Table of Contents
The creation of a large public organisation is a significant event because such a major institutional commitment is rare.[1] Democratic governments normally have limited capability for radical design (Olsen 1998) as the conditions for major change occur infrequently, but a window of opportunity occurred in Australia in mid-1996.
Australia has had large public organisations before and the progenitor of Centrelink, the Department of Social Security (DSS), was large in the departmental pantheon. There was also the ‘mega-department’ experiment from 1987, which resulted in agencies of greater complexity but not necessarily of more substantial scale (Halligan 1987). In Centrelink’s case, the concept that emerged after its inception was for a new type of Australian organisation: a generalised delivery agency that could handle several major functions. In moving towards the combination of elements, as discussed in the Introduction, a number of considerations were involved.
The interest in reform origins derives from the process of conceiving a distinctively different public organisation and the early decisions about the range of design features that came to be embodied in it. Why did the Commonwealth Services Delivery Agency (CSDA), the precursor of Centrelink, emerge at this time and why as a new type of organisation? These questions require interpretations of organisational origins and institutional change based on the historical evidence.
A perspective on management change within the rational instrumental tradition assumes that reform is the product of deliberate choices between distinctive organisational options. How much freedom of choice do reformers have, however, when they decide whether to reform or not and then when they determine reform content, implementation and consequences (Brunsson and Olsen 1993)? Existing solutions are often applied to problems when the conditions for change arise, but the results are shaped by institutional values.[2]
One study that has successfully integrated a set of elements for handling the complexity is Kingdon’s (1984) depiction of three distinctive streams in agenda setting: problems, policies and politics. These streams operate independently: the recognition of problems that require attention, the policy ideas that eventually produce alternatives and the political arena covering, inter alia, changes in government. The confluence of the streams through the merging of politics, problems and solutions provides an opportunity for an item to be promoted to the decision agenda.
The second consideration was the process of deriving a set of design choices for a delivery agency that articulated and developed the concept that was launched in September 1996. The issues covered structural questions about the decoupling of policy and delivery, the integration of delivery roles and the choice of agency features at a time when the international reform movement was at its peak. More practical options involved the division of responsibilities between departments and agencies, governance arrangements and the delineation of relationships under purchaser–provider arrangements.
This chapter examines the confluence of trends, ideas and agendas that led to the establishment of a new type of service delivery agency and considers the design decisions that shaped the development of the organisation before its inauguration in 1997.