Case Study: City of Calgary achieves dramatic increases in employee engagement and idea generation with IdeaScale

City of Calgary Testing New Ideas to Improve City Services

The City of Calgary, a large and diverse municipal government, wanted to tap frontline expertise to improve services by increasing openness, breaking down silos and creating a sustained idea pipeline from its 12,000 “wired” employees. Key targets included reaching at least 10% of staff, collecting 120+ new ideas, and sustaining engagement (360 comments, 2,400 votes) while providing a clear path from idea to action.

To meet this, Calgary launched myCityInnovation on IdeaScale as part of Civic Innovation YYC, backed by a multi-channel internal campaign, moderated discussions, design-thinking support and an on-site Innovation Lab for prototyping. The pilot exceeded expectations: 21% staff adoption (more than double the goal), hundreds of ideas (nearly triple target), 1,280 comments and 12,076 votes, strong cross‑organization participation and positive sentiment; the public launch was planned for Q1 2017.

City of Calgary

Chad Oberg

Business Technology Analyst