Amid the ongoing search for the holy grail of “local” service-delivery design, one of the very few certainties is the APS is nowhere near ready to deploy digital regulation to social services. When it comes to people, good policy outcomes do not equate to the best relationship outcomes.

Federal Attorney-General Christian Porter has released a draft package of religious freedom bills, including the much-anticipated Religious Discrimination Bill. These bills respond to earlier inquiries into the protection of religious freedom under Australian law. They implement some of the recommendations of the Expert Panel on Religious Freedom (known as the Ruddock review).

THE BIG INTERVIEW by Martin Stewart-Weeks: An in-depth Q&A with a key player in the Australian public sector or political space. The series starts with the Sarah Pearson toolkit for influence and getting stuff done.

In a world where governing is becoming increasingly difficult and the pressures on public servants are rising, how can leaders navigate transformation and disruption? Being skilled at communicating with all types of staff and communities and understanding their values and needs can help define progressive outcomes.

Twenty-eight years of economic prosperity has led to spending becoming the default policy lever, worries Victorian Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions boss Simon Phemister. Plus, why he thinks ministers do value frank and fearless advice and is wary of private-sector plants.

In this world of the machine, or the artificial, there are a number of challenges to accountability. First and foremost, we need to create herd immunity through digital literacy. We need to know what these new systems are, what they can do, how they work and what the limitations are.

Accountability is a term often thrown around as a worthy goal in government and business dealings, especially in the cyber space. So, it is worth spending a moment considering what we mean – and what governments mean, when they commit to accountability in dealing with information.

There are really only two choices for this country: We can take pride in our diversity and use it as an advantage when interacting with the world, or we can hunker down behind borders and slowly gnaw at each other.

Australia’s primary federal renewable energy target -- to have 33 terawatts of renewable energy by 2020 -- has essentially been achieved. There is much uncertainty as to what is next.

Whether a mistake is tiny or enormous, consequences will be a given. A successful apology has five achievable qualities that, when eloquently combined, can restore the trust that you might have thought was already lost.

Generally, social conformity is rewarded with comfortable feelings of belonging while anxiety rears up and warns us to think carefully before going too far against community norms. But we can act rationally and rebel against group-think. We can change the way things have always been done.

Sci-fi has offered predictions and inspired many of the technologies we now take for granted. What one person can imagine, another can build. Being able to conceive of the optimistic outcome (and not just what you believe to be the achievable outcome) is the first step to making it happen – in both technology and public policy. 

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.