2026 OpenFisca Conference —
Policy Innovation & Rules as Code
📅 30th–31st March 2026
🇦🇺 Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
🎟️ Free event upon registration
Day 1: Policy innovation for better public outcomes
Policy making and delivery has largely not kept pace with the increased speed, complexity and pressures of change and changing expectations in a modern, polycrisis world. Civil services around the world have hungrily adopted new methods and technologies, but what is working to drive measurable, scalable and sustainable public good? How might policy as a discipline evolve and transform to become more adaptive, humane and impactful? What can we learn from the past, and might a better future look like that we can work towards?
The Policy Innovation for Public Good event is dedicated to exploring these questions, through international and cross-disciplinary cooperation, bringing together a wide range of civil servants and policy aficionados to share experience, aspirations and bring bold collective reimagining of policy making and delivery.
Venue
INSPIRE Centre, University of Canberra (GPS: -35.238,149.082)
Schedule
- 08:30 - Doors open
- 09:00 - Welcome and acknowledgement of Country
- 09:10 - Opening keynote: Adaptive Policy for Adaptive Systems
Michael Outram, Independent Advisor and former ABF Commissioner - 09:30 - Policy innovation around the world
an exciting panel with case studies (10 mins each) from Japan, France, New Zealand, Australia and lessons on policy innovation from the human development sector. Speakers include public servants from around the world, and Bridi Rice (Development Intelligence Lab) - 10:50 - Morning tea
- 11:10 - Policy as a journey
An exciting panel of novel policy methods, frameworks, operating models and innovative use of technology. This panel will also discuss the criticality of looking backwards and forward. Speakers include Suhit Anantula (The Helix Lab), Catherine Althaus (Pracademic, UNSW), Joanna Weaver (Tech Policy Design Institute), Frank Bongiorno (Centre of Public Ideas, University of Canberra), Phillipa Martin (Salsa Digital) and more to come. - 12:30 - Lunch
- 13:30 - Participatory Possibilities
Chris Vanstone (TACSI) - 13:50 - Policy cooperation workshop
This session will invite attendees to participate in policy innovation discussions to share and co-create next steps. Each table will be invited to present their key insights and ideas, which will be captured in a post event policy innovation report. Topics will include Participatory possibilities with policy, How to make policy innovation the new normal in policy institutions, What policy infrastructure is required to support modern policy making and management, and How should AI be used in policy making? Note: There will be a simultaneous offsite government to government knowledge exchange event, for which participants will be transported from the Inspire venue at 1pm promptly. - 15:30 - Afternoon tea
- 16:00 - Groups report back on stream insights, with voting and prizes
- 16:30 - Policy capability innovation: Transforming traditional policy teams to be innovative as usual
Tim De Sousa (FTI Consulting) - 16:50 - Final thanks and close
City tour and networking dinner
Details to be announced soon.
Day 2: Rules as Code around the world with OpenFisca
The second International OpenFisca Conference will bring together policymakers and technical experts to advance transparency, innovation, and collaboration in Rules as Code. The intention of this event is to explore and share Rules as Code case studies, best practices and innovative approaches, and celebrate public and civil society actors who have made strong achievements. OpenFisca is the world’s most widely adopted free and open-source platform to write, provide and support proactive modelling and operational use of Rules as Code. This annual conference provides both a chance to learn from exciting Rules as Code innovation around the world, and to extend our collective vision towards where we need to go.
Venue
Semesters Room, Building One, University of Canberra (GPS: -35.239,149.084)
Schedule
- 09:00 - Starting on the same page: what is Rules as Code and what is OpenFisca?
- 09:15 - State of OpenFisca: a global tour of use cases and adoption around the world
- 11:15 - Parallel peer sharing streams by area of expertise
- Product & project managers: how to enable transdisciplinary collaboration in RaC?
- Developers: difficulties and good practices when coding with OpenFisca?
- Policy: how do you leverage feedback from coding the rules into policy design?
- Designers: what difficulties and good practices do you encounter when presenting rules to end users?
- 12:15 - Networking lunch
- 13:30 - Parallel sessions from public sector agencies and NGOs presenting their products and learnings
- 14:45 - Parallel sessions from public sector agencies and NGOs presenting their products and learnings
- 15:45 - Refresher break
- 16:15 - Round table on adoption strategies: presentations from different witnesses on how Rules as Code has been adopted by the government in their jurisdiction
- 16:45 - Fishbowl: audience members join the presenters on stage, progressively shifting the conversation to match the interests and challenges of the participants
- 17:30 - Closing address
- 17:45 - End of the event
Sponsors
Partners
- Program partner: Centre for Public Ideas
- Media partner: The Mandarin
- Venue partner: University of Canberra