When Australians pay their income tax, they assume the money is going to areas of the community that need it, rather than being used by the government to shore up votes for the next election. This is why the findings of the Australian National Audit Office into the awarding of community sporting grants by cabinet […]
A push for social procurement, better data linkage for users of multiple services, improving place-based service capability, and working more closely with public housing tenants: DPC deputy secretary Lill Healy outlines the state's work on entrenched disadvantage.
What led Victoria's Labor party to pair up with the Victorian Nats to get the Australian Open tennis Grand Slam to Melbourne? Was it state interests, friendship, a love of sport, or just raw politics? Traces of all these elements are present in the backstory of a historic investment and a showcase event that now enjoys overwhelming public support.
With start-ups and new business models disrupting traditional educational institutions and operating models, skills — not degrees — may be the reality of the future, write futurists Simon Fuglsang Østergaard and Adam Graafland Nordlund.
Plenty of organisations talk about boosting psychological safety, but actually putting it into practice is difficult. Being open about your own fallibility and asking lots of questions are a good start.
Many of the solutions to the climate change crisis are about infrastructure choices, as infrastructure development can either advance our progress in addressing climate change or damage it.
The reasons for Treasury’s waxing and waning influence on public policy are embedded in the nature of the relationship between the public service and the government of the day — in the fundamentals of the Westminster system in Australia, writes Paul Tilley.
The federal government sensibly linked its ambitions to boost economic development in northern Australia with its Indigenous affairs policies, but a lot of the details about how this works are hidden behind opaque funding arrangements. The key body that links the two federal policies is the Indigenous Reference Group appointed in August 2017 to advise […]
One thing we know about leadership is the danger of blaming an individual when individuals do not work in isolation. That said, witnessing our PM navigate the treacherousness during the bush fires has been (at times) gob-smacking.
Technology is to blame for the spread of misinformation, and it’s making the creation of misinformation cheaper. However, while technology is a contributor to the rise of misinformation, it is also at the core of how we are fighting it, writes Marc Prosser.
With Australian governments looking at new ways of improving aged care, there is great potential for collaboration with the non-profit sector to make assistive technology easier to access, and in a way that is sustainable, and cost-effective.
Dominic Cummings has remarkably conventional views about the shortcomings of the civil service. His challenge will be to make in-roads on those shortcomings where others have failed and to make himself an ally rather than an enemy of the civil service.
Many of the issues that consume legions of public servants and media management time would be a non-event in the US, argues Craig Dalton.
What skills do different policy shops look for in staff? A public management expert, a think tanker, and a consultant-turned-public servant weigh in.
If we know a great deal about something, we close our minds to alternative pathways, we share our knowledge with people who support our opinion and this, in turn, creates confirmation bias, and our creativity is constricted because we think we know what’s possible and dismiss anything that sounds unrealistic. Lyn Carson shoes how to mitigate these realities of being in governance and oversight positions.
