"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.

Geoff Gallop is a former premier of Western Australia. Your minister cannot avoid dealing with the politics, so you should understand the ideas behind it, and the policy compromises they must make to secure alliances.

The continual search for budget efficiencies imposes enormous operational inefficiencies upon the gathering, publication and application of scientific information, in what amounts to an assault upon scientific institutions, writes Geoff Edwards.

The Treaty of Waitangi obliges the state to ensure that public policy is as effective for Māori as it is for everybody else. But the Waitangi Tribunal's comprehensive report on the primary health care system found that despite clear intentions, the state fails to deliver good outcomes for Māori.

Joshua Sharfstein, the former health commissioner of Baltimore, discusses the day a simple power failure led to embarrassment and dysfunction, and what they did to prevent it happening again.