I’m Matthew Quinn, and I spent over 30 years as a senior public servant based in the United Kingdom. I’ve worked in different levels of administration and countries in the UK as well as working with the European Union and the United Nations. I’m now a United States citizen and am settled in Colorado. I hold a Distinguished Visiting Fellowship at Cardiff University, Wales, UK which kindly supported my work on “Towards a new civic bureaucracy”.
Most of my career has wrestled with the question of how we should govern if we are to achieve sustainable development – the idea of living in ways which allow future generations to live well with the planet and meet their needs.
I was fortunate to work in new institutions – particularly the Welsh Government – where we were able to innovate and develop action collaboratively with civil society. It is this practical learning about innovation and barriers to change, informed by understanding of human history and of the natural world, which brought me to the idea of the need for a new civic bureaucracy.