Transcript Slide 1

Building policy capacity:
Challenges and Implications Across
Policy Sectors
Presentation to Department of Education
and Training Research Forum
13 October 2010
Dr Anne Tiernan
Department of Politics & Public Policy
Griffith Business School
The problem of policy skills
• Internationally, concerns have been expressed
about the policy skills and capabilities of career
bureaucracies
– A pervasive sense that governments are not capable of
successfully developing, implementing and evaluating policies.
• Similar concerns are widespread in Australia
amongst decision-makers, senior officials and
stakeholders (notably business) at Commonwealth,
State and Territory levels.
– Empirical evidence of and explanations for this real or perceived
decline are the subject of a major ARC Discovery Grant (Weller,
Wanna and Tiernan: DP773267).
Our project:
• Examines the policy advisory skills and capacities of the
APS across key policy sectors:
– These initially included: Housing; Environment; Transport;
Economic policy (Treasury and Finance); Central coordination
(PM&C) and National Security.
– We take ‘policy advisory skills’ to be their ability to support
decision-making through their policy advisory functions.
• Has a longitudinal focus:
– 20 year period since the 1987 machinery of government
changes.
– In practice, there is some flexibility around the time periods in
question.
Some revisions and modifications
• Change of government in November 2007 prompted
some re-thinking, also opened some new opportunities,
particularly given the Rudd government’s concerns about
public sector performance
– We deal with Ministers’, Chiefs of Staff and senior officials’
perceptions of the ‘capacity problem’ in our book Learning to be a
Minister (MUP, 2010).
• Initially concerns centred on ‘strategic policy capacity’
– Advisory Group on reform of Australian Government
Administration considered these issues in depth.
• More recently, concerns have evolved to focus on
implementation and delivery
– We have made some revisions to our sample of agencies
accordingly.
Dimensions of the capacity problem
• A contested concept. No one clear definition, but
a degree of consistency in the discourse.
• Incorporates concerns about:
– A perceived lack of strategic thinking and analysis
– A lack of ‘creative ideas’
– Tendency for short-term considerations to predominate
• Tension here about extent to which decision-makers are
interested in longer-term issues (a demand-side problem)
and/or agencies are capable of producing the requisite analysis
(a supply problem).
– An inability to solve problems or solve them in desired ways.
– Extends beyond policy analytic work into implementation and
policy delivery.
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Possible explanations for the problem
• A consequence of the NPM reforms
– Loss of staff, corporate knowledge and expertise through
restructuring, outsourcing and contracting. Decline in
in-house research and analytic units.
– Changing role for the public service in policy analysis and
advice:
• Contestability; governments’ perceptions of what constitutes an
appropriate role (formulation vs implementation).
• Relations between ministers and public servants are central here.
• Changing nature and role for government: complexity
and uncertainty; expectations and demands of external
environment.
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Governmental responses
• Public sector reform initiatives over 35
years:
– Commonwealth Government’s Ahead of the Game: Reform
of Australian Government Administration.
– In Queensland, successive public sector reform efforts
since 1989. Most recently 2008 reform initiatives; 2009
MOG changes, performance frameworks etc.
– Most states and territories are doing work in this area,
notably SA, Victoria and WA.
– State governments face particular challenges in the current
environment: fiscal constraints, service delivery demands
and unpredictable nature of intergovernmental relations.
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Some insights from our cases: Treasury
• Has a strong sense of its mission and purpose
within government and a compelling narrative
about its contribution to Australia’s well-being.
• Is small and focused – its responsibilities are
well defined and have equivalents in other
jurisdictions.
• Strong, stable leadership over a long period of
time
– Limited turnover at the political leadership level (6
Treasurers in 30 years)
– Bureaucratic leaders have maintained a sense of
‘stewardship’ of the organisation – continued to
invest.
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Treasury (2)
• Staff are drawn from broadly consistent
disciplinary backgrounds: economics,
accounting, finance etc.
– There are recognised methodologies and analytic
tools for the work they do.
• Able to attract and retain high quality staff
because
– it remains prestigious (and a career accelerator); and
– it has adopted innovative approaches to staff and
skills development.
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Treasury (3)
• But…
– It is operating in a competitive and contestable
environment and Ministers do not simply defer to the
Treasury as they once did.
– They have their own sources of expertise in their private
offices and constantly probe other sources in the
broader policy community, including those developed in
Opposition and at earlier points in their careers.
• Treasury has worked very hard to make sure it remains
influential and relevant – see some of Ken Henry’s speeches on
policy advising.
• This is not risk-free.
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Treasury (4)
• There are lots of skills it doesn’t and can’t have –
because of the nature of financial markets,
banking etc.
– So they have creative strategies to source this
information. Rather than trying to buy or develop what
would immediately become redundant, they partner,
broker and furiously work the policy community,
including academia, other governments, international
organisations etc.
– Though in many ways inwardly focused, it is very
outwardly focused and connected. An international
network maintained through loyalty to the organisation.
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Insights from our cases: Housing
• Capacity has fluctuated according to interest and
needs of the government of the day
– Can leaders maintain investments in capacity if there is no
effective demand?
– In any case, difficult to attract and retaining quality staff when
there is no appetite for their work.
• Built up from 1970s to mid-1990s, but significant loss
of in-house knowledge and expertise from mid to late
1990s on
– Might have been less of a problem if major reform directions
had been achieved, however…
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Insights from our cases: Housing (2)
• Disinvestment in in-house research and analytic units,
but investment in broader policy community through,
for example, AHURI and through their own volition, by
non-governmental actors
– So is capacity lost or just dispersed and what are the
implications?
• Lack of in-house expertise (including in Treasury)
proved a significant frustration to Rudd government in
2007/08.
– Had to look to State governments...
– Who of course, had known for more than a decade this was a
problem and had experienced its consequences.
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How to Ministers, Chiefs of Staff and
Senior Officials see the problem?
We put this question
specifically to all three
groups when doing
interviews for our book.
• We report on this in
detail, including some
insightful quotes.
•
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Elite perspectives on the problem suggest:
That concerns about capacity in the APS:
1. Are a phenomenon of changes of government –
time it takes to adapt to new priorities and style.
2. Reflect a mismatch of expectations between the
roles a public service has performed under a
previous government and the aspirations of a new
one.
3. Unwillingness to put forward advice and options
unless asked (a common ministerial complaint) may
reflect uncertainty and disagreement about what
now constitutes appropriate professional norms for
public servants post-NPM.
Elite perspectives on the problem suggest:
4. Are a product of a changing
environment/pressures on policy advising –
complexity, media, citizen expectations etc.
5. As governments mature, concerns shift to the
public service’s ability to implement and deliver.
6. Issues of leadership emerge as a persistent theme.
Building capacity at the sub-national level
• Complicated by:
– Inheritances and administrative traditions
• State public services have antecedents in colonial administrations – not
unified from birth like the APS.
• Develop their own particular ‘policy styles’ – Queensland a case in point.
– Breadth of responsibilities
• Large systems – often decentralised.
• Reliance on ‘street level bureaucrats’ – potential tensions between the
centre and the front-line and in directing professional staff.
– Delivery rather than policy focused
• Cadre of policy people often mired in reactive work – arising from delivery
issues, inter-governmental agendas etc
• Or focused on coordination given dispersal both spatially and
organisationally
• Not a lot of ‘organisational slack’ to pursue strategic work.
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Building capacity at the sub-national level (2)
– Dependency and constraints on unilateral action
• Particularly because of Commonwealth-state financial arrangements
and increasingly blurred roles and responsibilities.
• Adds uncertainty and complexity.
– Political, organisational and administrative discontinuity
• Relatively frequent turnover of ministers and senior leaders
• Turnover and churn at other levels.
• Organisational restructuring to reflect government priorities,
emerging issues etc.
• Policy capacity at sub-national level probably has some
parallels to the challenges that have confronted Defence.
• Worth noting that where the APS has become involved in
delivery, it has experienced similar challenges to sub-national
agencies.
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Approaches to building policy capacity:
• Focus on building the skills of individuals
– Professional knowledge and skills.
– Judgment: what Kane and Patapan describe as ‘prudence and
practical wisdom’.
– Ability to navigate ambiguity and complexity inherent to policymaking.
– Personality and character traits: professional motivation,
integrity etc.
– Seek to recruit staff with diverse backgrounds and experiences.
– Leadership skills.
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Approaches to building policy capacity (2):
• Focus on attributes of institutions and organisations
– Information and research resources, including knowledge
sharing practices and institutional memory.
– Human resources: leadership, role conception, professional
norms and orientations; workforce issues including recruitment
and retention, churn, career paths.
– Processes: routines for policy coordination; ways in which
specialists and generalists work together; how central vs frontline perspectives are managed;
– Organisational culture: organisational identity, presence (or not)
of a learning culture.
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Approaches to building policy capacity (3):
• Being cognisant of the broader network/policy context
– Pressures of the political and broader operating
environment
– Dynamism and volatility
• Are policy issues new or presenting in unprecedented ways
– Expertise may need to be levered in from elsewhere or may
require deliberate network building strategies (e.g. counterterrorism; collapse of ABC Learning, how to respond to the
GFC).
• How to overcome the expectation gap?
– Impossible to ignore the demand-side, but often the
‘elephant in the room’.
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For discussion:
•
What should governments be able to expect
from their public service advisers?
•
How well is the public service delivering on its
side of ‘the bargain’ – in terms of providing
high quality, responsive, professional, expert
and impartial advice and support for
government decision-making?