While I regard the contestability of policy as unambiguously positive for getting the best outcomes for Australia, it has also generated some issues that the Australian Public Service needs to address. If the public service is to realise its potential (and not just in relation to policy) there is a real imperative to unreservedly adopt whole of government working, beyond the rhetoric, and to make sure that we have the right people in the right jobs with the right skills.
A whole of government approach assumes the need to respond and adapt to the complex and networked environment of modern government that I described earlier – it is about how we remain relevant in a new and fundamentally different world. It is not a single instrument, for, say, collaboration on service delivery. Rather it is a cohering principle, necessary to maintain our sense of government as a consolidated entity, a single system that can be worked upon to deliver the outcomes expected by the government and the community.
The term itself is flavour of the month. The reality is that we have to move beyond the rhetoric and start doing it for real (this is being done well in some areas - the new Water Commission is really starting to make some headway with water policy across jurisdictions and boundaries). We need to develop an instinct in the public service for doing things collaboratively, while leveraging off the important work being done beyond our boundaries. The alternative is that we will become irrelevant. This is, or should be, part of our competitive advantage: our capacity to think across all the boundaries of all the portfolios and agencies that support government, and to draw on that unmatched resource of skills and experience.
The dilemma for the public sector is captured well, I think, in a recent book by William Eggers (2005) – Government 2.0: Using technology to improve education, cut red tape, reduce gridlock, and enhance democracy. Eggers argues, essentially, that the public sector is struggling with the shift from government in the industrial age (hierarchical and agency-cantered) to government in the information age (less-hierarchical and citizen-focused). Egger’s book is written with reference to the U.S. experience, but some of it resonates here in Australia. Not everyone has cottoned-on to the speed at which things are moving – enabled by technology – and how responsive we need to be to government, to the community, and to each other as policy advisers.
In the past, the outcomes we are now looking to achieve from whole of government activity were mostly pursued through organisational restructuring and machinery of government changes. What is new is that today’s whole of government approaches tend to look primarily to the development of organisational cultures, capabilities and relationships that support, model, understand and aspire to whole of government solutions.
The benefits to be had from whole of government working are no greater in any area than in policy development. There is potential here for the Australian Public Service to really press its advantage. We have an institutional framework that will allow us to work collaboratively within the public service, and beyond and we should be actively looking to do that.
A positive move in this direction was made with the issue of a joint communication from myself and all of the 18 portfolio secretaries, titled Working Together. It sets out what is expected of Australian Public Service employees working on whole of government initiatives. The communication emphasises the importance of working across organisational barriers to achieve policy and service delivery objectives. It also outlines some of the significant whole of government activity that is already being undertaken - especially at the Senior Executive level – but notes that Australian Public Service employees need to look beyond the immediate interests of their own organisation to the broader context. It goes on to provide practical guidance on ways to achieve the best results from our collective endeavours.
Within the public service we need to recognise that central and line agencies bring different perspectives and different resources to the task of policy development – line agencies are often the custodians of the evidence that should support policy for example, while central agencies may well have a better handle on what the government is looking to achieve from a policy development exercise. We should be looking for the synergies here, rather than, as is sometimes the case, engaging in a contest to determine which source of advice will prevail.
Line agencies are the custodians of the data, the day to day regulators, the people who know what will happen when very complex and sensitive systems are adjusted at critical points. Central agencies are information rich in a context sense: they know what the government wants at a strategic level across a range of portfolios and they have access to ministers and through ministers to money.
Because line and central agencies each bring particular skills and understanding to policy development, the quality or even extent of policy work will suffer when the creative balance between them is lost. There are any number of factors that can shake that balance, from the electoral cycle to Commonwealth-State relations to the personalities of ministers. It is our responsibility to make the relationship work.