How do you build responsiveness to ongoing developments into a work program? And what inputs do you need to understand and respond to change? Pia Andrews gives some suggestions.

While the case for joined-up-government and cross-sectoral partnerships appears to have been convincingly made, the question of how to make this happen effectively still looms large. Many articles and studies focus on the institutional barriers that make it hard for governments to work collaboratively. However, while that is certainly important, Thea Snow focuses on a piece of the puzzle that is often neglected: the role of individuals in supporting collaboration to succeed.

How often do you have a chance to think about the long-term impact of what you are doing right now? How often do you consider (or get supported to consider) how a long-term goal should change what you are doing right now?

Despite the sheer scalability, connectivity, and use as highways for political messaging and public debate, most social media platforms were not designed with the purpose of engagement on policy issues . The repercussions for governments are not to be taken lightly. So, where do governments begin? Audrey Lobo-Pulo shows the way.

Trust is hard when you are so many things to so many people, especially when you are both the social worker and the cop. So, trust arguably needs to be about ensuring you are seen as trustworthy, fair, accountable and values-driven. Trust is something you need to earn every day, not something you ask for.

Even if people are motivated to understand something fundamentally new to their worldview, it doesn’t necessarily translate into how they behave. It is easier to improve something than change it. Pia Andrews provides some food for thought to encourage greater collective urgency for reforming the public sector to reflect the changing world and what sort of future we need and want as a society.

Openness is key to scaling anything. It is how we can influence the system and inspire and enable people to individually engage with and take responsibility for better outcomes and innovate at a grassroots level. It is how we ensure our work is evidence based, better informed and better tested, through public peer review.

When you study ‘policy’ in Australia, you are taught the ‘Public Policy Cycle’, which presents a linear method that doesn’t quite reflect the reality of working in public policy, and throughout public sectors we have lost a common language for what we mean.

Following 'Shergie's farewell tour' last year, Peter Shergold gave his final performance as outgoing IPAA National president at the association's conference in Darwin last week. He reflected on the public service's ability to moderate the damaging impulses of politicians and the importance of non-partisan actors in democratic government.

There has been growing attention to the declining levels of public trust in our politicians, public, and democratic institutions. Our analysis suggests that history will not record any sizeable shift in public trust due to the Turnbull or Morrison governments’ record on social policy.

The relationship between design and the public good is studied through two very different lenses. Learn what they are and how they can help or hinder you in Design for Public Sector Leaders on October 10 at the Melbourne offices of CPA Australia.

Rather than processes, it may be the clashing of values that has reduced our tolerance for engaging alternative perspectives. Social capital, the once-lauded holy grail of community, is crumbling and being replaced by suspicion, hubris and barefaced lies. Cross-sectoral leadership is the art of reaching across this tribalism to engage competing values and ‘learn’ our way to solutions. 

The digital future of support functions will be exciting. As traditional, time-intensive tasks like forecasting, reporting, and distributing information get handled through smart digital tools, people can focus on asking the right questions, running and interpreting analyses, drawing conclusions, managing trade-offs, and generating insights that help business units create new value. Capitalising on this potential, however, requires putting the right organisational structure in place. 

"Early intervention is a bit of a nirvana," says Amy Auster, deputy secretary economic at the Victorian Department of Treasury and Finance. Hard, but the Victorian government is still trying. It has contracted for two social impact bonds — service partnerships delivered by external providers and funded by investors, where government will pay a profit if the provider is able to achieve certain agreed targets.

Governments don’t govern alone. The shared responsibilities of public sector governance fall broadly into two categories – performance and conformance – and a lot of them land on public servants. Discharging these solemn duties can be a challenge when time is of the essence and process becomes a dirty word. Public service leaders should expect […]