Obama's ambassador to the UN on how she avoided bureaucratic isolation while tackling ISIS, why presidents prefer golf, and finding 'one's slice of change that one can make'.
Falling back on 'innovation' or restructuring as a solution to deep problems can obscure the work needed to fix the problem. Here's how to know if you're practicing magical thinking.
When designing a new service, there can be a lot of pressure to nail down a project plan and get on with it. But spending more time consulting, throwing around ideas and testing them before charging ahead can really pay off.
Public services should have at least the same proportion of people from Indigenous backgrounds as the populations they serve, at all levels, argue 78 senior bureaucrats who are descended from the original inhabitants of Australia and New Zealand
In Australia's history of climate change policy, there's been a few well-placed spoilers, backed by vested interests, who have thrown stones and kept good policy off the table. But there is a growing wave of public support for action. And at the end of the day, all pollies need that support to get re-elected. Scott Hamilton and Stuart Kells provide a timeline of Australia's acknowledgement of climate change.
Sally Hussey shows with case studies how local government engagement of the public around ecological action can override the seemingly insurmountable barriers of silence and urgency when it comes to climate change.
Five years of independent Australian National Audit Office scrutiny of government departments found that only 29% were compliant with the Australian Signals Directorate's Top 4 cybersecurity measures that government entities are to implement.
Even if you've completed your course in agile and lined up the authorising environment in favour of change, workplace habits and the relentless daily pressure of government can easily stifle innovation.
Treating the public service like a business has become the norm, with the structures, language, practices and incentives inherited from private sector managerialism. We know that citizens don’t expect public sectors to act the same way — which is evident in the feedback, discussions, user research and myriad public engagements — yet when we adopt the mindset of a business we create pressure to act more like a business in everything we do.
The Data (R)Evolution, goes to the heart of a question that we must confront if we are to take a modern Australia into the digital age: Can we simply continue to evolve and tinker with our existing policy frameworks? Or do we require a more radical rethink of markets, welfare, and fundamental protections?
In this year’s Williams Oration, Australian Space Agency chief executive Dr Megan Clark offered to explain the thinking behind foundational decisions taken in the agency’s establishment, for the benefit of her fellow public sector leaders. She hopes the agency can maintain an early groundswell of community support though lots of open, honest dialogue with stakeholders and a commitment to stick its word.
Martin Hensher is a former executive who has worked for governments in Australia, South Africa and the UK, and has been researching how economic growth projections might impact health care systems.
The draft Productivity Commission 2019 Inquiry into Mental Health. report, released in late October, calls yet again for further ‘major system reforms’ for mental health. But it curiously omits from its recommendations the proposed vital advanced decision-analytic infrastructure capable of navigating the complexity that so far has prevented progress.
The fires devastating our communities on the eastern seaboard are covering more than a million hectares even before we reach summer. They are, as predicted, joining and growing into mega-fires. Mega-fires create their own unpredictable internal weather systems; they can be as hot as a Bunsen burner at 100 metres, and they’ll overwhelm and engulf […]
With calls for more investment in infrastructure to help stimulate the Australian economy, it's also time for policymakers to think beyond traditional views of what this infrastructure might be. This means considering infrastructure that helps the process of reform in the economy. If we are strategic, it should also prepare Australia for some of the disruptions that are coming toward us — particularly in healthcare.
