What's a program? What's program management? Differences in how we use these words matter, argues UNSW Canberra's Dr Raymond Young - and the project management discipline needs to adapt its language use if it wants to help government deliver better results.
Read MoreCollaboration is a popular and often routine exercise for the public, private and community sectors to develop a common purpose, as well as co-design and/or co-deliver policies or services. But the costs of these interactions are often underestimated. Robyn Keast, Michael Charles and Piotr Modzelewski argue that a detailed cost-benefit analysis should be undertaken before undergoing collaboration.
Read MoreCommissioning is like a unicorn? (Are your eyes deceiving you?) Although this might sound like a bizarre analogy, Helen Dickinson, director of UNSW Canberra's Centre for Public Service Research, illustrates the surprising ties between the mystical creature and public sector commissioning in this repost from her blog.
Read MoreIs aggressive outsourcing of government services affecting service quality and trust? The Mandarin's David Donaldson spoke to contracting expert and NSW Premier's ANZSOG Chair of Public Service Delivery Gary Sturgess for his take on the matter. This post originally appeared on The Mandarin.
Read MoreIn recent years, social services recipients have had limited choice in service providers, but in New South Wales, these choices are further restricted by the state government's transfer of disability services to the non-government sector. The blog post below is NSW Council for Intellectual Disability's commentary on this development, and is a repost from the Council's website.
Read MoreFor UK based researchers, practitioners and policy makers interested in the area of eating disorders 2017 marks an important milestone. This year the updated National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines will be published in the UK after a 14 year wait. This is a long awaited release as these guidelines provide momentous support to professionals on the frontline of services by helping to inform the best care and treatment modalities for the most vulnerable. The 15 year wait begs many questions - none more so than why so long? In the post below, Dr Una Foye looks at why eating disorders have not received sufficient attention in mental health contexts.
Read MorePersistent long-term growth in the world’s population has brought with it significant public health concerns. The global demographic is ageing, chronic disease is on the rise and these concerns for health and welfare systems require action in a time of economic uncertainty. Over 46 million people worldwide are currently living with dementia and this figure is set to treble in the next 35 years (Prince et al., 2015). In the post below, Dr Jennifer Lynch looks at if Assistive Technology is a human rights issue for people living with dementia.
Read MoreAustralia offers an interesting analogue for England in thinking about how mental health treatment and illness prevention might develop. Inevitably there are limitations on what can be learnt and what can be transferred, but there are lessons. In the post below, Professor Paul Burstow looks at what Australia's approach to mental health can teach the English.
Read MoreScholars of public policy often seek to explain how particular policy ideas catch on. What is it that makes some ideas fly, and others flop? For social policy advocates, this is a crucial question. In this post, ANZSOG researcher Jo Luetjens suggests that understanding the role of the policy entrepreneur, and the strategies they use to create change, can help move us toward more effective advocacy strategies.
Read MoreWhat types of public policy promote greater happiness among citizens? Many governments justify pro-market policies on the basis of offering their citizens ‘choice and control’. Today’s post by Patrick Flavin, Alexander C. Pacek and Benjamin Radcliff presents results from an analysis of survey data across 21 industrialised democracies between 1981 and 2007. They find that in countries where governments intervene more frequently in the economy, insulating citizens from market fluctuations, there is a higher degree of self-reported happiness among citizens. While the authors note that these findings cannot strictly be taken as evidence that social democratic policies are better in a normative sense overall, the results suggest that more research is needed on the impact of a country’s political context on the happiness of its citizens. This article was originally published on the LSE EUROPP - European Politics and Policy – blog.
Read MoreImplementation of almost any policy now requires actions and engagement across multiple organisational domains with government, public, private and community partners. In today's post, Gemma Carey, Helen Dickinson and Sue Olney look to feminist theory for new ideas on how policy actors can navigate and influence the dynamic and increasingly complex policy implementation environment.
Read MoreWhen our politicians frame the discussion around welfare users by using such language as "dole bludgers" it is a deliberate tactic to validate punishing them - as we have seen with the Centrelink debt debacle and the accusations by staff that a faulty system was deliberately implemented. In today's post, Paul Michael Garrett explains how language use frames public opinion in the U.K. in unhelpful ways. Have ideologically underpinned debates, portraying those on welfare as being lazy and having an easy life, become part of collective public perceptions? With 2016 marking the 40th anniversary of the publication of Raymond Williams’ Keywords, an interrogation of the taken-for-grantedness of specific words used to support a neoliberal agenda is timely. Here, he looks at ‘welfare dependency’. This blog originally appeared on the London School of Economics' British Politics and Policy blog; the original can be viewed here.
Read MoreDETOXING DEMOCRACY: Citizen deliberation is a powerful tool for legitimisation, but can it become institutionalised? Just as Yarra Valley Water consulted its community in a way that encouraged their close deliberation on the issues, agencies could cultivate councils of people reflective of community makeup for ongoing capacity to reflect community deliberation.
Read MoreIn recent years, think tanks have been beset by financial constraints, increased competition, and, more recently, a growing questioning of, and popular dissatisfaction with, the role of the ‘expert’ itself. Marcos Gonzalez Hernando, Diane Stone and Hartwig Pautz examine each of these challenges and find that, at a time of huge over-supply of (occasionally dubious) evidence and policy analysis from a variety of sources, think tanks have an opportunity to reinvent themselves as organisations able to discern the reliability and usefulness of policy advice.
Read MorePublic servants should at least be aware of the human rights treaties to which Australia is party and the obligations they entail, says Gillian Triggs — and many do want to know how to do their jobs better. David Donaldson writes for The Mandarin
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In 2008, for the first time in the history of the United States, more than 1% of the adult American adult population was incarcerated. The prison population had increased approximately sevenfold since 1970, the US imprisoned more types of criminal offenders than any other country, and it kept them in prison longer. Here Jo Luetjens reports on work with her ANZSOG colleague Prof Michael Mintrom on how design thinking drove the introduction of an investment approach in the US state of Kansas. Early results are promising, and many other states have since taken up this approach.
Read MoreIt might sound strange, but the tragic voyage of the second fleet, which killed 40% of the convicts on board, holds a lesson for contemporary governments about the consequences of perverse incentives. Here The Mandarin's David Donaldson reports on the work of ANZSOG scholars Gary Sturgess, George Argyrous and Sara Rahman.
Read MoreTomorrow is Human Rights Day. Each year the international community commemorates that day in 1948 when the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Australia played a leading role in its development and reach. On its 68th anniversary, Patrick Emerton from the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law reminds us why human rights are more important than ever, and why governments must not forget their role.
Read MoreDistrust between government and citizens goes both ways, but deliberative democracy offers opportunities in this age of individualism. The convenors of SA’s citizens’ juries, Emily Jenke and Emma Lawson consider how government can recover the trust of citizens.
Read MoreDr John Butcher (ANZSOG Adjunct Research Fellow) recently addressed the Australian and New Zealand Third Sector Research Conference. His presentation offered expert reflections on the practical challenges of cross sector collaboration, and outlined the contribution of his recent open access ANZSOG/ANU Press book The Three Sector Solution: Delivering public policy in collaboration with not-for-profits and business.
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