apoliticalâs chief operating officer explains her role and hopes for Public Sector Strategy Round Table
In her role as apoliticalâs chief operating officer, Nitika Agarwal has a special focus on growth through partnerships. Her responsibilities include thinking about how the platform and its network can best serve public servants all over the world. As a participant of the sixth meeting of the Public Sector Strategy Round Table - In the Spotlight: How Can the Public Sector Excel Under Changing Dynamics? - Agarwal was provided the opportunity to speak to these officials face-to-face and make observations on how to reach better solutions.
Speaking to Salzburg Global during the session, Agarwal recognized the value of having different voices represented. She said, âThis is a very unique forum where it is grounded in the belief that exchanges between peers - across different sectors - but working toward common public sector challenges are valuable and can lead to change in the public sector.â
Agarwal believes there are many dimensions that need to be taken into account when thinking about a specific problem, which really highlights the complexity of the challenges facing the public sector. Reflecting on the conversations between participants, she said, âIt really reinforces the point that you canât think about these things in a silo because public sector challenges are essentially a web of interconnected issues.â
When asked what these challenges included, Agarwal replied, âWhere do you start?â She mentioned the changing nature of work, expanding populations, and climate change as examples but refrained from listing them all. She said, âWhat is fundamental to addressing any of those [challenges] is the capability of the public sector and its capability to change, and that is one of the most difficult things in organizations which have been established for so long.â Once you implement change management in an organization, then you can begin to tackle everything else.
Ahead of the two-day program, Agarwal said she was looking for a set of valuable and enduring connections with people who were trying to tackle many of the same challenges apolitical is thinking about. Midway through the session, she told Salzburg Global, âItâs been completely fascinating to see what people get when theyâre in a room of peers coming from diverse backgrounds because it is really instructive in helping us figure out how we can continue to serve those needs beyond a two-day seminar.â
Before joining apolitical, Agarwal served as a senior policy advisor at the UK Treasury where she performed a number of roles. This included advising ministers on financial sector reform and EU budget issues. She also represented the UK in EU negotiations and acted as chief of staff for the UK Ambassador to the European Union in Brussels.
Commenting on her career path, Agarwal said, âI was kind of obsessed with the issues of social justice from a very young age, which drove me to really want to understand the systems which drive certain outcomes, which sometimes feel very unfair. That led me to work in governments to try and understand how that works. How do you run a country?
âHaving been in government for several years, I realized that so many other sectors have their place to play in the overall ecosystem of creating change and felt that if I was to understand how change is driven across all of those sectors, I needed to be part of it in another place. Thatâs what led me to apolitical, which is really thinking about how to facilitate the collaboration between sectors to help systemic change happen.ââ
Nitika Agarwal attended the sixth meeting of the Public Sector Strategy Round Table â âIn the Spotlight: How Can the Public Sector Excel Under Changing Dynamics?â. This meeting was convened by Salzburg Global Seminar in partnership with the Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Court and apolitical, and with the support of Chatham House. More information on the session can be found here.