Julie Bishop’s ‘hipster’ innovation hub out of fashion at Dfat|Australia news|The Guardian

It was among Julie Bishop’s pet jobs as foreign affairs minister: a development center she referred to as a “gorgeous little funky, hipster, Googly, Facebooky-type location”.

However the “innovationXchange”– established in 2015 to develop originalities to deliver a significantly tight foreign aid spending plan– may well have innovated itself out of existence. It has been scrubbed from the foreign affairs department’s organisational chat and rebranded on the website.

Asked by Guardian Australia about the apparent loss of the standalone initiative, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade described that innovation had actually “now been embedded as a practice throughout the department”.

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While it has been a perennial topic for questioning at Senate estimates hearings, innovationXchange attracted possibly the most attention in 2015 when it was exposed Dfat had invested more than $1,700 on three beanbags.

This was, Dfat stated at the time, part of setting up a “collaborative work space and a new way of working that encourages creativity and innovation”, which also included a convertible conference table that doubled as a table tennis table.

In any case, the beanbags were deemed “more affordable, more practical and adaptable than a three-seat couch, which was valued at around $2,300”.

The present location of the beanbags might not be determined sometimes of writing.

Beanbags aside, the innovation scheme– with initial financing of $140m over 4 years– has actually spawned more substantive jobs.

It has, for example, moneyed a trial in Fiji of a robust, low-cost robotic that could help farmers in establishing countries. It has actually also taken a look at designing new methods to provide education in crisis-affected nations.

However there are numerous indications of a shift in focus from the Bishop-era job.

Dfat’s just recently revamped organisational chart no longer consists of any middle manager particularly responsible for innovationXchange.

That is a change from July, when the organisational chart still had an assistant secretary-level position in charge of the initiative.

The next piece in the puzzle is the rebranding of the “innovationXchange” area of Dfat’s website to carry the new banner “Innovation@Dfat”. Archived variations of the website recommend the old brand name was still in usage as recently as 9 October.

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A Dfat representative said innovationXchange had actually been “established to boost development across Dfat, and the help program in particular, by trialling brand-new technologies and services shipment approaches”.

“This has actually now been embedded as a practice across the department, showing the value of development in Australia’s global advancement program and action to Covid-19,” the representative said.

The representative included that there had been “no decrease in Dfat’s general staffing, nor reduction in our efforts to promote development, as a consequence”.

The development section of the site still states: “We will continue to react to the increasing need for support from Australia’s bilateral and regional help program, incubating concepts and supporting the adoption of innovative approaches in various contexts.”

Rather ominously, the current revamp eliminated the phrase: “Our future promises to be as creative and exciting as our very first three years.”

Dfat’s immediate future pledges to a look before Senate estimates on Wednesday and Thursday next week.