The ‘centre’ in most governance systems is comprised of a constellation of central agencies and secretariats dedicated to serving first ministers, and supporting and coordinating the government and the public service as corporate entities. Implementation units cannot be understood and evaluated on their terms because they are insinuated into an ecology of capabilities at the centre of government.
This observation is important for three reasons. First, implementation units may have emerged as a critique of other central units in the systems. Second, in a complex and ‘congested’ central state apparatus, such units have to compete for resources and the attention of ministers and departments alike. Third, any unit may be called on to take up different tasks and roles in the upstream or downstream of the policy-making process. In what follows we consider the ecology of capabilities that such units have to navigate and consider the different roles that implementations units might play.
Perhaps the most important, if the least exciting, central capabilities are the secretariats that handle the upstream and downstream logistics for the meetings of cabinet and its committees. Typically, these units are dedicated to ensuring that proper notice, sign-off, consultation, and proper documentation and analysis occur before initiatives are tabled for ministers to consider. Depending on the size of the cabinet and its jurisdiction, there can be many secretariats, some serving cabinet as a whole and others serving particular standing and ad hoc committees. Usually, these units function as gate-keepers and process managers, and do not have the capacity to undertake policy and implementation analysis, nor to monitor or hold to account the performance of ministers and departments assigned responsibility for implementation.
Cabinet offices typically have responsibility for advising the first minister and cabinet secretary on the overall direction of public service institutions. In this connection there usually are secretariats that provide advice and support on the appointment of top executives across the public service, the overall structure of ministerial portfolios and the machinery of government, and broader reform initiatives such as renewal and public service reform. Finally, there will be secretariats dedicated to coordinating the assessment and evaluation of ministers and top officials.
First ministers often establish several policy units at the centre of government, such as national advisors or secretariats on security, science, Aboriginal affairs, and the environment. These are different from the traditional standing secretariats responsible for supporting cabinet and its committees (although coordinating secretariats may support ad hoc committees of cabinet). These secretariats can function as focal points to move issues higher on the government agenda and clear the path for policy development; what Bakvis and Juillet (2004) have depicted as a ‘catalytic’ or champion role. However, Lindquist (2004) suggests that without strong political will, such capabilities will quickly become seen as ‘symbolic’ (Myer and Rowan, 1977).
The lead responsibility for developing, framing, and advocating a major policy initiative – even one that is clearly horizontal – will typically be assigned to a lead department or ministry, unless it is determined by the first minister that is prudent or necessary for a central coordinating units to be established. Such units are responsible for assembling expertise and undertaking analysis, developing a coherent and politically sensitive policy plan, and deal with and manage the central agencies and cabinet. It is in this latter role that such policy units will encounter and perhaps clash with policy implementation units.
Central agencies may tend to defer to departments for their policy and operational expertise, but one time-honoured role of the centre is scrutinise and challenge new proposals and often their implementation plans, even if approved by the cabinet. Such scrutiny emerges from the responsibilities of departments of finance and treasuries – particularly in the expenditure management and budget office functions – to ensure that funds are well-spent and provide good value-for-money. This challenge role can be exercised as part of informing cabinet deliberations when considering proposals, but it can also take place once policy decisions have been made, and finer-grained budget and human resource allocation decisions have to be made in the downstream to decisions. The extent to which this takes place will also depend on how potent the budget office and finance ministries are in the implementation process; in some jurisdictions, managerial flexibilities and traditions of autonomy may circumscribe this role.
In some systems, central capabilities are established to support horizontal initiatives, either by providing advice, training or lesson-drawing. They could facilitate learning, the dissemination of best practices, and function as a ‘centre of excellence’. This could be relevant to implementation initiatives since there could be learning and support informed by previous experience. Such capacity could assist officials leading a horizontal initiative at the formative stage, but such a role should be seen as distinct from the catalytic, champion, and implementation roles identified above.
The implementation of policy initiatives are usually assigned to lead departments, but sometimes their complexity and horizontality may require that the centre establish a coordination secretariat, either located with a lead department and sometimes in the cabinet office. In a parallel way, central agencies may often agree to coordinate across ‘service’ lines, particularly if key oversight functions and policies are distributed across different central agencies, to streamline the approvals and reporting associated with a particular initiative.
The line between monitoring progress on specific implementation initiatives and evaluating the performance of ministers and their executive teams can be blurry, but the latter activity focuses on more global assessment and reporting, whereas the former may involve remedial steps by the centre to ensure that implementation occurs. This might involve working with ministers and their departments to identify milestones and performance indicators for specific initiatives, and more generally, developing accountability frameworks for departments and executive teams, and reviewing indicators to inform the annual assessments of executive performance. It may also involve identifying broad outcome indicators for gauging the impact of government policies and programs in different domains over a longer period of time.
The forgoing leads us to see that there is a significant difference between creating capacity to promote priorities, assign responsibilities for horizontal initiatives, design significant policy interventions, coordinate approvals, facilitate progress, provide information, monitor implementation, and assess outcomes. These are distinct roles for coordinating units to play in government, and itemising them in sequence lays bare the inherent complexity for properly managing policy initiatives from the centre. It is in this context that we need to consider the role of policy implementation units at the centre for government. But even here we can have functional differentiation, and in this connection it is useful to identify two different potential roles that such units could play:
Upstream implementation. First ministers in Australia and Queensland have created implementation units in cabinet offices seemingly intended to ensure that when new initiatives are proposed, the administering organisations are properly identified, constructed and located, and that the right questions have been asked about a variety of implementation issues (Shergold, 2003). These implementation units provide ex ante quality control, to ensure the priority issues of government are properly addressed.
Downstream implementation. A related, but distinct, function is to monitor progress on implementation and, when necessary, invoke central authority to clear the path for horizontal initiatives as they evolve. The best example of dedicated capabilities for this purpose is the Delivery Unit in the British government, initially attached to the British Cabinet Office along with other policy and reform capabilities, and later moved over to the Treasury (Burch and Holliday, 2004).
It should be understood that implementation units could play one or both of these roles, or their focus could evolve over time depending on the interests of first ministers, and, of course, the competition and comparative advantage of other central capabilities.
More generally, we can see that there is great potential for implementation units, however defined and mandated, to overlap with and perhaps assume the responsibilities of other central actors in governance systems. Indeed, implementation units may have been established precisely to compensate for and as a critique of existing central capabilities. This implies considerable potential for overlap and rivalry for implementation units, and suggests that other central capabilities may exert pressure or attempt re-build capabilities to compete with or absorb implementation units. Moreover, there is no end to ongoing demand to create adhocracies and secretariats at the centre, and considerable pressure and incentive – particularly symbolic in nature – to retain them (Lindquist, 2004). However, prime ministers and top advisers also have to ask, ‘How do you cull and re-align the centre?’, so that governments can maintain their focus, and the time of central actors, departments and agencies can be utilised more effectively. In short, this canvassing of central capabilities suggests a degree of precariousness for these new units and suggest important empirical questions to explore in the case study contributions.
The three case study papers were presented recently at the Second Annual International Comparative Policy Analysis (ICPA) Workshop on October 3, 2005 in Vancouver. They included the following papers:
David Richards and Martin Smith, ‘Central Control and Policy Implementation in the UK: A Case Study of the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit’ (2005) chronicles the emergence of the Delivery Unit (PMDU), but first considers larger trends in the governance of the core executive in the UK. The authors show how the design of the PMDU and its direct reporting to the Prime Minister (even though it has been located in the Cabinet Office and the Treasury) can be seen as a response not only to the arrival and challenge of New Public Management themes to the Westminster style of governance but also to significant fragmentation of delivery of service. They see the PMDU as a concerted effort of the Prime Minister to work directly and negotiate with delivery agencies on implementation of priority initiatives because the departments of the core executive had failed to bring about a necessary culture shift to improve delivery performance. Richards and Smith see the PMDU and its monitoring activities as reflecting Tony Blair’s ‘personalism’ in carrying out the duties of the Prime Minister.
John Wanna, ‘From Afterthought to Afterburner: Australia’s Cabinet Implementation Unit’ (2005) examines the decision of Prime Minister John Howard and his top political and public service advisors to create a capability to encourage ministers and public servants to focus attention on the delivery or implementation aspects policy decisions. This interest arose close to the second term of the Howard government, and was addressed as part of the transition planning for his third government. Wanna describes how Prime Minister Howard and top officials learned from the UK experience with the PMDU and located a small Cabinet Implementation Unit (CUI) in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. The CUI can be seen as one of many strategies that Howard employs for running a ‘disciplined’ cabinet system. While the officials do not seem to be the high-flyers found in the PMDU with direct access to the Prime Minister, the unit does review all proposals going to cabinet for implementation analysis and risk assessment, and the unit maintains a ‘traffic light’ system to the Prime Minster and cabinet for about 30 per cent of all proposals that the cabinet has approved.
Anne Tiernan, ‘Working With the Stock We Have: The Evolving Role of Queensland’s Implementation Unit’ (2005) provides some background on Queensland’s history and governance challenges, including efforts of the last couple of decades to modernise public sector governance and administration. The interest of Premier Peter Beattie in implementation arose as a result of several embarrassments during the second term of his government that revealed a disconnect between cabinet decisions and on-the-ground service delivery. This interest emerged as he shifted from a collaborative style of governing with colleagues to a far more directive and populist approach, running against the performance of the public service and working hard to keep his ministers in line. Beattie and his top officials were very well aware of Blair’s PMDU and Howard’s Cabinet Implementation Unit. However, they chose to re-organise standing policy and reporting capabilities to establish an Implementation Unit in the Department of Premier and Cabinet’ Policy Division. An interesting feature of the Queensland experience is the extent to which the Premier sought to have this capability work through the ‘desk officers’ in DPC responsible for liaising with departments and agencies.
The annex to this chapter contains the list of the questions sent to contributors to guide the drafting of the cases. Table 1, inserted below, summarises many of the details from the cases studies along several dimensions. The rest of this section considers the similarities and differences in the experience to date with the three implementation units.
|
Dimension |
United Kingdom – Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit |
Australia – Cabinet Implementation Unit |
Queensland –Implementation Unit |
|
Genesis and Context |
Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit arises in 2001 from the PM’s disappointment in lack of follow-though of policy initiatives on the ground, such as Joined-Up Government. Challenge was to create coherence and coordination in highly de-concentrated and fragmented delivery system. Cabinet Secretary designed the unit as part of transition planning before 2001 election. |
Part of third term approach of the Howard government. Put in place in February 2004 at behest of Cabinet Secretary with a business background determined to assist in effort to consolidate and ensure implementation, incl. project management. Part of a larger reorganisation of the DPMC. |
Emerged after June 2004 election as result of second term difficulties of Beattie government concerning Cabinet decisions that had not been implemented and led to a campaign promise to ‘fix’ the problem. Queensland public service yet to modernise. Created room for bureaucratic entrepreneur to create unit. |
|
Exemplars and Precursors |
UK Prime Ministers have a tradition of creating central units in the Cabinet Office for driving major public service reform strategic initiatives. Typically staffed with a mix of central, departmental and private sector officials. Blair ran a highly personalised government and created many central units relating to policy and implementation issues. |
The Australian government established strong policy and coordination units in the 1920s, 1940s, and mid-1970s. Informed by UK’s PMDU as result of Australian DPMC staff on interchange in the UK Cabinet Office. Secretary of DPMC went to UK to learn more about PMDU. Sought a bureaucratic as opposed to political-based capability that would be more collaborative. |
Strong premier tradition with traditional structures, and a brief dalliance with a higher capacity Cabinet office during the 1980s. Beattie established central units in Department of Premier and Cabinet (DPC) on Strategic Policy, Reporting for Government, and Policy Research. Beattie moved from collaborative to directive role by end of second term. Design of IU informed by Queensland officials on exchange with UK Strategy Unit, and by Australia’s CIU and UK’s PMDU. |
|
Stated Goals |
To ‘ensure the delivery of the Prime Minister’s top public service priority outcomes’. To work directly with delivery units, rather than departments, to identify reasonable delivery schedule and outcomes. To monitor whether goals in the Public Service Agreements, first introduced in 1998, are getting achieved. |
The Primer Minister sought a more strategic approach to managing the government’s mandate. Key facet of this was to ensure timely and effective implementation of decisions, early warning if initiatives off track, awareness of best practices, and better design of significant policy and horizontal initiatives. |
To monitor key election and cabinet policy commitments of the government, and to ensure that implementation takes place. To encourage considering implementation when policy is determined, to identify and remove obstacles. Underlying goal was to avoid previous failures. |
|
Capacity, Skills, and Leadership |
PMDU consists of 40 staff reporting directly to the PM. Comprised of a mix of central, department, agency, officials and private sector consultants. It is led by a Chief Advisor on Delivery, and has had two leaders to date. |
CUI started in 2003 with 5 staff; by mid-2005 had 10 staff. The unit does not include high-level executives. Came from several policy and reporting units in DPC; no special expertise in policy or project implementation. |
Queensland unit has 15 staff with strong central expertise in policy and reporting, but no expertise in implementation per se. Initial leader came from experienced pod of central officials who knew the Premier. Succeeded by a Treasury official with strong interest in risk management. |
|
Location |
First physically located in the Cabinet Office; PMDU moved in 2002 to the Treasury to ensure a good relationship with the Treasury’s Civil Service Division. However, PMDU continued reporting directly to the Prime Minister. In 2005, PMDU became part of Building Capacity Section of Cabinet Office including EGU, OPSR, and the Better Regulation Unit. |
Inside the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. |
Inside Policy Division of the Department of Premier and Cabinet. |
|
Dimension |
United Kingdom – Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit |
Australia – Cabinet Implementation Unit |
Queensland –Implementation Unit |
|
Ex Ante Modus Operandi |
Worked with Treasury and agencies to develop targets associated with the bilateral Public Service Agreements. PMDU works with the PM on his priority areas – health, education, crime and transport – which involves 20-25 of the approximately 130 negotiated PSAs, and five departments. |
Review cabinet proposals at the design and development stages. Goal is to ensure that proper risk assessment and implementation analysis has been undertaken by sponsor departments. Identifies the milestones to guide reporting. The CUI can also negotiate the implementation plans of departments. |
Involved in announcing key government priorities; developing and circulating Ministerial charter letters; reports on ‘Top Fifty’ to Cabinet; developed the Implementation Assessment Template and revised the handbook for submissions to Cabinet. Goal is to educate DPC and department staff. |
|
Ex Post Modus Operandi |
Once targets are agreed on, PMDU reports on progress. This includes the Delivery Planning Process (links targets to deliverables), the Delivery Report (assesses whether targets are realistic), and the Prime Ministerial Stock-take (agency representatives meet directly with the PM). If there are problems, a Joint Action program is negotiated. |
Progress reports and early warning should initiatives get off track. Includes a traffic-light warning system of about 30 per cent of initiatives to the Prime Minister; he sees all of them, departments see reports that involve them. Quarterly roll-ups are sent to Cabinet. The reports do not have qualitative assessment, but there have been a few reviews of whole-of-government initiatives. |
Monitor and pursue the implementation of all Cabinet and Cabinet Budget Review Committee decisions, election commitments, and key policy initiatives. Produces reports on milestones, Top Fifty, and Key Initiatives. Reports to Premier and twice yearly to Cabinet on Charter Letters. |
|
Interactions with Central & Other Actors |
PMDU intrudes in an area previously the domain of the departments. PMDU must also navigate complex central terrain. Blair had also created a Forward Strategy Unit in the PM’s Office, a Policy Innovation Unit in Cabinet Office, and the E-Government Unit (EGU), Office of Public Sector Reform (OPSR), and a Better Regulation Committee. |
DPMC Secretary consulted portfolio secretaries about the CUI concept. Few tensions have emerged because CUI is essentially a reporting unit and does not connect to the budget process, nor to the priority-setting process, and therefore does not compete with other central units. |
Premier concerned about not overburdening departments with more central interactions; therefore IU required to work though DPC desk officers (PCOs) for each department. No link to budget process and highly dependent on data and information from departments. Treasury, however, does have very public outcomes for each department on the web. Often IU staff pulled off to deal with crises due to expertise. |
|
Degree of Precariousness |
Clearly driven by the Prime Minister, and has regular engagement with him. Not a support for Cabinet per se; a means for the PM to interact and negotiate directly with agencies – effectively an end run around ministers and departments. |
Unsure of role at first, largely because of departure of its progenitor. However, has emerged as a ‘ginger group’ informing PM of status of initiatives. Another tool used by an experienced PM running a disciplined cabinet. It seems that portfolio secretaries do not mind the reporting– helps with delivery agencies. In part, CUI exists due to disinterest on the part of DOFA on program management, implementation, and program evaluation in recent years. |
Key challenges: dependent on departments for information; early identity crisis because did not report directly to the Premier; had to work through PCOs, so had low profile, and, because of staff expertise in policy and research, often were pulled off to fire-fight on crises engaging the Beattie government. Gap in leadership for four months. |
|
Dimension |
United Kingdom – Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit |
Australia – Cabinet Implementation Unit |
Queensland –Implementation Unit |
|
Impact to Date |
Perhaps the best evidence of impact is the amount of time that the PM spends with the PMDU and the agencies in priority areas, but this is not the same as indicated that better performance has been secured with agencies. However, it has fostered a shift in emphasis from process to outcomes, and from relying on departments to the PM to oversee agencies in the priority areas. |
PM-driven process; ministers not keen to be ‘shamed’ in Cabinet. However, increased awareness and discussion of delivery and implementation, particularly among policy and delivery staff in departments. More project management units in agencies. PM likes the regime – part of running a disciplined Cabinet system. Led to collecting more data on delivery, such as third parties. |
Mixed reviews: evidence of raising awareness of PCOs and departments, but could be another check-off provision. |
|
Prospects |
Appears highly contingent on proclivities and energy of the current Prime Minister. One possibility is for the capability to move more squarely into the domain of the Treasury. |
Clearly driven by current PM and DPMC Secretary. Three possibilities are the status quo, for CUI to move to DOFA, or emerge as a joint central unit to connect reporting to budget decisions, risk assessment, and the challenge function. |
Depends on the Premier. Might persist, or capabilities may be directed to take up other suite of tasks. Its new leader is moving IU more into realm of risk assessment. |
The case studies suggest several similarities in how the implementation units came to be created, how they were conceived and initially located, and what have constituted their ‘bread and butter’ activities. All of them were introduced by experienced first ministers with had considerable experience running their respective governments, and therefore had a good sense of implementation issues and gaps. For two, lesson-drawing was at play, with Australia tapping into the UK-PMDU experiment, and Queensland officials learning from both the British and the Commonwealth of Australia initiatives. Each first minister had top political and bureaucratic support and engagement for building capacity to improve implementation, but this implicitly reflected either disinterest or insufficient capacity on the part of other central agencies in the respective systems, such as budget offices or management boards, to take up this responsibility. The units each appeared to have relatively narrow scope – their creation did not entail, for example, absorbing other functions from other central units and they were carefully kept separate from the budget process. None of the units played exclusively in the upstream or downstream of policy implementation; rather, they were all in vetting policy proposals before cabinet decisions ere taken and in the downstream monitoring of implementation. Monitoring involved a strong focus on identifying milestones and reporting on priority initiatives; the horizon for the milestones seems to be around a year, and this functioned, as intended, an early warning system for first ministers. This vetting and oversight was motivated by the aspiration of educating and raising the awareness of ministers, central agencies, and the leadership of departments and delivery agencies about the need to anticipate and deal with implementation issues.
Despite these similarities there were differences. The size of the implementation units vary considerably – PMDU (40), Queensland (15), and Australia (10) – and so does their composition, with the Australian and Queensland units tapping more into public servants with generalist policy skills, whereas the UK PMDU assembles expert teams for each of the priority areas from central agencies, departments, and the private sector, presumably reflecting the specialist expertise for certain priority monitoring. The more substantial size and composition of the PMDU reflects an oversight regime that, in addition to the monitoring of milestones and general reporting to cabinet, is deeper and more aggressive, working with the Prime Minister to plan, negotiate, and oversee the performance of delivery agencies, circumventing the traditional roles of departments. Not surprisingly, the PMDU is very prominent, clearly an agent of the Prime Minister in dealing with delivery agencies. In contrast, the Queensland IU has a low profile, working through other parts of the DPC to liaise with departments. This represents an interesting anomaly, since the Premier has made much of the need to improve the quality of the public service and to ensure follow-through on service delivery. However, the Queensland IU has a latent function, assisting the Premier with crisis issues, because of its staff capabilities also included policy and ‘fire-fighting’ experience.
Finally, notwithstanding the engagement of first ministers with the implementation units, and evidence that they seem to be playing significant transactional and education roles, the case studies seem to indicate their existence is somewhat precarious. Implementation units are inventions of particular first ministers, who often reorganise or structure their central capabilities in their personal and cabinet offices. It is not clear that these units have built a strong constituency beyond the respective first ministers – it seems unlikely that ministers, central agencies, or executives in departments and agencies would strongly argue for the offices to be maintained once the current first ministers left office.