Allan Barger discusses how vast amounts of information being opened up creates new opportunities for combining data from multiple providers to create a diversity of options for consumers and constituents.
Artificial intelligence is already being used in unethical ways, both by the world's governments and technology giants. Now is the time to nail down the principles governing AI and machine learning projects. This multipart series begins with a Department of Defence workshop where warfighters, lawyers and philosophers pitched 84 principles for assuring that AIs operating on our behalf remain ethical.
Addressing the growing crisis of faith in democracy and public institutions is not easy but it is a key responsibility of public servants, says Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade secretary Frances Adamson.
There's a fear that consultants represent some kind of power behind the throne, secretly deciding what should be done with public money. In this view, consultants are a very real threat to democratic accountability.
We see all around us the evidence that science works. For many years there has been an effort to apply scientific thinking to management. In organisations, managers attempt to define and spread ‘best practice,’ which seems to offer certainty about the correct procedures to follow. Daniel Thornton considers why using terms such as ‘best practice’ is bad practice, and suggests an alternative approach that could help to navigate the complexities of organisational life.
Much of the APS needs to lose the attitude that policy is the apex of public administration and service delivery is done by lesser mortals, says Verona Burgess. With change and uncertainty all around the federal bureaucracy, to fulfil the Prime Minister's expectations it will need to quickly learn from state counterparts.
As problems associated with Australia's homelessness crisis exist across the housing spectrum, so too must the solutions. Moving forward, there is an opportunity for the Morrison government to put create a positive spin on the housing and homelessness situation in Australia. And that is through implementing evidence-based solutions across the housing spectrum.
Keeping mum is business as usual for the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) but its director-general has decided there are also benefits to popping up in public from time to time. “No media and no profile presents its own problems, so here I am,” says ASIS chief Paul Symon.
If Andrew Colvin could turn back time, the Australian Federal Police commissioner would not have wasted so time much time battling the minority of staff who strongly opposed his efforts to transform the organisation at every turn.
Krzysztof Izdebski, Policy Director at Poland's ePanstwo Foundation, says citizens and decisionmaking officials are deprived when only companies creating tools for public institutions have the full knowledge of the algorithms’ functions. A lack of policies around automated decisionmaking can undermine trust to both public authorities and services they provide to the public.
From Australia to Illinois, there is a growing recognition that to achieve the best results, governments should recognise the limits of their knowledge and share power with those better placed to promote positive change.
South Australian Commissioner for Public Sector Employment Erma Ranieri has a plan to improve leadership, wellbeing, performance and workforce management across the board, informed by the state’s first whole-of-government staff survey.
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.
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.
