Premium

The essential resource for effective public sector leaders

Interviews

Setting up a social impact bond requires thinking through many barriers around data and measuring success. Amy Auster is stewarding two rollouts with an eye to early intervention

Features

"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…

Columnists

The successful ACT senior secondary colleges have reached an evolutionary crossroads that may lead to their demise. Can they be revitalised – or will they face a ‘gale of creative destruction’?

By Verona Burgess

Australian Capital Territory

Insights and analysis

Learn to live with uncertainty, and other tips on public sector governance and leadership. Sometimes you have to push back and take a stand for due process, but it’s getting harder

By Stephen Easton

Features

Interviews

Emily Phillips leads a highly distributed, highly visible agency. Finding the breathing space for innovation has taken contemporary leadership, strategy and partners

By David Donaldson

Features

Insights and analysis

Departmental media staff have an important job to do, but have been muzzled. Inside the public service, information spinners have stopped. Here’s how it happened

By Bernard Keane & Jennine Khalik

Engagement

Expert briefings

“I have read and agree to the (long, boring and incomprehensible) Terms and Conditions”. How to get people to read and understand the privacy notices you coerce them into signing

By Ravi Dutta-Powell

Communications & Technology

Case studies

Reentry to work is a challenge, but sponsors and preparation make it easier. How Victorian public servants are returning after parental leave

By Shannon Jenkins

Case studies

Expert briefings

More collaborative workplaces have come at a price: knowledge workers who can’t think in the buzz of an open-plan office. Researchers are pinpointing the ideal level of noise to stay focused

By Stephen Easton

Features

Interviews

The ABS’s chief methodologist on the common pitfalls of using data and why fishing makes him better at work

By David Donaldson

Features

Interviews

What exactly does a chief resilience officer do? Bringing stakeholders together to address the stresses and crises faced by our cities

By David Donaldson

Case studies

Expert briefings

Mental health tends to be something organisations sweep under the rug. Here are three questions to ask to gauge how mentally healthy your workplace is

By Camille Wilson

Editors' Picks

Expert briefings

The media loves a good bureaucrat beat-up. Don’t be a victim: these are the mistakes public servants make with journalists

By Harley Dennett

Engagement

Expert briefings

Design thinking is about creating repeatable processes for harnessing human creativity. How to write and communicate a spot-on mission statement for government

By Benjamin Teed

Editors' Picks

Insights and analysis

Geoff Gallop on learning from how Australia advanced its thinking on First Peoples in the past, and can maybe learn how to do reform again

By Geoff Gallop

Editors' Picks

Insights and analysis

Data sharing reforms are taking shape and federal agencies need to get up to speed. Expect new powers, new responsibilities and cultural change

By Stephen Easton

Communications & Technology

Expert briefings

To ensure nobody was left behind, Steven Kennedy opened his department doors to dozens of partner organisations. Digital services alone couldn’t reach all in need

By Stephen Easton

Community & Social

Insights and analysis

We have a collective responsibility to build environments in which children thrive. Here are five ways to work differently with families to help keep kids safe

By Annette Michaux

Australian Capital Territory

Columnists

Without a holistic architecture of service delivery, citizens miss out on coordinated and suitable responses to their particular welfare needs

By Verona Burgess

Australian Capital Territory

Case studies

How to avoid your dream job turning out to be a nightmare ⁠— know what you want at work beyond the fancy title

By David Donaldson

Case studies

Interviews

Early career advice: maintain your work connections and play 'the mind game' if you want to get your ideas in front of senior staff

By David Donaldson

Features

Case studies

Transitioning into government, advisers behaving badly and other dangers of public sector work, in Michael Lewis' 'The Fifth Risk'

By Peter Debus

Case studies

Interviews

Sarah Pearson on leadership: how to inculcate innovation into the public sector, take risks, create impact, and remain an optimist

By Martin Stewart-Weeks

Editors' Picks

Insights and analysis

How to navigate transformation and disruption in the public sector. Leave an enduring legacy of improvement by knowing your audience

By Shannon Jenkins

Features

Interviews

Private sector recruits don't have 'mystical powers', and have actually been responsible for many policy disasters. Why Simon Phemister still believes in 'frank and fearless'

By David Donaldson

Features

Insights and analysis

Accountability in the age of the artificial: seven ways data analytics undermines it, and 10 ways to maintain it

By Fiona McLeod

Features

Insights and analysis

Accountability in the age of the artificial: how can we make sure AI is our saviour, and not the enemy of the people?

By Fiona McLeod

Features

Expert briefings

The gap between assumptions and reality is a policymaker’s risk. To bridge it, you need a research goal and the right questions to ask

By Charles Lambdin

Features

Case studies

Advancing gender equality in Victoria Police took asking the right questions to unearth the surprising barriers holding back progress

By David Donaldson

Case studies

Insights and analysis

What to do when your minister’s policy range is less than what’s demanded of the role. Engage with them at every opportunity to build trust and create an echo chamber

By Shannon Jenkins

Features

Expert briefings

R&D is in the DNA of every policy person, not just a specialised few. Critics of using human-centred design for policy are missing a golden opportunity

By Kirsty Elderton

Editors' Picks

Insights and analysis

New in government, you are? Succeed and make an impact by mastering perspective before skill. Think, observe — only then, do

By Joseph Maltby

Editors' Picks

Case studies

Jay Weatherill on where the SA nuclear citizens’ jury went wrong — what were the lessons from this innovative consultation process?

By David Donaldson

Case studies

Expert briefings

You’ve stuffed up, now what? How owning and admitting to mistakes can return you to power and strength

By Sue Parker

Editors' Picks

Columnists

Doyens of the Canberra bubble gather to hear Prime Minister ScoMo give the APS its orders, while Yarralumla fills with sunshine

By Verona Burgess

Features

Insights and analysis

The tale of the bold Belgian bureaucrat: how to create preferred workplaces and a loyal workforce by rejecting old school management styles

By Stephen Easton

Features

Insights and analysis

The policy futurist’s reading list. How speculative fiction can inform better public policy as our society changes and grows in response to new tech

By Tim de Sousa

Communications & Technology

Case studies

Disability applicants to the Victorian Public Service graduate program quadrupled this year. Here's how they did it

By David Donaldson

Case studies

Case studies

New Zealand's wellbeing budget has attracted plenty of attention. Is it a new paradigm or just clever marketing?

By David Donaldson

Case studies

Expert briefings

Opening up data has transformed service delivery. It lets us reframe the conversation about how services could be delivered simply through better access to information

By Allan Barger

Communications & Technology

Insights and analysis

Ethical AI and government: how guiding machine learning projects with principles will help prevent tech solutions turning into unintended problems

By Harley Dennett

Features

Columnists

You cannot administer government policy and relentlessly criticise it online. Governments, whatever you think of them, have to be able to trust public servants

By Bernard Keane

Features

Insights and analysis

For genuine collaboration with Indigenous communities on policy, government must change how it regards Indigenous public servants, representation, control and mutual learning

By Catherine Althaus

Culture

Case studies

The UK’s Policy Lab is using co-design and games to rethink both the solutions and problems of government — without a budget

By David Donaldson

Case studies

Insights and analysis

Grappling with customer-centricity, the energy sector is recalibrating how it consults with stakeholders. Regulators can facilitate choices efficiently by aligning conflicting interests

By Victoria Draudins

Economy & Industry

Columnists

Auditors take your seats! Old money becomes new money when it’s time to pay out election promises

By Verona Burgess

Economy & Industry

Interviews

Richard Di Natale: cooperating on policy. You won't get anywhere if you assume you can't have open and frank conversation with people. I haven’t been burnt yet

By Scott Hamilton & Stuart Kells

Editors' Picks

Insights and analysis

Peter Costello on the independence of the public service 'view', the future of policy advice, and when Treasury secretaries were treated harshly

By Peter Costello

Editors' Picks

Columnists

Richard Bolt on dealing with corruption when it's in your own executive. Why it happens, and what he learned about the duty to protect the agency

By Richard Bolt

Editors' Picks

Expert briefings

Writing a form sounds simple, but isn't. Public servants must balance readability and logic with the needs of complex policy and legislation

By Stephen Easton

Communications & Technology

Insights and analysis

The great Treasury juggle: providing the minister with fearless advice (even if it causes discomfort), while keeping the government's political strategists happy

By Paul Tilley

Features

Insights and analysis

Government-stored data can pose a threat to human rights. Educating the public about their own 'data hygiene' is a first step, while legislation catches up

By Shannon Jenkins

Communications & Technology

Insights and analysis

What’s wrong with best practice? How the quest for certainty affects the agility and innovation needed for organisations to thrive

By Daniel Thornton

Editors' Picks

Columnists

The APS needs to radically and quickly overhaul what 'service delivery' means to them. That should start with genuinely listening to their front-line people

By Verona Burgess

Features

Expert briefings

Policy models are powerful decisionmaking tools, but backward-looking bias and lax application mean they can also be seductive and misleading

By Claire Craig

Communications & Technology

Interviews

Government and startups don't speak the same language. Kate Cornick helps them help each other, improving services and keeping jobs local

By David Donaldson

Communications & Technology

Case studies

AI was supposed to help this city recruit staff for local kindergartens. Denied transparency, parents compared results to understand the automated decisionmaking

By Krzysztof Izdebski

Communications & Technology

Interviews

Craig Ritchie sees the mistakes public servants make working with Indigenous communities. How he finds policy and delivery success in 'me knowing you and you knowing me'

By David Donaldson

Features

Insights and analysis

What do we want our democracy to look like? Globalisation, means of income, and how we govern for the 21st Century

By Luca Belgiorno-Nettis

Editors' Picks

Insights and analysis

Trust makes the world go round. As a business asset, rebuild it with competence, care and 'a little bit of good each day'

By Bob McMullan & Sean Innis

Community & Social

Trends and research

Service design for public policymakers. The value and challenges of service design in government, from exploring to creating to delivering

By Angelica Quicksey

Case studies

Expert briefings

The pitfalls you'll face in regulatory startups. Finding staff; ministerial panic; evaluation ... 'IT is simultaneously a minefield and a black hole'

By David Donaldson

Features

Columnists

The key to coexisting peacefully and effectively with political staffers is simple: each of you should understand the other's role

By Bernard Keane

Editors' Picks

Expert briefings

Are you investing as much into psychological safety as physical safety? If you don’t know, it might be time to start

By Camille Wilson

People & Capability

Interviews

'Licensed to operate differently' ― How Adrian Turner achieves large-scale digital innovation with porous boundaries and multi-disciplinary teams

By Stephen Easton

Features

Expert briefings

Economics influences policy ― but only when the numbers make sense. Jenny Wilkinson has three key tips that are often overlooked

By David Donaldson

Career Matters

Interviews

Steve Hodgkinson is banning 'stupid digital stuff'. Relentless incrementalism, empowered staff and reusable platforms allow for cheap, fast 'micro services' that users love

By David Donaldson

Communications & Technology

Expert briefings

A digital government twin can model effects of change over time. It could teach us what structures worked and what didn't, optimising machinery of government

By Allan Barger

Communications & Technology

Interviews

Underperformance in the public sector is difficult and painful: Linda Waugh talks about how to guide and advise a way through it

By Verona Burgess

Features

Trends and research

They break the rules, disrupt norms, can't promise ROI. Why risk an innovation project? Here's how to know when you've added value

By Harley Dennett

Features

Expert briefings

Effective public servants need nuanced understanding of politics, what drives their minister and government. Geoff Gallop offers eleven theses on Australian politics in practice

By Geoff Gallop

Editors' Picks

Case studies

It was an unfortunate mishap. Things went badly wrong. Here's how an Incident Command System can prevent nasty events happening again

By Joshua Sharfstein

Editors' Picks

Expert briefings

How Collective Impact is helping solve our most pernicious problems: breaking down the isolated agendas of stakeholders and realigning incentives

By Victoria Draudins

Community & Social

Expert briefings

In Argentina, public servants get promoted for learning how to innovate. For every class taken, a public servant earns points towards a pay rise

By Jennifer Guay

Editors' Picks

Expert briefings

You can start anywhere, you can end anywhere. Elanor Huntington is rethinking career journeys, skills and attributes to beat global challenges

By Stephen Easton

Economy & Industry

Case studies

In the trenches, winning the battle to reduce violence against women is a daily, brick-by-brick process

By Stephen Easton

Case studies

Expert briefings

Genuine mental health case ... or not? If you think an employee is lying, here's what you need to ask yourself first

By Camille Wilson

Features

Expert briefings

Most people don’t have enough time in their lives. Here's how government can help them get some of it back

By Lyndall Strazdins & Sean Innis

Features

Expert briefings

Your ethical reputation is your most valuable professional asset. So how do you build the right muscles to protect it?

By Attracta Lagan

Features

Trends and research

Toxic leaders and how to get over them once they’re gone … innovation labs and design thinking ... making services that work for people ...

By Harley Dennett

News

Interviews

Gill Callister on ethics, female leadership and how to manage a department through a messy public corruption scandal

By David Donaldson

Education

Columnists

Ministers are powerful and important, but they need support to do their jobs better. Trust in our democracy demands it

By Bob McMullan & Sean Innis

Features

Expert briefings

Using 'challenge prizes' to develop great innovation policy. It's not about the winners, but diverse solutions to a well-defined problem

By Tris Dyson and Oliver Cansdell

Features

Columnists

The accountability trap: how to avoid low trust and low performance because everyone’s shifting responsibility and protecting themselves, not collaborating

By Nicholas Gruen

Editors' Picks

Interviews

Blending in wasn't going to work for Carmel McGregor. Now she mentors those with vision, not just personal ambition

By Verona Burgess

Editors' Picks

Columnists

Announcing an ambitious new addition to The Mandarin

By Zoe Dattner

News

Trends and research

How citizens value their own data ... why Facebook gets away with privacy controls ... the value of enterprise architecture … where power lies ...

By Harley Dennett

News

Columnists

How do you handle a crisis in government? Start with contingency planning, then get ready to take your blinkers off

By Richard Bolt

Editors' Picks

Case studies

Australia's top librarian tells how the National Library fosters a culture of in-house innovation. In two words: 'radical incrementalism'

By Stephen Easton

Editors' Picks

Latest Articles

Be excellent: how ancient virtues can guide our responses to the climate crisis

By Roger Crisp

The big budget question is why the surplus wasn’t big

By Warren Hogan

Thodey review of the APS completed, sent to the Prime Minister’s department

By Stephen Easton

Integrity news: WA hospital manager pinged for $500k in overtime, Qld Health ex-CIO in the clear

By Stephen Easton

Stakeholders slam APVMA’s new ‘non-controversial’ board

By Shannon Jenkins

Premium

The essential resource for effective public sector leaders

Setting up a social impact bond requires thinking through many barriers around data and measuring success. Amy Auster is stewarding two rollouts with an eye to early intervention

Categories

The successful ACT senior secondary colleges have reached an evolutionary crossroads that may lead to their demise. Can they be revitalised – or will they face a ‘gale of creative destruction’?

The essential resource for effective public sector leaders

Learn to live with uncertainty, and other tips on public sector governance and leadership. Sometimes you have to push back and take a stand for due process, but it’s getting harder

Emily Phillips leads a highly distributed, highly visible agency. Finding the breathing space for innovation has taken contemporary leadership, strategy and partners

Departmental media staff have an important job to do, but have been muzzled. Inside the public service, information spinners have stopped. Here’s how it happened

“I have read and agree to the (long, boring and incomprehensible) Terms and Conditions”. How to get people to read and understand the privacy notices you coerce them into signing

Reentry to work is a challenge, but sponsors and preparation make it easier. How Victorian public servants are returning after parental leave

More collaborative workplaces have come at a price: knowledge workers who can’t think in the buzz of an open-plan office. Researchers are pinpointing the ideal level of noise to stay focused

The ABS’s chief methodologist on the common pitfalls of using data and why fishing makes him better at work

What exactly does a chief resilience officer do? Bringing stakeholders together to address the stresses and crises faced by our cities

Mental health tends to be something organisations sweep under the rug. Here are three questions to ask to gauge how mentally healthy your workplace is

The media loves a good bureaucrat beat-up. Don’t be a victim: these are the mistakes public servants make with journalists

Design thinking is about creating repeatable processes for harnessing human creativity. How to write and communicate a spot-on mission statement for government

Geoff Gallop on learning from how Australia advanced its thinking on First Peoples in the past, and can maybe learn how to do reform again

Data sharing reforms are taking shape and federal agencies need to get up to speed. Expect new powers, new responsibilities and cultural change

To ensure nobody was left behind, Steven Kennedy opened his department doors to dozens of partner organisations. Digital services alone couldn’t reach all in need

We have a collective responsibility to build environments in which children thrive. Here are five ways to work differently with families to help keep kids safe

Without a holistic architecture of service delivery, citizens miss out on coordinated and suitable responses to their particular welfare needs

How to avoid your dream job turning out to be a nightmare ⁠— know what you want at work beyond the fancy title

Early career advice: maintain your work connections and play 'the mind game' if you want to get your ideas in front of senior staff

Transitioning into government, advisers behaving badly and other dangers of public sector work, in Michael Lewis' 'The Fifth Risk'

Sarah Pearson on leadership: how to inculcate innovation into the public sector, take risks, create impact, and remain an optimist

How to navigate transformation and disruption in the public sector. Leave an enduring legacy of improvement by knowing your audience

Private sector recruits don't have 'mystical powers', and have actually been responsible for many policy disasters. Why Simon Phemister still believes in 'frank and fearless'

Accountability in the age of the artificial: seven ways data analytics undermines it, and 10 ways to maintain it

Accountability in the age of the artificial: how can we make sure AI is our saviour, and not the enemy of the people?

The gap between assumptions and reality is a policymaker’s risk. To bridge it, you need a research goal and the right questions to ask

Advancing gender equality in Victoria Police took asking the right questions to unearth the surprising barriers holding back progress

What to do when your minister’s policy range is less than what’s demanded of the role. Engage with them at every opportunity to build trust and create an echo chamber

R&D is in the DNA of every policy person, not just a specialised few. Critics of using human-centred design for policy are missing a golden opportunity

New in government, you are? Succeed and make an impact by mastering perspective before skill. Think, observe — only then, do

Jay Weatherill on where the SA nuclear citizens’ jury went wrong — what were the lessons from this innovative consultation process?

You’ve stuffed up, now what? How owning and admitting to mistakes can return you to power and strength

Doyens of the Canberra bubble gather to hear Prime Minister ScoMo give the APS its orders, while Yarralumla fills with sunshine

The tale of the bold Belgian bureaucrat: how to create preferred workplaces and a loyal workforce by rejecting old school management styles

The policy futurist’s reading list. How speculative fiction can inform better public policy as our society changes and grows in response to new tech

Disability applicants to the Victorian Public Service graduate program quadrupled this year. Here's how they did it

New Zealand's wellbeing budget has attracted plenty of attention. Is it a new paradigm or just clever marketing?

Opening up data has transformed service delivery. It lets us reframe the conversation about how services could be delivered simply through better access to information

Ethical AI and government: how guiding machine learning projects with principles will help prevent tech solutions turning into unintended problems

You cannot administer government policy and relentlessly criticise it online. Governments, whatever you think of them, have to be able to trust public servants

For genuine collaboration with Indigenous communities on policy, government must change how it regards Indigenous public servants, representation, control and mutual learning

The UK’s Policy Lab is using co-design and games to rethink both the solutions and problems of government — without a budget

Grappling with customer-centricity, the energy sector is recalibrating how it consults with stakeholders. Regulators can facilitate choices efficiently by aligning conflicting interests

Auditors take your seats! Old money becomes new money when it’s time to pay out election promises

Richard Di Natale: cooperating on policy. You won't get anywhere if you assume you can't have open and frank conversation with people. I haven’t been burnt yet

Peter Costello on the independence of the public service 'view', the future of policy advice, and when Treasury secretaries were treated harshly

Richard Bolt on dealing with corruption when it's in your own executive. Why it happens, and what he learned about the duty to protect the agency

Writing a form sounds simple, but isn't. Public servants must balance readability and logic with the needs of complex policy and legislation

The great Treasury juggle: providing the minister with fearless advice (even if it causes discomfort), while keeping the government's political strategists happy

Government-stored data can pose a threat to human rights. Educating the public about their own 'data hygiene' is a first step, while legislation catches up

What’s wrong with best practice? How the quest for certainty affects the agility and innovation needed for organisations to thrive

The APS needs to radically and quickly overhaul what 'service delivery' means to them. That should start with genuinely listening to their front-line people

Policy models are powerful decisionmaking tools, but backward-looking bias and lax application mean they can also be seductive and misleading

Government and startups don't speak the same language. Kate Cornick helps them help each other, improving services and keeping jobs local

AI was supposed to help this city recruit staff for local kindergartens. Denied transparency, parents compared results to understand the automated decisionmaking

Craig Ritchie sees the mistakes public servants make working with Indigenous communities. How he finds policy and delivery success in 'me knowing you and you knowing me'

What do we want our democracy to look like? Globalisation, means of income, and how we govern for the 21st Century

Trust makes the world go round. As a business asset, rebuild it with competence, care and 'a little bit of good each day'

Service design for public policymakers. The value and challenges of service design in government, from exploring to creating to delivering

The pitfalls you'll face in regulatory startups. Finding staff; ministerial panic; evaluation ... 'IT is simultaneously a minefield and a black hole'

The key to coexisting peacefully and effectively with political staffers is simple: each of you should understand the other's role

Are you investing as much into psychological safety as physical safety? If you don’t know, it might be time to start

'Licensed to operate differently' ― How Adrian Turner achieves large-scale digital innovation with porous boundaries and multi-disciplinary teams

Economics influences policy ― but only when the numbers make sense. Jenny Wilkinson has three key tips that are often overlooked

Steve Hodgkinson is banning 'stupid digital stuff'. Relentless incrementalism, empowered staff and reusable platforms allow for cheap, fast 'micro services' that users love

A digital government twin can model effects of change over time. It could teach us what structures worked and what didn't, optimising machinery of government

Underperformance in the public sector is difficult and painful: Linda Waugh talks about how to guide and advise a way through it

They break the rules, disrupt norms, can't promise ROI. Why risk an innovation project? Here's how to know when you've added value

Effective public servants need nuanced understanding of politics, what drives their minister and government. Geoff Gallop offers eleven theses on Australian politics in practice

It was an unfortunate mishap. Things went badly wrong. Here's how an Incident Command System can prevent nasty events happening again

How Collective Impact is helping solve our most pernicious problems: breaking down the isolated agendas of stakeholders and realigning incentives

In Argentina, public servants get promoted for learning how to innovate. For every class taken, a public servant earns points towards a pay rise

You can start anywhere, you can end anywhere. Elanor Huntington is rethinking career journeys, skills and attributes to beat global challenges

In the trenches, winning the battle to reduce violence against women is a daily, brick-by-brick process

Genuine mental health case ... or not? If you think an employee is lying, here's what you need to ask yourself first