecting individuals and teams so we can work better for the people we serve.
Join us
If you're a behavioural insights practitioner in the APS and would like to join BIPN, please contact us at BETA@pmc.gov.au to introduce yourself.