As every public servant knows, advisers on both sides of politics range from highly competent, agreeable people who work collaboratively with the bureaucracy, to rabid ideologues who regard public servants as something between beasts of burden and monstrous enemies. It’s a bell curve, like any slice of humanity, so most end up being somewhere in the middle.

Andrew Podger, former public service commissioner and head of four separate government departments, replies to Jacinta Collins' recent article on press freedom and national security.

There is a huge catch 22 driving impact measurement in human services. A lot of the evaluation is done because governments seek it, but then it goes nowhere – and for good reason. NGOs can’t escape this without  something like an evaluator general, writes Nicholas Gruen.

Imagine how difficult it would be for local government decisionmakers if they were unable to obtain accurate estimates of their local area populations. Lateral Economics' Gene Tunny, Matt Balmford and Nicholas Gruen take on the major challenge of finding a robust and defensible methodology for calculating the benefits to the Australian people from having more accurate estimated resident population estimates as a result of Census data.

"We have the potential here to create a new model, a new global network ... to solve not only Australia's but some of the world's emerging challenges, whether it’s energy, climate, food security, biosecurity, and we do so with a view to seeding new industry for Australia, for national benefit.”

Jenny Wilkinson is Australia's Parliamentary Budget Officer. She thinks there is plenty of scope for the profession to bolster its voice in public debate.

A new tranche of APS gender equality policies that builds on previous successes and incorporates best practice will go a long way towards ensuring that the APS is an employer of choice for women, writes Sue Williamson.

“Times may be challenging but I absolutely believe politics can be a place for change, disruption, and a force for good. Good government need not be an oxymoron.”This was the key message from the New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, at her Melbourne address on Thursday night.

Steve Hodgkinson has been chief information officer at Victoria's Department of Health and Human Services since late 2014. He has spent plenty of time thinking in depth about the exact questions he now confronts at work, having completed a PhD at Oxford examining the centralisation of IT functions in large multi-business organisations.

Here is a transcript of Meghan Quinn's speech delivered to the Australian Conference of Economists in Melbourne on 16 July 2019. Ms Quinn is Deputy Secretary of the Macroeconomic Group for the Commonwealth Treasury Department.

Allan Barger is a digital government specialist who worked on data.gov.au and most recently in the New South Wales government. He built a simple ‘twin’ -- a digital copy of a system that exists in the real world -- to better understand the shape of government and start a conversation about how we can use technology to help shape a better bureaucracy.

With her first year as the Merit Protection Commissioner under her belt, Linda Waugh reflects on public service merit, the Canberra bubble and some service-wide concerns.

But what constitutes success in personalisation for large-scale policymaking? And are there ways to reduce delays in designing and reviewing individual plans as the scheme rolls out to meet its target of 460,000 NDIS participants by mid-2020?

In 14 premodern states, the royal women of eight societies exerted power in at least four ways: they influenced policy; they influenced the behaviour of those both above and below them in rank; they acted as go-betweens; and they patronised clients. Here is a summary of the Santa Fe Institute's political anthropologist Paula Sabloff's new paper on how royal women exerted power throughout history.

THE HORIZON is a curated guide to published research, books, reports and podcasts with utility for practitioners in the public sector. With Australia’s public sector celebrating Innovation Month in July, throughout this month Mandarin Premium is looking at research and thought leadership on public sector innovation.