Next up on Basic Income week, Professor Greg Marston explores how the simple yet powerful idea of basic income could help people vulnerable to climate change.
Read MoreContinuing on with our contributions to International Basic Income Week, our regular contributor Jon Altman provides an important analysis of what basic income could do for remote Indigenous Australia.
Read MoreNext up for International Basic Income Week, Dr Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico), lecturer in critical theory and technology studies at UC Berkeley and at the San Francisco Art Institute, offers an alternate view of the basic income discourse. This piece originally appeared on Dale's personal blog.
Read MoreAs well as being the week of the Power to Persuade Symposium, this week is also International Basic Income Week. In recognition of this, we will be running a series of posts on basic income (as well as some lead up pieces to the symposium). Below Dr John Tomlinson outlines the case for basic income. John has campaigned and published widely on the need for basic income.
Read More"We've all got knowledge, it's just different knowledge." Wales Chief Medical Officer Dr Ruth Hussey focused on the value of 'co-production' in her address this week to the Population Health Congress in Hobart.
In this article below, Michela Clarkson examines the theory and practice of co-design, which she says 'starts with an open question of need and recognises the limits of professional assumptions'.
It was originally published in the latest edition of Insight, the Victorian Council of Social Service (VCOSS) member magazine and is based on the Walk Alongside report by the same author, also recently published by VCOSS.
Read MoreThe Federal Government's Indigenous Advancement Scheme (IAS) tender process caused much chaos and stress, particularly for Indigenous organisations and communities (see this previous Power to Persuade post on the opportunities lost).
Read More"…the government’s express goals of innovative service delivery and improved outcomes for service users have actually been hindered as a result of the way the tendering process was designed and executed."
Recent federal funding cuts and tendering processes have created much concern for the community sector and the communities they work with. That's been particularly so for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities under this years Indigenous Advancement Strategy (which Indigenous leader Noel Pearson this week rated at less than 2 out of 10 for reform).
In the post below, Victorian Council of Social Service (VCOSS) Policy Advisor Brooke McKail looks at some of the lessons to be learnt. Her article is published in the latest edition of Insight, the VCOSS member magazine.
Read MoreIn today's post, Paul Smyth explores how events like last week's national reform summit reveal the lack of government-driven policy development and asks how do we successfully engage the community to create the economic and social policy we need.
Read MoreLast week the National Reform Summit brought together leading figures from the community, politics, business and media to examine the big policy issues facing Australia today. Addressing the summit, Dr Cassandra Goldie, CEO of the Australian Council of Social Service, made the case for reaching out across traditional divides in our community to “reignite participatory democracy”.
Read MoreHow do you lead the type of large scale (or 'compound') collaborations needed to tackle truly wicked, large scale problems? In a recent post on the Policy and Politics Journal Blog Chris Ansell, from the University of California Berkley, discusses leadership for large scale collaborations. You can read his full article at the Journal, which he says is 'essentially about “collaborations of collaborations.”
Read MoreIn recent years, child care has returned as a hot topic in politics and policy. Both the current and former governments have tended to view child care as a means to a similar policy end – increasing productivity, yet neither have adequately considered the centrality of worker’s needs in developing policy solutions to ‘fix’ child care. In this post, Lara Corr (@corr_lara) explains why workers’ mental health and working conditions must be front and centre in child care policy and the ongoing risks associated with policy that promotes the worker exploitation through poor conditions.
Read MoreThe 'innovative finance' model of Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) is being hailed as an answer to funding critical social problems. In this post, guest contributor Helen Dickinson (@DrHDickinson) looks at the hype and potential of SIBs and if they really are the best of all worlds.
Read MoreIf only government departments worked together we could solve even the most 'wicked' of problems, right? Well, not, quite. In this post, Gemma Carey (@gemcarey) shares her insights into 'joined up government' implementation and what we can learn about efforts to solve the wicked problem of social exclusion through the Social Inclusion Agenda. This article was originally posted in The Policy Space.
Read MoreThe following is a summary of internal structural changes within government and key policy directions, part of a regular update series developed by The Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG). This update was developed in December 2014 and updated in early 2015. Thanks to Nicole Barling-Luke at ANZSOG for this contribution.
Read MoreToday delivers Part Two of Paul Smyth's presentation to the Dunstan Foundation's Addressing Homelessness Conference (@DonDunston). In this post Paul explores the ideologies that got us here, and what it will take for a new social policy perspective to rise from the ashes the recent 'market led' approach.
Read MoreToday's post is the first instalment of a presentation by Paul Smyth at the Dunstan Foundation's Addressing Homelessness Conference (@DonDunston). With the conference subtitled Valuing the Homelessness Sector: Humanity, Productivity and Building Futures, Paul's lecture explored the value in the community sector. Tomorrow's post explores how to start re-valuing it.
Read MoreAs we look for new ways to collaborate and adopt 'disruptive' models of practice we need to be aware that just because it is disruptive, it does not mean that it is truly 'sharing' or revolutionary. The term 'sharing economy' is being co-opted as outlined in this post by Olivier Blanchard, which was originally published here.
Read MoreHappy Monday! Something a bit left-of-centre for your Monday morning read. An essay by the famous (and controversial!) political scientist Francis Fukuyama, which outline his views around the decay of the public administration (and public policy) in the United States.
(We hesitate to mention that we are not endorsing his views by publishing, only offering them up for reflection.)
This post is a reblog from the website Foreign Affairs.
Read MoreCo-design, co-production and other terms which emphasise that governments cannot solve social problems from a top down-perspective are becoming increasingly common place. However, given the power differences involved can we truly 'co-create'? Below, Mark Evens explores the emerging popularity of co-design. Professor Evans is the Director of the Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, University of Canberra. His piece originally appeared on the Policy Space.
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